The paper Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses, is written by Ylva Fernaeus and Mattias Jacobsson. The paper concerns the “design of physical languages for controlling and programming robotic consumer products”.
 
Today, it is no longer clear the areas for where it is possible to use programming and different areas are also merging together. It is no longer given that programming need to be done on a screen since there are more areas where it is possible to use it. But one additional work that Fernaeus och Jacobsson is saying is necessary is to “explore how to create visually effective and easily understandable ways to represent physical program actions”. Therefore, they are exploring the possibility of using design and comics together in physical language design.
 
Both clothes and comics are extensively used and understood in popular culture. The authors is inspired by these two sign systems and by combining them the authors want to explore how it can control the behavior of physical interactive devices. But it is also pointed out that signs “become signs only when they are loaded with meanings that make them stand for something other than themselves”. Hence, it is important to have the consumer and their background in mind when designing this, or any other kind, of system.
 
The study that Fernaeus och Jacobsson do is interesting and it is without a doubt a area where a lot is  going on right now. The experimenting with merging different fields together (like merging comics, fashion and programming) for making new products that are more personalized for the costumer I believe will be bigger and bigger. 

What different areas could we, as soon-to-be-engineers, see are merged together in the future?
 
How can media technologies be evaluated?
Obviously there is not one answer to this question. Since, within media technology, there is a lot of different technologies and these can be evaluated in many different ways. Depending on the system, I think that observation or user tests may be a good way to evaluate. During these different kinds of evaluations, it can become very clear to the developer what the weaknesses are.  

What role will prototypes play in research?
Already nowadays I would say that prototypes have an important role in many researches. Since systems a lot of the time acts different from what was expected and assumed, it is relevant to examine how it actually work in real life. Prototypes are also a good way to discover unexpected errors and become aware of aspects that was not considered before.
I can not see any reasons why the importance of prototypes would change. I would rather say that in the future it might even be more important to do prototypes. Since the technology gets more and more complex and are implemented in different areas, it is important to know that it will actually work before doing it. Even if prototyping can be expensive, it is usually more expensive to implement a system that does not work.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
A prototype is built to demonstrate or try what the final product is supposed to do. I would say that I prototype is a simplified version of the final product, or some of the features of the final product. But since it is not the final product, it has limitations. If the goal is to test one feature of the product, the limitation could be that it is hard to see how this feature actually would work with the rest of the product. For example, I was once asked to test a device for controlling the computer by eye tracking. But since I could only scroll up and down, and were not able to click on any links, it was hard for me to say what the major problem was since I did not try it during normal circumstances.