Theme 5

Part 1

How can media technologies be evaluated?

I believe one of the best ways of evaluating media technologies would be to do user studies and see what the potential users of a system would have to say about it. In this way it would be easy to get feedback on design choices, interface, interaction and so forth. Once the feedback is acquired one could make changes to make the product fit the target group in a better way.

What role will prototypes play in research?

I think prototypes are extremely important. Obviously they are not necessary for every kind of research topic, but for research similar to the one we just read about I think they are very useful. As for media technology, I believe it is one of the research areas where prototypes are useful for testing. As our discipline is mostly about creating things that people will use, prototypes gives a nice preview or the users thoughts in an early stage.

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

It would be a good idea to make sure that the idea is viable. It is a lot easier to rework the idea in an early stage, say after having done a test with a prototype rather than having to do major changes once the real product is already done.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

A prototype is a light version of the real product, which is used for doing tests in an early stage. Hence it is different from the final product, as it will not be fully developed and all the details will not yet be finished.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

The best way to present a design would probably be through the use of a prototype, especially if one wants to put the design to test. It could be presented in other ways as well, but I still believe a prototype would be the best, as it really puts the design to test which makes it easy to take notes and possibly come up with ideas for improvement.

Part 2

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

The difference between the two settings is that the result from a collaborative setting is based on the whole group’s opinions and thoughts rather than having them individually from a single user setting. The benefit of a collaborative setting could be that people interpret information in different ways which could lead up to a wider range of perspective on the examined item. However a single user setting might be more convenient for the observer as collecting the data from the single user is a more straight forward process.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

A combination of the two methods can improve the evaluation of something by compensating one method’s limitations by gaining the strengths from the other. For instance a qualitative study could lead up to some hypothesizes which could be examined through a quantitative study. In this way the result of one method can be used to strengthen and verify the results from the other.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

I feel like this question is very similar to the previous one. A combination of the methods would allow one of them to complement and help verifying the results of the other. To fully understand a phenomenon, I think the phenomenon has to be considered from all different possible angles, which is where the use of both methods comes in handy.