Theme 6 Reflection

This week I analysed two papers, one with a qualitative method and one with a case study. Last week I learned what a qualitative method was but this week I learned how to apply one. Also I got a much better understanding of why you should use a qualitative method in certain situations and what you get out of them. In my paper they wanted to evaluate two SMS-services. What they wanted to know was reason of why thing were like they were and how they experienced the service. An important factor of qualitative methods is that you have to prepare the meeting with informants and make them feel comfortable and safe to get as much as possible out of it.

At the first seminar I got to know a lot of new qualitative methods that I had not thought of before. Some of them seemed really interesting and I am looking forward to use them in my master thesis. Diary was the method I discussed extra during the seminar. It can be used to follow a study over time and we also discussed that there is a lot of material available on the web. In one of the attendants paper they analysed video blogs that were published by members of an online game and used them to draw conclusions. 

Case study was something new to me. Quantitative methods are often more general and qualitative methods dig a little deeper into a problem. Case studies uses both to search a narrow field. I think that the fact that it uses different kinds of methods is what I take with me the most. It proves that both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used together and learning about case studies also helps to point out the value of each method. I believe that a combination of different kind of methods gives the best results. 

Theme 6 Qualitative and case study research

I picked my qualitative paper from Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication with the impact factor of 1.778. I thought it was hard to find a paper that was used qualitative methods but when I read the title of my paper I new I was done looking. The title of my paper is Counseling Young Cannabis Users by Text Message and it is a research about how two text messages services affect the weekly use of cannabis intake among heavy users. It is based on qualitative interviews with twelve young people who have tested at least one of the SMS-services. The interviews were semi structured and took place in a public place that the young people decided for themselves. One hour of open ended questions about their past, their opinions on the service and how it was compared to other methods, if they had tested anything else. 

What they wanted to find out in the research was the story behind the young users experience with the SMS-services. For this qualitative methods are the best because they give the subject a chance to explain themselves with their own words. If you could only pick one research method, then I think that it was a very good choice to pick qualitative methods for this purpose. It gives deeper view of what the SMS-services really contribute with and how they help people. But I would have liked to see a mixture between both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Maybe a questionnaire could be send out to everyone who used any of the services and let them answer some quick questions. Then you could get both a deep understanding of the services and some general data of it. Now it is very hard to do any kind of measurements and future work. 

Case study is a method that is trying to go deep into what you are researching. A case study consisting of at least one case, a research problem and data sources. Then what it need is some investigator to make the study and come up with some output. The first thing to do is to come up with a problem that the research will be about. Next step is to find cases to study so that you can find your solution to the problem. The third step is to define which methods to use on the different cases. They could be either quantitative, qualitative or both which means that you could use interviews, questionnaires or anything else to collect your data. When all that is decided you have to get out there and collect the data before you can analyse it. The analyses part is probably the most difficult. 

The Use of Instant Messaging in Working Relationship Development: A Case Study

It is about how instant messaging (IM) helps people at a large organization in South Korea. The research questions are the following: 

• "Differences in IM Use Within and Across Organizational Boundaries" 

• "

  Differences in Improvement of Working Relationships Within and Across Organizational Boundaries"

They use both quantitative methods (surveys to 137 employees) and qualitative methods (13 interviews with employees). Also two in depth case studies were made to generate further insight into the two research questions.

They get a good start by defining these research questions. These that i quoted were the short version of the questions. They pick out two cases (employees) which is better than one. They can also compare these cases with their previous qualitative and quantitative data to make sure that they are typical for this group. They shape a structured methodology and procedure which they apply on the cases. I think that they enter the field with opportunistic methods and analyse the data well because they make it simple with a lot of quantitative data and statistics. They shape hypotheses and link a lot of their conclusions to literature. To be honest I think that they do a great job in this research and see no room for complaints.

Reflection Theme 5

This week we read two texts and had lectures with the authors. The first text: Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses was how comic signs and clothes could help us communicate with robots in more intuitive ways. Compared with last weeks readings this paper did not seem scientific at all. No numbers, statistics or results to tell the reader if this was a good or bad hypothesis. By reading the paper you ended up with even more questions than you had before but i guess that was the point of it. At the lecture Ylva told us that this paper had been given great response at some conference and was accepted as a research paper.

The second text was about prototypes. I think that it is very interesting and during my bachelor thesis I worked a lot with prototypes. I really think that it is the best way of creating a product. When you first get an idea it is far from what the end result will be like. If you create simple prototypes you the changes will be easy to make and you learn something and refine your product after each iteration.

During the lecture he spoke about other things than the paper. It was a a new perspective on research. Until this point we have learned what science and research is. What Haibo Li talked about was more how you can make money out of research. That is important, because without a great chance of making some money, who want's to found your research?

Theme 5 Design research

The paper Comics, Robotics, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses, Fernaeus and Jacobsson (2009) was about physical communication with robots. The authors dig into how they can use different artifacts and signs to control the computer systems. They call it the actDresses and writes that human computer interaction is getting more important to do research about. So they apply the concept of actDresses to three different cases where they use signs and accessories to communicate with the robots. E.g. the dinosaur falls a sleep when he gets his pajamas. 

 (Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration.)

How can media technologies be evaluated?
There are two main ways that I know: Consult an expert and let him/her evaluate your product or let people test it. The later is the best in my opinion and especially if you get your costumer group test it. You will get good data on how they used it or their opinions on the product. Who's opinion could be more important than your costumers? If it is the coding you want to test you can always create test programs that run your code and see which alternative is the best. A little like they did in the paper. 

What role will prototypes play in research?
Prototypes play a big role in the research of a new design. Before you put all your money and time into a project it is good to know that the idea is at least tested before hand. In the paper they first tested to see if the idea was any good with the help of a prototype. A prototype should be easy to make but still you should be able to test the functionality. 

What are the characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
A media technology prototype can differ a lot and it depends on what it is supposes to test. Is it the graphic design then you could use power point or if it is the coding then it could be a small program without any graphical content. Things they have in common is that they are easy to build and take short time. They can never really represent the final product. Some functionality might be hard to implement in a prototype. During my bachelor thesis I worked a lot with human computer interaction and design research. I did an application for smartphones and it was demanded from the company that it was going to be very intuitive and easy to use. For that we needed to create a lot of different prototypes, test them and evaluate them. We started off with simple paper prototypes to see if the flow of the app was good and if people understood how to use it and what they thought of it. Later we created an prototype in power point, it was good because we got it on a screen and it looked a lot like the final product but the functions did not really work. This made the testing a bit troublesome since we had to give the testers directions.

Reflection Theme 4

I have read and analysed a quantitative research paper about Facebook usage and social capital. The authors of the paper created a survey that consisted of two parts, one for Facebook usage and one for social capital. It was handed out and filled in by a lot of students and the data were later statistically analysed. A typical quantitative method I would say. 

During the first seminar we had the chance to talk about what the others had read and then picked one out the one we thought was the most interesting. Now the assignment was to create a graphic model over the quantitative method. It was a helpful way to understand the method and it bettered my view of what a quantitative method exists of. 

During the Wednesday lecture we played a game and tried to come up with advantages of the different methods. It was a good lecture and I learned a lot but the best thing was that we won the game. The most important things that I took with me from the game is that both methods are good in its own way. I also understand better when to use which method because of all the advantages that we talked about. 

Theme 4. Quantitative research

Quantitative paper: The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students Use of Online Social Network Sites, Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield, Cliff Lampe, 23 AUG 2007

I chose a paper about a Facebook intensity and social capital. 286 undergraduate students participated in an online survey. The survey consisted of different parts, one part were their social capital were investigated and another part consisting of questions about their Facebook habits. These could later be matched to prove their hypotheses.

I think that they used their data well but the way they chose their data made it hard for them to get to any significant conclusions. Their goal was to find a link between Facebook usage and social capital. In my opinion you need to send the survey to a large group of Facebook users but also to a large group of non users. Then you can analyse the differences between the two groups to see if there is a bond between Facebook usage and social capital. 268 of the participating students were Facebook users and only 18 were non users. Instead they had to explore the relation between social capital and the intensity of Facebook usage. The authors did have some good questions in there survey about how people used Facebook. I think that without these questions the results would be meaningless because people use Facebook in so many different ways.

That they only send the survey to a small group of people makes it impossible to generalize the conclusions but on the other hand it is fair to say that it fits very well with the University of Michigan where the undergraduates studied.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
It is a simple way of gathering large amounts of data for analysis. Statistic conclusions can be drawn but sometimes it can be difficult to understand the result. If it is a survey you need to make sure that the questions are interpreted the correct way, otherwise the result could be incorrect. It can be used to test all sorts of things, not only human behavior.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
With these methods it is much easier to understand where, when, why and how the results occurred. The method is more flexible and it makes it easier to obtain data that you might have missed out during a quantitative research but since the questions and answers are more open in a qualitative method it is harder to analyse and to make conclusions.

Reflection Theme 3

This week I have explored a journal and read a research paper. During the week we also had two seminars, during the first we discussed the journals that we picked and the papers that we read and during the second we discussed the theory in our paper and what theory is.

Before this week I had a very different view of what theory was. Now I have understood that it is not a guess or a thought but more of  a serious scientific proof of a phenomenon. One year ago when I started to think about my bachelor thesis I did not understand what the term theory really meant and that created some confusion when I started writing.

It really helped me understand what a good theory was when criticized the theories in the papers. Most of the criticism was about how the data was collected and analysed. Most of the tests were done with people involved and the group of people were not always representative for the rest of the population. Theories can also be based on other theories, this was something my group talked about at the second seminar. We chose social capital as our theory to present to the group and found out that it is really hard to test that the theory is solid and also to use it. How do you define social capital? Well if you have a thousand friends it does not matter much if they are all having a very low human capital. Human capital is another theory and we thought that social capital was dependent on human capital.