Pre-blog post theme 5

Preparation for the lecture on Wednesday (Design reasearch Haibo Li)

In the research articles to read before this lecture they made an attempt to evaluate their prototype. Something that can be hard to do with media technology I would argue that it is mainly because we need to time to learn the devices etc. However they point out that coding schemes were most important. I think this was because the small amount of training the participants had. However it is important to evaluate media technoligies in different perspectives like usability and sustainability. In the area of usability I think the approach made in the article with effectivness (does it communicate the information in an understandable way?), efficency (How much effort is required?) and finally Satisfaction (comfort and acceptability) represent a good way of measuring the usability of a prototype or final solution.

When it comes to evaluate media technology in view of sustainability I think LCAs (Life cycle assesments) is a good way to both be more critic in the production regarding both enviromental and social impacts of the whole life of ICT. 

Prototypes is a way we can experiment with new ideas. They can also be used to measure behaviours in the field. I think prototypes is important in research when they offer us new solutions that could improve some aspect of our field. Even if not all prototypes are successfull they will contribute with knowledge to the field with hypotheises that didn’t work and explanations (theory) why it didn’t work that can be used in future research.

A proof of concept is a prototype that demostrates its feasabillity. In other words it actually show that the concepts or ideas work. The neccesity of these prototypes is to bridge the gap between research and actual technologies on the market. If it is shown that an idea can be feasible it will be more secure to invest money into development. 

Even if prototypes serves a good purpose they are not final solutions. What character prototypes is that they often are limited to a specific task and a situation. The prototypes are often designed to work within specific conditions. This is limitations to a prototype but it also benefits because it makes it possible to test the solutions before they are fully implemented. This gives us the opportunity to refine parts and also to get honest opinions of it from participants in the test, which often is harder to get when you showcast a finished product. (Preece, Sharp, & Rogers, 2015)

 

I think it is important to communicate this kind of research, called design reaserch, in both the academic and corporation spheres, basiclly everyone that could have and intrest in implementing the ideas and concepts into a usefull application. However to only present them in the form of research papers might not be the best way. I personally would prefer to get it in a more concise form as articles in a magazine or as articles on a webpage.

Preparation for Lecture on Friday

The articles that I read before this lecture, where the design is the key ingredient, consist of empirical data in a special way. They argue for how we can do things and what challenges we face when trying to design certain forms of interaction. In the first paper (Fernaeus & Tholander, 2006) I would say that the empirical data is mainly about how participants interacted with their system. In the other article about a visualzation of current distance range of electric cars (Lundström, 2014) the main empirical data is that it would be of value to consider different speeds and climate controlls settings when driving an electric car, because they affect the driving range and also the optimal speed to reach it. Their approach with a graph that shows the range at different speeds is intresting and I belive that a visual approach like that is a great solution.

I think both of this articles shows that practical design should be considered as something that contributes to knowledge because they show how we can use our current knowledge in the creation of a new solutions. Even if they might not be the final solutions they showcast a possible solution that can be refined, through as an example an iterative design process.

You could pose the question if you can replicate these design processes in other settings (historical etc). That is probably hard or even impossible, however when it comes to designing and interactions our perception of it is changing almost constantly due to that the culture is changing.
I think that design driven research is an intresting field that is dependent on current tools availible. During the last decade we have seen a big increase in IoT and sensors in our everyday life, who have made measurements an gathering of data possible to a degree we didn’t had before. Something that we can use when desiging in new exciting contexts.