Design research
To answer the following questions I read the given research paper, written by Haibo Li with colleagues 'Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration' and also read the chapter 'Prototyping tools and techniques' of the book The human-computer interaction handbook.
How can media technologies be evaluated?
Suggested by the given paper, media technology can be tested by experiments, by evaluating its usability or by trainability, which helps in improving the system. As we are in the age of digitalization and a lot of technologies depend on the user surface, I would put in particular a lot of focus on evaluating usability. Following the guidelines ISO, "usability is defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments" (ur Rehman et al., 2008: 1026).
What role will prototypes play in research?
Prototypes describe the thoughts of the designer at specific stages in the design process, and always try to represent what is the best way to usefully contribute answering the research question. Since prototypes take on different purposes throughout the design process, they also take on different forms. In general, there are two different sorts of prototypes: the Off-Line prototype (paper prototypes) and the On-line prototypes (software prototypes).
The first ones are non-computer based, usually drafted by hand very quickly at the early stage of the design and are destroyed as soon as their purpose is fulfilled. The latter, On-line prototypes, require a computer, have usually a higher cost, but can contribute to research variously by showing animations, interactive video presentations, or contain written programs or applications. These are likely to contribute to research, since they give users the opportunity to explore the system actively. Moreover, "(p)rototypes increase creativity, allow early evaluation of design ideas, help designers think through and solve design problems, and support communication within multi-disciplinary design teams" (Beaudouin-Lafon and Mackay, 2003: 1102).
Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
Since prototypes are an essential part of an interactive design process and therefore also the resulting data, the concept has to be thought through in-depth. Throughout the design process, they represent the progress of the research, implementing the ideas of the research designers and showing how the system could look and feel like. The concept prototype has to follow certain principles set up by the researchers in order to assure a representative outcome of the research that could be used as basis further on.
What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
Prototypes vary in their possible forms and characteristics widely depending on their intention. They could be rough sketches or detailed computer software. However, they always intend to give the designers, users and developers an early glimpse of a possible future product. They are concrete tools to explore the design space, continuously question the design decisions and can therefore steer the research process, because they "highlight the areas that must be refined or require additional ideas" (Beaudouin-Lafon and Mackay, 2003: 1029). The advantage, for instance in the given research paper is that the prototype functioned as test object for both researchers and mobile-users presenting an un-known system and enabling experiments in order to develop it further on and test the user responds to vibrotactile rendering of live game information.
The limitations of prototypes are their confined test coverage being only tested on a few examples, not build for other cases. Therefore, prototypes will most likely not work (or crash) on other cases since they are too specific and built for something else. Moreover, prototypes can do early test rounds on users and usability, but since its still just a model, you do not get the final user assessment as you would for the finished product.
How can design research be communicated/presented?
Design research evaluates the test results of the design process like any other research paper. Evaluations should either be based on the quantitative measures or on the qualitative measure like user impressions. Since the results are very specific and are likely to vary within other designs, the researcher has to consider other possible factors, like product features that would evolve in a non-test environment.
How can media technologies be evaluated?
Suggested by the given paper, media technology can be tested by experiments, by evaluating its usability or by trainability, which helps in improving the system. As we are in the age of digitalization and a lot of technologies depend on the user surface, I would put in particular a lot of focus on evaluating usability. Following the guidelines ISO, "usability is defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments" (ur Rehman et al., 2008: 1026).
What role will prototypes play in research?
Prototypes describe the thoughts of the designer at specific stages in the design process, and always try to represent what is the best way to usefully contribute answering the research question. Since prototypes take on different purposes throughout the design process, they also take on different forms. In general, there are two different sorts of prototypes: the Off-Line prototype (paper prototypes) and the On-line prototypes (software prototypes).
The first ones are non-computer based, usually drafted by hand very quickly at the early stage of the design and are destroyed as soon as their purpose is fulfilled. The latter, On-line prototypes, require a computer, have usually a higher cost, but can contribute to research variously by showing animations, interactive video presentations, or contain written programs or applications. These are likely to contribute to research, since they give users the opportunity to explore the system actively. Moreover, "(p)rototypes increase creativity, allow early evaluation of design ideas, help designers think through and solve design problems, and support communication within multi-disciplinary design teams" (Beaudouin-Lafon and Mackay, 2003: 1102).
Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
Since prototypes are an essential part of an interactive design process and therefore also the resulting data, the concept has to be thought through in-depth. Throughout the design process, they represent the progress of the research, implementing the ideas of the research designers and showing how the system could look and feel like. The concept prototype has to follow certain principles set up by the researchers in order to assure a representative outcome of the research that could be used as basis further on.
What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
Prototypes vary in their possible forms and characteristics widely depending on their intention. They could be rough sketches or detailed computer software. However, they always intend to give the designers, users and developers an early glimpse of a possible future product. They are concrete tools to explore the design space, continuously question the design decisions and can therefore steer the research process, because they "highlight the areas that must be refined or require additional ideas" (Beaudouin-Lafon and Mackay, 2003: 1029). The advantage, for instance in the given research paper is that the prototype functioned as test object for both researchers and mobile-users presenting an un-known system and enabling experiments in order to develop it further on and test the user responds to vibrotactile rendering of live game information.
The limitations of prototypes are their confined test coverage being only tested on a few examples, not build for other cases. Therefore, prototypes will most likely not work (or crash) on other cases since they are too specific and built for something else. Moreover, prototypes can do early test rounds on users and usability, but since its still just a model, you do not get the final user assessment as you would for the finished product.
How can design research be communicated/presented?
Design research evaluates the test results of the design process like any other research paper. Evaluations should either be based on the quantitative measures or on the qualitative measure like user impressions. Since the results are very specific and are likely to vary within other designs, the researcher has to consider other possible factors, like product features that would evolve in a non-test environment.
Beaudouin-Lafon, M. and Mackay, W., 2003. Prototyping tools and
techniques. The human-computer interaction handbook. J. Jacko and A.
Sears, p. 1006-1031.
ur Rehman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L. and Li, H., 2008. Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Trans. Multimedia, Vol. 10, No. 6, p. 1022-1033.
What is the 'empirical data' in these two papers?
In the first research paper by Fernaeus and Tholander, the empirical data was derived from video recorded material. The data was then analysed with the help of four concepts specifically discussed in tangibles user interfaces. In the second research paper by Lundström, a series of interviews, conducted with experts or other selected partners, represent the empirical data.
Can practical design work in itself be considered a 'knowledge contribution'?
Both research papers prove that their design work generated some new knowledgeable information that has contributed in form of new topic related learning. This could be, for example, in form of challenges, warnings or training characteristics.
Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to design in general?
There might be a difference in their intention of usability. I think that in a research project usability is a very important goal while design in general can also focus on other outcomes more. Design, I argue, is of course also adapting to usability, but other factors might overrule it, e.g. its appearance or art value. During the design process, researchers might also value the problems that come up since this is information that has to be considered during the research; designers in general are more solution-oriented and could more easily change to other techniques in order to achieve the goal.
Is research in tech domains such as these ever replicable? How may we account for aspects such as time/historical setting, skills of the designers, available tools, etc?
Since research projects usually take a long time to develop and later on to analyse, it is hard to replicate research in general, not just within tech domains. If you are replicating the exact variables, repeating the exact research, with the same software, same participants and same researchers, you might come close to the same result, but I still think the results will always be different. Time and setting play an important role, but they are inflexible variables and not replicable at all. The human perception also changes, so it would be a rare case if the participants would react the same way twice. Moreover, the goal of research is to go with time and support change through continuously developing and evaluating new ideas and research approaches.
Are there any important differences with design driven research compared to other research practices?
I think since design research takes attributes of the field of design in general, it could perhaps be said that design tries more to be good instead of new, tries to focus more on the user instead of the research goal. Whilst other research practices focus more on the outcome itself, the design process in research design is more important, adjusting and reflecting ideas for example in regard to their usability.
In the first research paper by Fernaeus and Tholander, the empirical data was derived from video recorded material. The data was then analysed with the help of four concepts specifically discussed in tangibles user interfaces. In the second research paper by Lundström, a series of interviews, conducted with experts or other selected partners, represent the empirical data.
Can practical design work in itself be considered a 'knowledge contribution'?
Both research papers prove that their design work generated some new knowledgeable information that has contributed in form of new topic related learning. This could be, for example, in form of challenges, warnings or training characteristics.
Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to design in general?
There might be a difference in their intention of usability. I think that in a research project usability is a very important goal while design in general can also focus on other outcomes more. Design, I argue, is of course also adapting to usability, but other factors might overrule it, e.g. its appearance or art value. During the design process, researchers might also value the problems that come up since this is information that has to be considered during the research; designers in general are more solution-oriented and could more easily change to other techniques in order to achieve the goal.
Is research in tech domains such as these ever replicable? How may we account for aspects such as time/historical setting, skills of the designers, available tools, etc?
Since research projects usually take a long time to develop and later on to analyse, it is hard to replicate research in general, not just within tech domains. If you are replicating the exact variables, repeating the exact research, with the same software, same participants and same researchers, you might come close to the same result, but I still think the results will always be different. Time and setting play an important role, but they are inflexible variables and not replicable at all. The human perception also changes, so it would be a rare case if the participants would react the same way twice. Moreover, the goal of research is to go with time and support change through continuously developing and evaluating new ideas and research approaches.
Are there any important differences with design driven research compared to other research practices?
I think since design research takes attributes of the field of design in general, it could perhaps be said that design tries more to be good instead of new, tries to focus more on the user instead of the research goal. Whilst other research practices focus more on the outcome itself, the design process in research design is more important, adjusting and reflecting ideas for example in regard to their usability.
Fernaeus, Y. and Tholander, J., 2006. Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems - CHI '06.
Lundström, A., 2014. Differentiated Driving Range. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications - AutomotiveUI '14.
0 Kommentare:
Post a Comment