Reflections on today's lectures for theme 5
First out was with Ylva Ferneaus with the topic Qualitative methods.
We discussed the paper Ferneaus and Jacobsson. Questions were asked and conclusions were: Statistics could have made the paper more complete, but it was not a problem that there was no user study, it was not part of the scope of the paper. What made this project into research was that it was based on previous research and presented something new.
Ylva presented her own research philosophy which I found interesting:
Knowledge = Things taken notice of, caught attention
Research = Taking notice of something new + sharing it
Sharing knowledge = Getting others to take notice
I also found her description of a typical research process good:
1. You think everyone else has missed something
2. You check it up (literature, design explorations, reality)
3. You take notice (sometimes with surprise)
4. You convince them (text+images+diagrams+designs)
5. They accept it (publish, take notice, quote)
Even though I gave it critique in my last post, I realize now that this paper probably was a decent example of conceptual research.
Next was Haibo Li with an inspirational lecture on the topic Design Research.
The process of coming up with ideas
Firstly, it's important to filter ideas out, to find the best one(s). One might want to consider things like:- Does it address a real problem?
- Appeal to market?
- Is the timing right?
- Will we be good at it? (or will we be eaten by the bear?)
Secondly, is the idea valid? Li gave an example of a bear chasing two people. Was the idea to outrun the bear? No, impossible. One person had to outrun the other to survive. Survival of the fittest. Typical business-thinking.
Evaluate the idea. Do some research. I suppose this is where we could apply conceptual research, in combination with quantitative or qualitative.
Communicate the idea
A good way to find a great idea is to think like a business-person and come up with statistics that can sell the idea. Li also gave an example on how to convince us about an idea by laying out facts, and the point here was that we need to make use of mathematics.
Li's theory, which I also liked:
"If you want to become famous, solve the problem. If you want to be great, define the problem."
Problem solvingLi talked about how to define and solve a problem.
Here I might add some of my own work experience, not from research, but from troubleshooting products that were the result of research and development. Communication with people can be very difficult. In many cases, a problem might not be well defined, and you could find yourself pulling out your hair over a problem that is not correctly defined. Even for after-market service, small research projects can be necessary to actually find the root cause problem!
Li also said "Don't trust yourself." I agree and would add, don't trust anyone. Others will steal your ideas!
I also enjoyed some of the examples of great ideas, such as Vimio and Li's company Wawo.
Like I discovered and wrote about in Pre-Theme 4: Quantitative research, Li explained how Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) is a great method of analyzing and presenting statistics to convince people of a concept. It enables a scientific conclusion to be presented from charts, by comparing variability within groups and with variability in other groups.
Examples
1-way ANOVA: Does caffeine increase productivity of rats?2-way ANOVA: How does toy colours affect satisfaction in children, and depending on gender?
Both Ferneaus and Li brought up the problem of technology obsoletion, a critique I included in my Pre-Theme 5-post.
Lastly, I stumbled across this article about Nobel prize winner Randy Schekman who wants to boycott the top science journals.
Schekman calls Impact Factor a "toxic influence". Oh well, I better start looking for two science papers for theme 6 with minimum IF of 1.
Hej Andreas!
SvaraRaderaI liked how you presented the main points of the lectures!
What I will get from both lectures is the importance of being able to communicate your knowledge, in sharing it, in getting others to take notice.
I also believe that the definition of the problem is more important than finding the solution. Therefore, we should focus more on defining the right problem.
Hi Katerina, I'm glad you liked it! And I hope that it can help our fellow student's that couldn't attend. You're right, we need to define the problem well before commencing. I don't think you need to compare the importance of the problem with the solution, since the goal is to define the problem so well that it makes it easier to reach a good conclusion/solution.
RaderaHi Andreas, interesting to read about the reason why Fernaues and Jacobssons paper qualified as research, since i could not attend that lecture. The definition of research is a bit fuzzy in my opinion but the idea of looking into previous research and adding something new to it feels like a good view of how research can be defined. Now that you mention it, i don't think i reflected about the lack of user study, which i feels is important in design research. Did Ylva say something more on that subject? How neccessary is it with with having a user study?
SvaraRaderaYou describe the findings from Ylvas lecture very good. I agree that typical research process described by Ylva is very good. I also think that it is described in a simple way which is easy to understand. When i was on the lecture by Haibo Li, i felt that it was a bit hard to grasp sometimes what he was talking about around the design process and how it was tied together.
Hej Filip. Yes, there was a discussion about user studies. In this case, it's not needed since the goal is to come up with a concept, and I suppose that it could be tested in another study later on. I did have this point included in my text but removed it due to lenght.
RaderaThere was a contrast in the presentations of Ylva and Haibo. Where the first lesson was focusing a lot on the report we'd already read and tried to bring up a discussion around it, Haibo had a different approach. He wanted us to understand the importance of deciding what exactly are we trying to solve, and a very important thing of being commercially successful: The selling "pitch". This will apply to most of us when we start working, however it might be slightly different when it comes to non-commercial research, where you still have to convince someone, but it might not be as focused on "can we make money from this".
You think that you shouldn't trust anyone with your idea, because they will steal it. I don't think that you should be afraid of sharing your idea with people. If you can't trust yourself that it's a good idea (like Li said). To solve that problem you would need to talk with others to develop your idea. But be pick people that you know can't steal your ideas (people you know or people with lack of complete competence).
SvaraRaderaHej Nicholas. Let's say like this. Trusting oneself was about, "is this really a good idea", "do I have the complete picture" and so on.
RaderaIf you (think you) have a good idea, first, investigate on your own if it's something that really would be useful and could be turned into a product. This is where it could become dangerous if you talk too much about the idea to others.
To be able to start a research, you need to convince somebody that it'll be worth it. During the research, I think it could be a good idea to keep the information within the group, until it's time for release/presentation. Now here's when you really want to be able to use the statistics collected and present it like a real sales-person, in order to get the funding to start a development-project.
Knowing who to trust is not so easy. But I like your idea of telling people who lack proper competence, it's actually true, I've had a lot of ideas and not been able to make them come true since I didn't have the proper knowledge or the time to do so. Perhaps not even the motivation.