Theme 5: Research Design (Before Seminar)

Part 1 -  Article: “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball”

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?
Usability is a key element in the design and development of interactive and media products. Media technologies can be evaluated considering the usability  and its criteria of efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfaction. This measure was used in the article, to evaluate the proposed system. Among the evaluations conducted were: the error rate of a successful pattern, the response delay and user satisfaction assessed through surveys. It is important to notice that usability can also be measured by taking into account other criteria such as learnability and memorability and it is going to depends on the type of system to be evaluated.

 2. What role will prototypes play in research?
Building a prototype before a final design is very important to develop a high quality product that meets the expectations. A prototype allows trying and identifying possible design flaws or improvements required before the final design. It also allows checking the proposed design meets the expectations of all involved in the investigation.

3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
A proof of concept is needed to determine if the product you want to design it is possible to perform, and also to be able to meet all the needs presented.

4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
A prototype represents the main features of the final product, and allows you to test certain features, improvements and fixes to the design. Design a prototype can be a lot of expenses. To design a prototype are generally used different materials that would be used in the final product so many times the product quality is lower. Prototype users may lose reliability in the product because a prototype does not possess all features and characteristics arranged for the final product.

5. How can design research be communicated/presented?

Any design research can be presented by multiple ways like videos, pictures, models and prototypes. Depending on the type of product, should it be presented in a certain way, for example, with a prototype can be represented a product very similar to the final product and serves to identify failures or to have new ideas to the design. However, often do not represent all features of the product, which can make the user not convinced or motivated to buy the final product. Depending on the type of design it is advisable to present the product by other means as may be a video or by using a simulation software.

 Part 2: Articules - "A haptic tool for group work about geometrical concepts engaging blind and sighted pupils." and "Auditory feedback in haptic collaborative interfaces."

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

A collaborative setting differ in many aspects form a single user settings. The main difference is how in collaborative settings the persons involved are more than one, this brings as consequence that you can have different point of views and opinions in certain aspects. In the other side, single user settings allowed you to have an individual opinion of the study and the information collected with this kind of setting is more  concise o easy to interpret. 

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

It can be said that quantitative and qualitative methods complement each other, previous posts have described the limitations and advantages of these methods so the limiting one of the methods can be supplemented by the advantages of the other and vice versa. For example if you want to validate whether a hypothesis is correct or not, using quantitative methods is the best option, however if you want also to know why this hypothesis should include qualitative methods to get the answer. Using both methods, in some cases leads to better and more reliable conclusions because there are  a deeply understanding of the problem and also the study is based on statistical data to achieve the results.

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

 Using subjective methods allows you to have a better understanding of a certain situation and evaluating the behaviour and  reaction of the object under study, however being subjective, the results of these studies may vary according to many factors and generalize the result is very complicated. However, if objective methods are also included, which allow to validate certain ideas based on statistical data, would be a  more viable and better supported conclusion of the study performed.