This week we haven't had any seminars, we have instead had two lectures. One with Ylva Fernaeus and one with Haibo Lee. There hasn't been as much room for discussion like the other weeks. This was partly mine and the rest of the students fault since the questions asked was only answered by a few. This might be because everyone doesn't feel as comfortable speaking in a big lecture room or that the lecture room sets us in a mindset where we don't have to contribute like we would at a seminar.
At Ylvas lecture, she spoke of the paper we read last week. She explained what their thought were during the study and throughout the process.
We discussed what a qualitative research method can be, but like I stated above the discussion was a bit unidirectional.
When I read her paper I couldn't find any user study of any kind which she explained wasn't needed since the design concept in itself was seen by the scientific community as empirical data. A user study might not be beneficial when researching a design concept since the users might not realize the potential benefits of the concept.
Ylva also shared her own research philosophy and a description of a typical research process. First you come up with something that hasn't been thought of before or something everyone else has missed. Then explore the subject through literature, design and reality. After that you need to convince others of your idea and last get it accepted. She made it easy to understand and it gave me a better understanding of what design research is.
The second lecture by Haibo was a bit different. He didn't talk about the article we had read which was nice, even though Ylvas briefing gave better understanding, another hour of hearing what I had already read can be a bit repetitive.
Haibos' lecture was entertaining and interesting and the main focus was "ideas" and what we as engineers are supposed to do with them. He gave an example of a two people that was going to be chased by a bear. They couldn't outrun the bear. The first person said "How do we outrun the bear?", the other person said "How do I outrun you?". By outrunning the other person the bear would likely stop when it caught the first person. Haibos reason for sharing this example was that you can always look at a problem from different perspectives and therefor come up with different solutions.
He gave examples on the different magnitude ideas can have e.g. a great idea was worth a billion dollars and a big idea was worth a million dollars.
He presented a 5-step model that instructed how to nurture your ideas. First of all you need to come up with an idea. You can do so by re-stating problems (bear example), but then you need to filter your ideas since with a business mind. The idea can be validated through proof of concept and evaluated with a prototype. Last step is to communicate your idea. If no one know of it, it will never be successful.
I do not agree on what Ylva said, or at least I did not entirely get her point when she said on this type of research you do not definitely need the experimentation with some users.
SvaraRaderaI think it is more than essential for this kind of studies in which we are testing the usability and the satisfaction of the end user.
In my opinion a simple testing made by researchers themselves might not show some insights the one on naive users could do, moreover it might affect or bias the result.
What do you think about it?
When I first read Ylva’s research paper, I thought that a user study was missing. But after the lecture, I don’t think so anymore. Because the purpose was not to create a final product that people like or want to buy, the purpose was to show that interaction with robots could be made on several ways, even with physical objects. However some things in the text will not be proven, because of the missing user study. Like we don’t know if the products became more playful with the new interactions.
SvaraRadera