Final blog post

In this course I think the structure was very good and made it so you gain a lot of knowledge. I think for we it was really good to first by my self read texts and then reflect on them. That started my own thinking. Then at the seminar when we started to discuss things I got a better understanding of the thoughts that had poped up during my own reflection. But not only that thanks to the seminar new questions occurred that I  had not even thought of that gave me a new perspective on my own thoughts and also got me to see things from different angels. 

In this course we started out with at  philosophical direction. Where we read texts that were very complex and abstracts to understand. This part was a very good start to the course. In my education overall there has not been so much philosophical thinking and thats why I thought this was really good. We discussed what knowledge really is how we can really know when something can be named as knowledge. We also discussed how to see things, that we never are a blank paper and that it is close to impossible to have a non objective point to things. Everything that we analyzes and look at we do from or specific objective point of view. One thing that I thought was good was when we read and discussed about that to really understand someone when they talk or when you read a text that someone has written you have to put your self inside of the same environment as that person. If you read a text from someone that was in a war you need to put you self in that environment to truly understand the meaning of the text. You also need to understand the person that has written it. I think this is a very important learning and something that needs to bee be narrated to people. I often feel like me and other people judge or analyze people often from or own perspective and from or own point of view when we try to understand someone or something. This is misleading and we need to try to understand people by trying to understand what they are saying by understanding who they are and what there objectives are. 

We also discussed what a theory is and how it is structured. That you with facts and data comes up with theories. Theory can be very hard to define and when you compare it to hypotheses it can in some cases be hard to divide them up. From theory you come up with hypotheses and from there you can start a study and come up with your own theories. But you can also turn it, because from a lot of hypotheses you can come up with a theory. This is what makes it so hard to divide and I think thats why this course is really good. I think that you are not suppose to really know where the line is drawn you just need to know what the different things are. How they are defined can be really different from case to case. 

I also find it really good when we first started to think about what a quantitative research is and what is it you can gain from it, and what the obstacles are. This theme was something pretty familiar the same thing with the theme design research. But it was familiar because I have been working with this type of reachers and that is just an implication that it is something that is good for me to reflect on. There is a great chans that I will work with something like this again. What I taught was really good about the theme quantitative research was when we in the last theme we reflected on the difference between qualitative and case study research. Case study was nothing that I had been working with my self but when we had that theme I realized that I have read a lot of case studies and not really been reflecting on what type of study it was. The seminar on this theme really helped me to gett a grip on what a case study was. But like almost every other theme there was a hard to draw a clear line when to define something a case study. 

I think the last theme was a very good wrap up. I got to think about the different types of studies that can be done. When to use what and what you actually got out if them. I realized that a case study can be done to find a problem that you don't see. A problem that you know is there but you can not really find specifik what the problem is. When the problem is found you can use quantitative research to find a solution to it. 

Overall this course gave me a better understanding of what the different things are. How you can attack a problem you want to solv or maybe find. Things that are important to have in mind when you are about to start a study. This course would have been great to have before I wrote my theses. But I think that if I had taken this course before the first theses I would not been able to really understand the different things in this course. It was easier to adapt to the different things in the course when I had own experience to compare to and reflect upon. I think this course is really good to give you a better understanding why different elements are important and what differentiates one from another. I also think that it can bee good to from time to time after working with different studies to reflect upon the themes of this course, I think that will help the process. 

Reflection Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research

On the last weeks theme ”Qualitative and case study research” at the seminarium we got divided up into groups. My group discussed a lot how to define a case study and also what can be called a case study. One way we defined a case study was to say that a case study is adapted to find the problem. It is often that you in a company or anywhere know that something is wrong but don’t really know the source of the problem. Thanks to a case study where you look at a lot of data and compare it you can find the unknown problem and then solve it.

This got us to start discussing however other texts we had read or written maybe where case studies and not qualitative methods that we once thought.

One other way to defining it was that you thru the case study find the problem and the with qualitative methods can you understand the problems. When we started to talk about this we realized that a lot of the decisions that you make in life are based on a very small case study.

Theme 5 - Design Research (Reflection)

This weeks team was about evaluating design from prototyping. I find this topic very important since a lot of the work that I have done during my studies has been working around creating a product or testing existing products. I have found that in many existing problem things can be changed, and that a lot of people complains about the same things. What I also have find is that when first testing a product myself I find some problems with it and things that can be better. Then when I test the same product on other people that are not in the team with me, new problems and things that needs to be changed comes up. This is one common mistake that I think people do when they are developing products. They relay to much on there own thoughts and expertise's and by that misses out important things that are wrong and needs to change. 

This week team also  gave me a good things to have in mind then writhing a thesis. There is a lot of different way of looking at a problem. First is the problem that is given. Then looking at the problem form different angels will redefine the problem and by that you can solve it. Haibo took an example of a student and a professor that were being chased by a bear. They were to close to the bear to run away from it. The problem is how to get away from the bear. There is no solution to that problem since the can’t outrun the bear. But then the student realized that the bear will probably be satisfied with one of them. So now the problem was no longer how to outrun the bear it was how to outrun the professor and that’s a problem that can be solved. 

Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The text is about the connectedness experienced in computer-mediated relationships.

Small things that can have an impact on what we think about other people. They are doing

two studies however we feel connections to other people because some factors. First they

try if similarity in activities has an impact on the connectedness between people. In this

study they have 24 collage students that are going to every day text to the administrators

of the test what they are doing.They should text a number from 1-5 that are different types

of activities. Before the test starters they got a name of one other participant that also is

going to do the same test, and during the test every time the text the administrators they

will get a text back that says what the other participant is doing. 

The think in this test is that the other participant is not for real. There is a system were 12

of the participants will get a lot of similarity from the ”other participant” and the other 12 will

not. After the test is done they will ask all the 24 participants if they felt Connectedness,

Intimacy  and if they would like to meet the other participant. 

They they did yet another study, the concept is the same but they this time did not only get

the name of the other participant they also got a profile with gender, age, academic focus,

and three favorite pastimes. The profile were also costume designed to bee similar and not

similar with the real participants depending on what group the participants were in. 

The benefit from using the method is that it gives a very valid result. They first finds out what is factors that can have an impact on our connectedness between people and then they tries them out in two different studies. The limitation is that it can only be tested on a smaller amount of people and it requires a lot o work to conduct all the data. 

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
I find that it is really good to do qualitative methods on topic like this. When you cant really tell the participants what you are testing. I also think that it is a good example of trying one aspect of a question at the same time as trying the other side. Then it is clear that the things that they are testing has an impact in that case.  

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the

use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

The limitation is that there can be other things that can impact. Things that they never asked about or tested.

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

When you know that there is something that is wrong but you don’t really whats the problem. It is good to use when you want to get a bigger picture on things. Taking in a lot of different data and looking at it comparing it one to another it helps you to maybe see the problem from another angel and that may help you solve what the problem really is about. It helps you come up with a theory/ a ground to work with.

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

I think this study follows all the steps in the Eisenhardt table more or less. It has a good definition on the research questions. They are looking at three case and the comparing them to one and other. This is done well and they make a good analyses on the three cases. 

Theme 4 reflection

During the seminar this week we discussed qualitative and quantitative methods. This was done by dividing us into groups. In the groups we discussed the advantage with qualitative and quantitative and Olle that held the seminar made it into a competition between the groups. 

What I got from the seminar is that qualitative methods is good to use when you want a deeper understanding in a question, when you need to ask more advanced questions about a topic that is more complex, you can read and ask about peoples feelings and thoughts. 

Quantitative methods is good because it is easy to make graphs, when the questioner is done it does not need a lot of extra work to get information from at lot of people, it is easy to compare the different results. 

After that we discussed the advantages with web vs paper questionaries 

With the web it is easy to get it out to a lot of different people. In the long run that makes it cheaper then doing it on paper the questionnaire is easy to get graphs on and it goes fast. It dose not get more work the more people that are answering. But with web there can be technical issues, the layout needs to work on different web browsers, computer/media screens.

Theme 5: Design research

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?
Depending on what product you want to evaluate different methods can be used. In the article they tested the users effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Three factors that were important for there product. It is important to know what will be the limitation of a product and what will drive the users to buy it knowing this is easy to know how to test the product.

2. What role will prototypes play in research?
Prototypes roll in research is to give a picture of what the design will look like.
When designing something you can never really know what the costumers will like about it. Sometimes you as the designer are to involved into the product that you can’t really see it from a costumers eyes. When designing something there is a lot of things to think of so it is easy to forget about some elements.
When doing a prototype you get to try the product out on a real costumer. Thing maybe are to hard for the costumer to understand, or there is some design issue and so on. It is a good way of testing the product out in a stage were the product still can be changed. One new example is the new iPhone, a short time after the release a lot of the costumers started complain that the phone easily bended in the pocket. It is hard to know however the developers knew about this and did nothing about it. But looking at it now they should have. iPhone probably did some prototype that they tried out and maybe still missed this think. But this kind of bad designing problems is one good example of what you are trying to find when prototyping and testing the product at the stage were changes still can be made.

3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
When creating a product a lot of things needs to work. There needs to be a market, there needs to be technology that can create the product or material etc. The proof of concept prototype is when you tries the product if it really work, if it’s going to be feasible. This is done so that product that no one whats don't get developed.


4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
There can be a lot of deferent characteristics of a prototype, it can by on paper just a drawing, made as a fully done product done with no features, a website, a app, a first draft on the real product. The prototype is not the real product and can be on every step and level during the creation of the new product. The limitation of prototypes is that it is very good to do it a lot but it takes a lot of time and money.

5. How can design research be communicated/presented?
I think it is a good way of showing the product as a prototype. But it is important to choose the right type of prototype. Sometimes if the the real product is missing some important features and does not look like it should then it maybe is better to just draw a prototype to visualize it. To make the audience understand how the real product will really look like.

Reflections on Theme 3 (After the Seminar)

In this weeks theme we were suppose to read two texts Gregor, S. (2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems and Sutton, R. I. & Staw, B. M. (1995). What Theory is Not. We were also suppose to choose another text by ourselves. The text that I choose was Thomas J. Johnson, Credibility of Social Network Sites for Political Information Among Politically Interested Internet Users. I always like to choose my own texts, then I can choose the topic that I find most interesting and then the reading gets easier. 

During the seminar we all went thru or texts. First in small groups, In my group we discussed a lot what was the difference between hypotheses and a theory and everyone told what theories there text had used. After we were done in the groups we started to talk about the texts in full class. This gave a new perspective on what theory really is. Thing that were said during the seminar was the a hypothesis is when I am wondering something and a theory is when a get a reason/answer to something. When looking at that explanation it is pretty easy to divid hypothesis from theory. But knowing that and also knowing that a big amount of hypothesis together can create a theory (this was also mentioned during class) makes it really hard to divide the two.