Theme 6 – Reflection

In this seminar, that was the last one for this course, we talked about case studies and qualitative studies although the focus was on case studies. Before the seminar I found case studies a bit hard to understand, I couldn’t really tell how they differed from qualitative studies. But in the seminar I learnt that in the beginning of a case study, one does not necessarily know what to look for. A case study don’t need to have a defined problem to investigate, it is enough with just an idea. Also, the questions in a case study could be open-ended so that one cannot answer yes or no. I also learnt that a case study is a lot like a field study, the main difference is that a field study often is made by just one person while a case study often is made in teams.

We also took some time of the seminar to discuss the course and how we experienced it, like a lighter course evaluation. One thing that we talked about was when the right time to take this course are. I believe that some parts of this course (like the part with quantitative and qualitative studies) could be good to have before we write our bachelor thesis. Olle talked about “the perfect survey” in one of the previous seminars and I would really like to have that kind of lecture in the beginning of the bachelor thesis, especially since I used a survey in my bachelor thesis. On the other hand, I am not sure that I would have learned so much about it if I hadn’t practically used it before. Since I had done a survey I could really relate to it and see what kind of things that I did “wrong” in the survey I used. So I think it is both good and bad that we take this course after we writer our bachelor thesis.

Theme 5 – Reflection

This week we did not have a seminar like the ones the previous weeks, we were supposed to have two lectures instead. But because of Haibo’s lecture being reschedule we only had one lecture with Eva-Lotta Sallnäs.

In the lecture she talked about her research in the field of Haptics. I thought the lecture would be more about qualitative/quantitative methods and objective/subjective methods since that is what the pre-reflection was about. But that was not really the case, instead she talked about the different studies she had done and was doing. It was interesting although I had preferred that she talked more about the questions we had answered in the pre-reflection.

She talked a little about qualitative and quantitative studies in the beginning and how one can get quantitative results from qualitative data and vice versa. That was really interesting but also a bit confusing. I already have a hard time separating those two methods, although I believe I have gotten better at it after our seminars, so it made it even more confusing when they can be mixed up like that. But I also think it is good to know that when you do a qualitative study it is not sure that the answers are qualitative, which puts more pressure on the one making the study. One need to really look through the methods and test them before actually using them, so that one can be sure to get the right kind of answers.

Theme 6 – Qualitative and case study research

For this week’s theme I have chosen to read the qualitative paper Perceived Connections Between Information and Communication Technology Use and Mental Symptoms Among Young Adults – A Qualitative Study by Sara Thomée, Lotta Dellve, Annika Härenstam and Mats Hagberg.

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
   This paper used individual semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions performed by the main author. The questions were about the participant’s connection between the use of computer and mobile phones, and stress, depression and sleep disturbances. They also asked direct questions about the participants’ own worries about personal ICT use, their experiences of problematic or destructive ICT use and the impact of ICT use on their sleep.
   
   A benefit with this method is that the participant can come up with new ideas that the interviewer hasn’t thought about. Since a semi-structured interview gives more freedom in the answers than a structured interview I think that one can get better answers.
   A limitation with a semi-structured interview is that there is a chance that the answers goes outside the actual topic. If the interviewer doesn’t have a specific path to go with the questions there is a chance that the interview does not contribute to the research because it is not enough answers.
   
   
2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
   I am not sure that I learned so much about qualitative studies by reading the paper since we talked a lot about qualitative studies during the seminar with Olle. But it was nice to put a qualitative study in to context and actually see how it can be used.
   
   
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
   I believe that they could have combined the semi-structured interview with a structured interview. Because that could reduce the risk of answers going too much off topic. A structured interview would keep the answers within the topic and that could be complemented with more open-ended questions in form of a semi-structured interview.

For the case study I chose the paper Social Media Competitive Analysis and Text Mining: A Case Study in the Pizza Industry by Wu He, Shengua Za and Ling Li.

4. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
   A case study is an analysis of a person, group or event. The analysis could be either descriptive, exploratory or explanatory. A case study often uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods but also empirical and theoretical. The case study could be either prospective or retrospective. A prospective case study is a study where criteria are established and the cases that fit the criteria are included as they become available. A retrospective case study is a study where criteria are established for cases that are selected from historical records for inclusion in the study.
   
   
5. 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.
   One good thing with this study is that they define the research questions and target group early in the text, they have three research questions to be answered. The case is done on the three largest pizza chains: Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza and Papa John’s Pizza. They explain very good, and early, in the text why they have chosen the pizzaindustry which makes it easy to understand that it is not chosen randomly.
   
   They used multiple data collection methods. They used a quantitative method which looked at the social media sites for each pizza chain, for example how many followers, likes, shares, comments, number of posts and frequency of posting. Then they used text mining to analyze the text messages and in order to discover new patterns and knowledge.
   
   I am not sure that I could find any comparison with conflicting literature and overlapping data collection. They also use only three cases and according to the text by Eisenhart it is best to have 4-10 cases. So maybe they could have used more cases to make the study more reliable.

Theme 5 – Design Research

How can media technologies be evaluated?
Products of media technology today are often products that we can see, hear or interact with. That makes them dependent on user studies that is more than just a survey. The evaluation of how good a product are depends on not only the data itself but how the user perceive it. The product can be outstanding in theory but if the users don’t like the product it is useless. In the paper they used a questionnaire and human tests to evaluate how good their product is. I believe that combining these methods are a good way of evaluating media technologies.

What role will prototypes play in research?
A prototype is often the early version of the finished product. It have all the functions that the finished product are supposed to have, but in a simpler way. This makes it easy to find errors and fix them. By using prototypes one can detect errors early and fix them and after that make a new prototype. This workflow will end up with the finished product and hopefully without any errors or question marks.

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
A proof of concept is the stage before the product prototype. The purpose of a proof of concept prototype is to determine whether the idea is good or bad. By this kind of prototype one can determine if the consumers are interested in the concept. If they aren’t, one does not need to develop the idea further and therefore save a lot of work.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?
A limitation of prototypes is that it can be very expensive due to inefficiency in materials and processes. It is often expensive and time-consuming to build the fully design, especially when the procedure of prototyping is expensive, building a design -> fixing problems -> build new design etc. In the end, the finished product could have been cheaper to produce without producing a lot of prototypes on the way.
The characteristics of prototypes is that they are not fully the same as the final product. The prototype represents some compromise from the design of the final product.

How can design research be communicated/presented?
I believe a good way to present a design research is by using a prototype. It is easy to really show the design and functionality in a prototype rather than writing everything down for the consumer to read. It is also easier for the consumers to give relevant feedback if they can see the design on a prototype, otherwise the consumers might visualize the design differently and they cannot give proper feedback.

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?
A collaborative setting means that the study is tested on more than one person i.e. two or more. In a single user setting the study is tested on only one person. That makes it easier to get a deeper analysis than a collaborative setting. A collaborative setting can get different kind of views from people since they have more persons than just one. One does also have to make sure that the group of people in a collaborative study are representative.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?
Since they are a bit different and one can use the results in different ways I think it is good to combine these two because then one can get a really good result. For example one can start with a quantitative method like a questionnaire survey and send that one out to the target group. When the survey has got enough answers to get a good view of the situation, with graphs or tables, one can complete this with a qualitative method. Within the survey one can pick a few participants to study further with e.g. interviews. That would give a deeper analysis of the results because some things that might have been unclear in the survey can be straighten out. 

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?
I think that subjective methods are based on personal experiences and knowledge while objective methods are based on experiments and measurements. To understand a phenomenon one need to do experiments and collect data, which are objective methods. One does also need to make observations and compare with our knowledge, which are subjective methods. To get a better understanding one does also need to analyze the results which can be both subjective and objective.

Theme 4 – Reflection

I think that this theme has been the most interesting so far. Especially the seminar, or workshop, was really good. Since I recently did my bachelor thesis (last spring) and within the study we did a questionnaire survey to collect data it was really interesting to investigate the quantitative methods more and compare them to qualitative methods. In the paper that I chose it was interesting to study their methods and how they could have improved that instead of study and analyze their results.

The workshop was really fun this week, I call it workshop because I think it was more like a workshop. Olle talked about qualitative and quantitative methods and what kind of advantages and disadvantages there is for the methods. We also talked about what the advantages and disadvantages are between sending out a survey on the web and sending it out on paper. We sat in smaller groups and discussed these subjects and when we talked in the whole group we got points if we had come up with an advantage or disadvantage that no one else had come up with. It was fun because it became a competition between the smaller groups to see who could get most points.

I have learned a lot from Olle what to think about when setting up a survey. One thing that he talked about was how important it is to test the survey so that all the questions are good and so that it works on all platforms etc. Because that is something that I haven’t thought about earlier and I think it is easy to miss smaller things because the questions are so obvious for oneself since I am the one working with the subject and therefore have a lot of knowledge, some that the one participating in my survey does not have.