Good usage of other sources, especially interesting that you found
another source from Russell where he defines statement of fact better, because
i thought it was hard to grasp that concept from only reading "The
problems of philosophy".
I also agree that a shame that we didn't have the seminar and the
lecture because it would have given a better understanding of this, for me,
very complex subject. Just as you i felt that the book "the problems of
philosophy" that we read was unnecessary complicated and many of the
points Russell was trying to make could have been explained easier but of
course it could be that you said that he was trying to make connections and
therefore couldn't simplify it. It could also be that my understanding of
philosophy is too low for such a complicated text. Sometimes i felt like he
mentioned "truth" like 58 times in the same sentence and it was very
confusing.
Just as you i thought sense-data was a very interesting term which i
also discussed in my reflection. A part of the reason for that was also that
sense-data was the concept that was easiest for me to grasp and it seems
everybody thought so because, in my opinion, everybody answered that question
about it in a very similar way.
Interesting thought about critical thinkers today and why we read a book that is so old. I haven't myself thought about that but when you come to think about it I wonder what are the current philosophical problems. I think there must be as many philosophers today as a 100 years ago so I tried to google what philosophical problems today could be and found some good links, eg http://neouto.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/top-ten-philosophical-issues-of-the-21st-century/
Here they say that the main one is global injustice like preserving the environment while allowing the poorer nations of the world to improve their standards of living.
Interesting thought about critical thinkers today and why we read a book that is so old. I haven't myself thought about that but when you come to think about it I wonder what are the current philosophical problems. I think there must be as many philosophers today as a 100 years ago so I tried to google what philosophical problems today could be and found some good links, eg http://neouto.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/top-ten-philosophical-issues-of-the-21st-century/
Here they say that the main one is global injustice like preserving the environment while allowing the poorer nations of the world to improve their standards of living.
It's interesting what you write in the last paragraph about your belief
that technology and human mental ability keeps society progressing. I took a
course called "Media between technology and culture" and there we
discussed a lot around how technology effects society and how much society is
controlled by technology. I also believed before that technology in itself is
very important for society to progress and that it controls society in certain
aspects but now I think that the human aspects are more important. It is we who
build technology and decide on their features so because of that we also decide
how to keep society progressing.
I also reflected a lot about the differing in answers on some of the
questions. In a subject of science like math you have one specific answer that
is the correct one but when it comes to philosophy, which we are discussing, I
think there is not one truth as you say. You can make a lot of different
interpretations depending on what experience and the acquaintances you have, as
Russell talks about in the book. When i wrote my pre-reflection to the first
theme i believed that everyone was going to answer fairly the same and that
there was right and wrong but now after i read this book and then answered the
questions for theme 2 I didn't think so much about if this was the right or
wrong answer but more about how i interpreted it and trying to explain why i
thought this was the case.
I really
liked your own example of relating math to philosophy and i agree that we can
learn from that sometimes there aren't one single answer to a problem. I think
our education is very much focused on teaching us how to become problem solvers
and maybe sometimes we are focusing too much on finding that particular answer
to the problem that we are trying to solve. I studied a course at Stockholm
school of economics this spring and there i learned much about analyzing the
situation, asking yourself questions and trying to look at the problem from
different angles in order to, as you say, "think outside the box". Depending
on what we will be working on when we graduate, there will not always be one
correct solution to the problem that we are working with and so we need to
learn to think in a philosophical way.
Hi Sombo, seems as if some text got lost in the first paragraph, which
was sad because as you say in the last paragraph it's interesting to read about
how other persons relates to a text like this through their own experiences. I
was also quite astonished when i read all the other blog posts that everyone
had answered kinda differently and had made different interpretations. In
relation to what you say about using your own experiences in our blog posts I
must say that i enjoy the after reflections much more than the prior, at least
for theme 1. This because in the after reflections you had the ability to
reflect more freely than in the prior where everyone just answered the
questions with the help of the book. I myself felt that I had a hard time
contributing with my own analysis/experiences in addition to what Russell had
said. Maybe that was because of my inexperience in philosophy because i felt
that I did it better in the second theme.
I haven't thought myself of the length of the reading compared to the
brief assignment but now that you mention it it's interesting to think about
and discuss. I can see your point but at the same time I think it was
interesting to read the whole book although it took a lot of time for me since I’m
not used to philosophy. Some chapters of course gave more than others but think
it was worth reading it all. Maybe a compromise would have been to focus the
questions on specific chapters but now when I come to think of it, two of the
questions did already do that. So by looking at the questions I could focus
more on certain chapters and therefore those chapters would probably be
discussed more in-depth if we would have had the seminar.
When it comes to the question of what is best of either discussing a smaller
bit more in-depth or getting a more overview of the whole literature, when it
comes to philosophy i'm not so sure what I prefer.
I think your comment about the age of Russells book (it being a hundred
years old) is interesting because I saw another blog in this course which
reflected on why we aren't using any newer book and therefore if there are any
philosophers left in this world. As you say, the terms and concepts that we
encounter in Russells book works just as fine today as when it was written and
so making that question of newer books slightly irrelevant. It would have been
interesting to read more exactly about how you see the connection between
Russells terms/discussions and the academic work.
Isabella Arningsmark 16 November 2013 02:17
Good quote that you found
Isabella, I think it really captures why philosophy is important and why it is
good to study. As you say some things need to have a collective truth in order
for human beings to communicate with each other and that’s why we, to a certain
extent, have science so that some things can be established as a definite
truth. Then you have many things that can be questioned, discussed and looked
upon from different angles. I have never been good at questioning things and in
some way I think it's because I have a mind catered to science, so looking at
that quote from Russell you can see that philosophy is important, because
sometimes not only the answer is important but the question in itself.
Filip Erlandsson
(response on own blog) 16 November 2013 11:01
Yeah i remember that passage and I think I had it a bit in my mind aswell
when i wrote my reflection. Interesting comparison with facebooking and such,
makes me think that maybe what Adorno and Horkheimer are describing is an old
form of procrastination. In that case I’m glad that the procrastination is
easier now, you don't need to go to the cinema, instead you just do something
else at the computer like facebooking or maybe cleaning your apartment.
Theme 2 - Critical media studies
Theme 2 - Critical media studies
When reading the answers to question three in all the blog entries, it
seems as if it can be interpreted in two ways, either you talk about the actual
medium, as you have, like radio, film etc. Others, like i did, interpreted it
as two medias of pre and past-culture industry where the old media could be
acknowledged as art and had other motives. The new media came with the culture
industry and standardization. I don't know if there is any right or wrong but
it will be interesting to discuss on the seminar.
I also think the term pseudo-individuality is interesting. I feel like
you have heard this speech about standardization many times before from various
sources, both old and new, just as Adorno and Horkheimer tries to say. I feel
like it's a bit exaggerated but maybe i'm just one of those that is lead to
believe that all the media is different.
I'm wondering if we really do accept everything so easy. I feel like
there are an increasing number of people that is getting more and more critical
to, for example, Aftonbladet. Though if you look at it at a different point of
view, Aftonbladet still have many readers so I guess your proposition that
"we easily accept everything" applies for many people. I agree with
you Jenny that most people probably don't check any stories at all. To know if
the mass media are deceiving us you need good knowledge before you are reading
an article. Then i think you will make a judgment about it. Otherwise you will
just read it quickly and believe it.
I agree with you that information can come from anyone and so there are
many types of sources today. With the Internet and especially social media,
anyone can get out information to a large audience. Citizen journalism is an
interesting term that reflects on the grassroot culture which occurs when
"ordinary" people (someone not working for a media company) takes an
active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and
disseminating news and information. I think that this concept has created space
for the so called "old" media to breed. It's not just the culture
industry that produces standardized goods but also the masses that produces
what they want, and not because of sales. So i think the masses create what
Adorno and Horkheimer term as "old" media.
I totally agree with you about the poor scanning quality of the book. I
don't understand why some parts were overlined and it made it hard to read. I'm
not all with you on the critique against the choice of literature though. I
thought that it was interesting to read about the enlightenment since it is
about opposing established beliefs in order to think for yourself and rely on
your own intellectual capacities in determining what is true. I also enjoyed
the fourth chapter since I think much of what is brought up there can be
considered as valid today and that I believe we have came across in other
courses. I can agree with you though that it would have been nice to complement
"Dialectics..." with some more recent literature about the topic
critical media studies.
I made the same interpretation as you regarding the "new" and
"old" media; not talking about the specific media but more about the
culture. "New" media is the mass culture that is standardized and
produced for the masses in order to make money where as the "old"
media can be considered as art and "high culture".
I liked your feeling about Adorno and Horkheimer that you describe in
the last paragraph. I also get that kind of feeling and I think they exaggerate
in their critique of the culture industry. In my belief many people seem to be
very critical to what the culture industry produce today, that it is just crap
and everything is the same etc. It would be fun to read something where the
author is portraying a very positive picture of the culture industry and see
whether you would agree to it or not.
Oscar Friberg 19 November 2013
15:04
I, as well, agree with what you are saying about the standardization in
the culture industry. I was also, just as Stefan, thinking about sequels. How
if one movie turns out to be very successful you can just start making sequels
because you know there is a large fan base and so you know that it is worth, in
terms of money, making another movie. Though I must say that there are some
sequels that i really like, for example "Fast and furious", and so
when talking about sequels I don't really have a problem with that.
You mention that you can't watch romantic comedies because all scenes
are so predictable because every movie is more or less the same and the ending
is always happy. I can really understand what you mean. I feel that the movies
that i like nowadays are those that i feel do something (in some way, big or
small) that no movie before has done. I can be intrigued by a certain concept
that I haven't seen before or some new environments or whatever. As long as
there are some aspect of the film that you haven't seen before then it's a big
step towards it being worthwhile to see.
I think it's interesting what you write in the last chapter about the
music industry, where artists belong to the industry even before it puts them
on stage. I began thinking of what Adorno and Horkhemier would have thought of
it today. With all the social media we have and the trend of sharing everything
with others, for example music that you have created yourself, without the need
of the industry, can be shared via Youtube and you can be very successful by
going another way than the "traditional" one. Would that indicate
that the culture industry today are losing power? Would it mean that mass
culture is going away to some extent and that a new type of culture, which
maybe reminds of the one before the culture industry came, is on the rise?
I also had a hard time understanding all the negativity from Adorno and
Horkeimer about the culture industry and the "new" media. I thought
that the lecture brought light upon the situation at that time and the
Frankfurt school of thought. Also in our seminar we talked about the second
world war and that Germans were using media to share propaganda and that it
could have been a underlying reason why Adorno and Horkheimer was so critical.
If they had written the book today maybe they might have been of a different
opinion.
I agree with you that the preconditions have changed for the culture
industry because of the internet and social media, where everyone can share
information or culture. This means as you say, that the media consumer in some
ways have become or atleast ar able to be a producer. Another interesting
thought about the control of content by the big companies is that it's them who
decide in the end what they will produce but they take note of what the masses
wants. Because if there is something that won't generate consumers then it
won't be produced. So if the masses want light entertainment then the big media
companies will produce it.
Intriguing thought you got about TV series. I understand your point and
i have series that comes to mind, for example "Heroes", that have
been excellent and where the quality has dropped more and more. I read an
article about the quality of TV series just the other day, where they thought
that the quality of the series "Downtown Abbey" had drastically
decreased. But it also said that different series have different quality
curves. Some goes up fast and then down, some are down first and then increases
and some have succeeded in keeping a good quality through all seasons. An
example of the last thing from that article was "Solsidan" who have
managed to have a pretty good level of quality all the time. So I tend to agree
with that. I also think it's hard to keep the same level of quality for several
seasons even though you put a lot of effort into making it. I agree with you
though that it would have been interesting to see the quality of a series where
economy is not the first priority.
I think it is interesting to read all the post-reflections this week and
see what was being discussed in the other seminar groups. What you see is that
all groups had a somewhat wide spread on the discussed subjects. For example
you mention that you talked about art which our group didn't even mention.
Instead we talked a lot about censorship in our seminar group.
It seems that you had an interesting discussion about art. It's not
really a subject that I care about but I agree with your opinion that it is
something that has a very subjective nature. What is art for someone might be
just crap to another person. It feels stupid that the question of art should be
in the hands of the legal system but the example you mention with graffiti is a
good example of times when, in my opinion, it should.
Theme 3 - Research and theory
Theme 3 - Research and theory
Hi Olle, i see that we found the exact same paper :) i thought it was
interesting to read a paper that presented a view that was pro social
networking sites when it comes to the effect of social capital. There is this
common notion that because of SNSs we only sit at the computer and talk instead
of meeting face-to-face and it's all bad. I tend to agree that maybe he was to
confident of his own result but he has written about the limitations of the
study and i think the results seem accurate and believable.
I didn't think so much of the method in my critical examination but i
believed, in contrast to you, that dividing it into groups made it easier to
draw conclusions. Of course the reality isn't so black and white, thats
probably why 5 groups was better than 3 or 4. Maybe it would have been even
better with 10 groups but i think the chosen number was good because it gives a
simplified view of the basic types of users.
Mårten Cederman 24 November 2013 02:59
The subject of the paper seems very interesting in my opinion. Something
that springs to mind is a blog post by Laila Bagge, who i think said that
homeless people can't have a mobile phone because they shouldn't afford it.
This opinion seems to me to lie in line with the hypothesis of this paper. We
make weird assumptions of the homeless that isn't true. As you say, we might
think that the driving factor for homeless is food and shelter in order to
survive, but having the possibility to contact family, relatives or friends
might be just as important.
Aikaterini Ioanna Kourti 24 November 2013 12:31
Your paper, "The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and
College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites", is one that my
paper (the one i read) refers to when talking about previous research. One
limitation with your paper, as you say, is that only one community is examined
in the study. My paper "Social Networking Sites: Their Users and Social
Implications — A Longitudinal Study" have made use of various SNSs in
relation to social capital during a longer period of three years. Just as your
paper, they conclude that the usage of SNSs and social capital are strongly
connected and that it has a positive effect on the social capital. It also
categorizes different SNS user types and reflects on the effects on their
social capital.
I think the topic is really interesting because of the common notion
that the usage of SNSs is bad for your social capital. For example if you use
Facebook then you won't meet as much face-to-face. More and more research seems
to occur that state otherwise which i think is good.
Thats a very interesting paper you found. It combines something very
relevant with media technology, which is telepresence, and something that, to
me, is a big interest. I have never actually played a virtual golf simulator
though which is a shame. So i can't say much about the experience on that
really, but since i play real golf i can say that in my opinion the social
interaction is very important in a sport like golf. It's not very fun to go out
and play for four hours all by yourself. You want to talk between the holes and
have someone that you can compete with to play at your best. The same can also
be said about a virtual golf simulator i guess except that the competing is of
another difference because you can't lower your handicap there. I think the
result is very interesting and i wonder who the people was that they had
questioned, if it were people who had much experience of playing real golf or
not.
That was intriguing paper you have found. Haven't heard about that
before although i'm interested in football. It is an interesting
phenomenon that they discuss with the incresement of social media and the term
citizen journalism which is a term describing "grassroot" journalism
from the public. Today it's very easy to start a rumour which gets spread and
you think it is true because so many people have spread it further. Also in the
case in your paper even The Times picked it up and then you get even more sure
that it's really true. I use Twitter a lot and sometimes you see a lot of
people retweeting some information that aren't true because they don't check the
source and then it get trapped up quickly. Did they say anything about the
conclussions in the paper? Would have been interesting to know.
I thought that the second seminar was the one that gave me the most
since theory is, in my opinion, a difficult subject. As you say about the
different types of theories, people can interpret them differently depending on
their own knowledge. On the seminar we agreed that it was very hard to
determine which of these types a theory is. I think that as long as you can
argument for it, you can see a theory as two different types. Though in the seminar,
one group thought that a theory was both explanation and prediction but Stefan
didn't agree that it was so much explanation, i think. So i guess there is
right and wrong aswell but it's all very hard to determine since theory is an
abstract term. That we noticed when we tried to change in the course wiki on
the question "what is theory".
I thought it was very interesting what we did in the second seminar this
week when we looked at the course wiki for the question on "what is
theory" and we were trying to change it in some manner to define theory in
a better way. It feels like you can do it over and over again, trying to change
different words and implement new views. You are not sure though if you improve
the definition or just make it more confusing or misguiding.
It's interesting that you mention that all theories come from an hypothesis.
That reminds me of a discussion on the seminar about who is to say that a
theory is valid for it to get recognition. Maybe it needs to be experts from
the field and not a KTH student, but an expert may have been a KTH student
before so why couldn't we come up with a theory that everyone will believe.
Though i think you need the experience and knowledge from the moment you are a
KTH student until you have researched for many years in a subject and thus
become an expert.
Ekaterina Karpukhina 28 November 2013 09:00
As you describe in your blog posting, this weeks theme has taught you a
lot of things and so have I. When i wrote my bachelor thesis i had a hard time
grasping what theory was and how to use it. At the time, it was also the first
time i used journals i think and didn't know anything about impact factor. For
my masters thesis this will be very good to know about when you are looking for
sources to describe your subject area.
I also thought it was interesting to read about what theory is not.
Sometimes it's easy to believe that some collected data can be used as a theory
but as we have read this week, it is not. Also the different types of theories
is something that i need to get more experience in since i thought it was hard
to distinguish the different types in the theories that we discussed on the
seminar.
Yeah,
another thing that came to my mind now, which was brought up at the second seminar was the use of the word theory. It
can sometimes be used very carelessly, for example you say "my theory is
that...". So you use the word for a belief that you have. A belief that is
not accepted by the majority or tested. I saw some other blog that made a very
good example of this with Jessica Alba i think.
Just as the previous comment say, I also think that you make an
interesting reflection in the end. It would be fun to do a longitudinal
experiment of the thing you propose with the teacher and see what the affects
would be. Would the children grow up without the knowledge that some things are
true and some things are not and how will they perceive things? But as you say
I think that it would be hard to grasp that sort of thinking because they have
probably already leaded at home about truth. Then this thinking will collide
with that about other theories being more correct. I can't imagine what will
happen then but maybe they start using this new thinking at home when arguing
with their parents.
Theme 4 - Quantitative research
Mårten Cederman 30
November 2013 06:46
I think it's interesting to see all the different quantitative methods that
have been used in everybody’s paper. The most common is of course online
surveys which is easy to use. So I think you paper had an interesting way of
collecting quantitative data, using search results from Google and analyzing
that. This quantitative method feels very specific for the research question or
the area of research that is being made in your paper. In contrast an online
survey can be used for almost any research subject. At least that's the feeling
i have, i don't know if you agree with me?
Simon Schmitz 30 November
2013 07:00
My paper did also have an online survey and I did not think so much about
what i learned about quantitative methods when reading my paper. I have experience
though from my bachelor thesis when it comes to making an online survey and as
you say, its very important how you formulate the questions and what parameters
you have. For example should you have open questions where the subject can fill
in by himself or have a scale with 1-5. There are of course pros and cons but i
think it could be very difficult to decide what to have when you are making
these online surveys. Other quantitative research methods may be easier to
conduct but i think online surveys fits all purposes and that makes them
attractive.
Jenny Sillén 30
November 2013 07:22
Hi Jenny, your chosen paper sounds very interesting since it is a very
valid topic these days with all the smartphones which makes it so easy to
multitask and procrastinate. I find it also interesting how they have done the
method of research with all the observation. I am wondering though if this can
be called a quantitative method? I tried to google examples of quantitative and
qualitative methods before i looked up my paper for this theme because i was
not sure what to look for. The perception i got then was that observation was a
qualitative method of research. Maybe i got it wrong or that observations can
be done differently depending on if you want quantitative or qualitative data?
Marit Aldén 30 November
2013 07:52
Hi Marit, it would have been interesting to know what paper you read and
what it was about :) Feels like it has something to do with Facebook? I agree
with you that it is very difficult to create a good questionnaire. It's easy
that you misinterpret the question or even don't understand it. I also think it
is hard to choose what form the questions should be, open or maybe a scale with
predefined answers. Do you select the first then people may not bother to write
anything but if you select the other then the pre-determined answers might not
describe the situation for the subject in the best possible way. I would really
need a lesson in making good surveys i think because they are so handy to use.
Stefan Etoh 1 December
2013 15:14
Interesting that they did several tests for reliability and validity. I
think that can be a big issue when working with quantitative methods and
especially questionnaires. People may not answer truthfully or they just
misinterpret the questions. As you say, they did good in the questionnaire
because they gave examples about different social medias in order for people to
understand the question fully. I feel that mostly this help text is nowhere to
be found when you get to do these surveys and many times it can definitely be
needed. I am wondering more about those checks for reliability and validity,
did they say anything about how these were done?
Alexandros Sombo 2
December 2013 11:29
It seems like an interesting paper and as many other papers they have used
an online survey. As you say, such a method is good if you want to reach out to
many people at a long distance. One thing I wonder about your paper though is
how they spread their survey. Was it via Facebook or e-mail and who were they
targeting? I think that depending on how you share the survey online, you can
get a good view of how many respondents there might be, just as for the
physical survey. Good to see that they had made use of pilot surveys. I get the
feeling that not many make use of that, or at least don't write about making
it. It's a good way to test out the survey and see if people understand the
questions and answer correctly.
Aikaterini Ioanna
Kourti 5 December 2013 11:20
Just as you, I have thought about how to design a questionnaire and how
difficult it can be. I think that Olle showed us some very good examples of how
easy it can be to formulate a question wrong, so that the answer can be
interpreted in several ways and therefore be useless. You might think that a
questionnaire is easy to develop and perform but it takes a lot of time to make
the questions correct and also you should do a pilot test in order to see if
people can understand the questions correctly.
Further on I thought that the excersice with the model on the first seminar
was a hard task, which I reflected on in my blog post. I agree with what you
say though that with these models, you can easily see how things are connected
and what relationships or patterns the paper are trying to investigate.
Ekaterina Sakharova 5
December 2013 02:41
Hi, as Andreas points out above, there are probably few (or maybe none?)
that have read a course just on quantitative and qualitative methods. I think
you make a fair point about the content of the second seminar. I believe that
most people have good knowledge about advantages and disadvantages of
quantitative and qualitative methods, especially since that was the task for
the week. So maybe it would have been better as you say to focus more on the
specific methods and how you do those. I think it was very interesting to see
Olle tell about the problems in different online questionnaires. You want to
know more about that in order to learn how to perform such methods in a good
way.
I think the last figure captures the essence of what we concluded in the
seminar with Olle and those guidelines are good to have when you are about to
do your own research and should decide what methods you want to use for your
problem area.
Jenny Sillén 5 December
2013 05:11
Hi Jenny, I have reflected on this on the other blogs and i agree with you
that the seminar with Olle, and especially the advice he gave with how to
develop a questionnaire, was the most giving part of this weeks theme. Although
i thought that the Boggle competition format brought up a bit too long
discussions that felt unnecessary, it was interesting when you learned the
point system because then you started thinking of advantages/disadvantages that
was a bit uncommon and what you didn't think the other groups would thought of.
At least I did this and I think it was good because you feel that you know the
most common examples, for instance that quantitative methods is good because
they give big statistical data. These ones you know well so it was interesting
to hear other examples of advantages and disadvantages with the different
methods.
Tommy Roshult 5
December 2013 09:14
I think you are pointing out a very important thing in your first paragraph
when it comes to quantitative methods and statistical data which is that you
should not interpret or make assumptions that the statistics does not show.
What we talked about in our seminar group on Olles seminar, as you discuss in
the last paragraph, was how difficult it is to develop a questionnaire and Olle
showed us some examples of bad questions. With your point about making
assumptions in mind, I think that the questions, in a questionnaire for
example, needs to be developed so that the possibility of making such
assumptions are none or at least very low. Otherwise I think you can make these
assumptions without even realizing it.
Theme 5 - Design research
Theme 5 - Design research
Cim Nordling 7 December
2013 02:06
Hi Cim, I like your discussion in the last paragraph about the advantages
and disadvantages about using prototypes. You say that developing a
high-fidelity prototype is expensive and takes a lot of time. Even if you build
it and test and then see that the target group is not interested I still think
that it can be good to have done this prototype because otherwise you might had
develop the final design and that would have been even more expensive. I agree
with your other proposed limitation that a prototype can restrict their
thoughts. I wrote in my reflection that with a prototype, the users may think
more about the prototype than the overall concept.
Andreas Sylvan 7
December 2013 11:26
Hi Andreas, i would not say the concept is obsolete but just as you I’m a
bit unsure about this way of visual programming as the ActDresses concept uses.
As you propose it feels like the concept fits well with for example toys and I
think it could be very nice for children to use on their dolls or something. We
saw the example with the dino in the paper, which feels like a typical usage of
this concept. I'm more unsure about the example with the vacuum cleaner and i
think you propose an interesting solution with using your tablet or mobile
phone instead.
Just as Jenny says, you seem to have good knowledge about research design
and i like that you make use of your own experiences in your reflecting.
Adam Rosén 7 December
2013 02:41
Hi Adam, just as you I enjoyed the paper by Li et al because it was about
football and the use of a very interesting concept in relation to it. I think
you make a very valid point about not describing how and why they picked the
participating persons for testing the prototype. I did not think about this
when reading the paper. Although I made the reflection that because of the
match that they used was recorded and not live, I thought that maybe someone
could have seen the game before and thus I believe it would have changed the
experience. But maybe the participating persons was not that interested in
football. We don't know that, as you have reflected about.
I agree with you that a big limitation with prototypes is that the testing
persons might think too much about the design such as colors and fonts, as you
say, and not much about the functionality. I though believe that you could use
a prototype to test different things. Sometimes you might want to test the
design more than the functionality.
Jenny Sillén 7 December
2013 03:11
Hi Jenny, I think you explain the concept of design research very well. I
feel that i didn't have much knowledge about what it was before reading about
it through the two papers for this week. Now after reading your reflections I
feel that I have increased my understanding even more. I agree with the
connection you make with media technology research that it is often aimed at
improving on an existing system or technology. This means that design research
is very important because then you can develop a design concept and a prototype
to test and evaluate the improvement your are looking for.
I'm glad to see that I am not the only one who has written a question for
the lecture in this blog post :)
Carl Ahrsjö 8 December
2013 20:43
I totally agree with you that prototypes makes it a lot easier to
understand a design concept because then you can test it out how it works. I
also found it a bit hard in the beginning to understand how the vibration
concept by Haibo et al was supposed to work at first but it was enlightening to
read about their prototype and the evaluation that they did.
I think the feasability is very important when you are making a proof of
concept prototype. You can then see if it is possible or maybe worth it to make
the final design. As you say, it is also good to persuade the users, although
in the paper by Haibo et al, the users did not get persuaded to buy such a
product, they at least got to know about the concept and most of them thought
it was an interesting one, so then you know that there are interest in
continuing with the research for such an area.
Isabella Arningsmark 10
December 2013 01:42
I think you are on the spot on the limitations regarding prototypes.
Furthermore, i also believe that when you evaluate a prototype, you might get
stuck on the design of the prototype and not the concept or idea behind it, and
thus the testing might give you the wrong feedback. Therefore (as you say) you
have to be critical of the evaluation results. But as you say, I totally agree
that using prototypes is great. In my opinion, it makes it so much easier to
understand a concept if you have something to try out and play around with.
Also as a developer you can see if the prototype is used in the intended way,
as Jenny commented about. An additional benefit of using prototypes could be to
market the concept and make sure there is an awareness among future customers.
This can be seen in computer games where beta versions are released and tested
by the public.
Aikaterini Ioanna
Kourti 11 December 2013 20:10
Hi, I did not have the chance to be present at Ylvas lecture so it is
interesting to read what it was about. It would have been interesting to go by
reading what you have written about the differences between design research and
research. I agree with you that Haibos lecture was focused much on
commercialization of an idea. There were clear examples of that i think, for
example that a great idea was in the billion dollar segment i think and a good
idea in the million dollar segment or something like that. Another example was
when talking about how design research can be communicated and he mentioned an
elevator pitch. That feels very much like business oriented. I would have
imagined something else like presenting it at a conference or show casing your
prototype.
Edvard Ahlsén 11
December 2013 11:21
Just as you, I could only attend Haibos lecture and not Ylvas. It seems
that they were very different and it would have been good to get both views of
design research. I agree with your disappointment on Haibos lecture, or i don't
know if disappointment is the right word for me, but i think i had expected
something completely different. As you say, the lecture was very
entrepreneurial and business oriented. I would have liked to look at it more
from a pure research point of view and trying to define what design research
is, what it consist of and what differentiates it from other types of research.
I think that would have helped more in my understanding of design research and
how I could have used it in future work, for example the master thesis.
Andreas Sylvan 12
December 2013 10:59
Hi 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?
You 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.
Stefan Etoh 12 December
2013 11:22
Interesting opinion that you take up in the first paragraph. I was
unfortunately not on Ylvas lecture so i can't say my feeling for how it was. I
agree with you though that trying to have discussions on lectures can be very
hard because, as you say, the hall is too big and it can be hard to get heard
and so on. I took a course on Stockholm School of Economics this spring though
and i think that the discussions on the lectures was much better there. So i
think it also depends much on us as students to get the discussion going
anyway.I think the format that we had last week with Olle Bälter was very good.
There it was mostly a seminar but also a kind of lecture since Olle talked a
bit as well about quantitative methods. Since we only was half the class (and
even less really) we got good discussions.
I agree with Andreas about the need for both lectures and seminars. It's
interesting to discuss much about the topic of theory and methods but you also
want to listen to professors with experience to learn more about it.
Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research
Theme 6 - Qualitative and case study research
Zahra Al Houaidy 14
December 2013 16:20
I think it is interesting to see such a wide range of methods used in a
paper, as in your first one. I think, from all the papers i have read on KTH,
that it is easy to get comfortable and only use one method that you feel fits
your purpose well. So it is good to see a paper that combines different methods
since they provide different types of answers and can serve different purposes.
Makes you learn more about how to make this combination as well. I think it can
be hard to create a combination and then to be able to argue for why you used
it. It is easy to just make an observation plus some interviews but it also
needs a purpose. It feels like your paper made use of the different methods in
a good way.
Johan Storvall 14
December 2013 07:46
The paper about geotagging seems very interesting. If there were any good
applications for this purpose as Socialight has (maybe that one is or there are
others?) i would be interested to try it out. Maybe it would give you great
advice on where to go when you are on holiday and you can see other people
notes about places or activities. As you say, a weakness is that you can't make
generalizations and that is common with qualitative methods. They didn't say
why they did not use a quantitative method to make up for this weakness? As i
said in another blog comment, papers should make use of combinations of methods
more. It feels like it is uncommon but maybe i am wrong. Otherwise i would know
why it is uncommon. Maybe because of lack of time or money.
Ekaterina Karpukhina 14
December 2013 09:01
Hi Ekaterina, as you say, the qualitative method is very good to get
in-depth understanding and discover the underlying problems. Interesting to
read that they had a very systematic approach with a very precised interview
formula. If i understand it correctly, the questions were the same for all
interviews or was there a set of questions and some of them were questioned
depending on the interview? I think i like semi-constructed interviews best but
maybe this interview format could work very good as well. With this method, it
become very static i think, which can be good if you interview many people and
you have the same purpose for all the interviews. I don't know if i agree with
you that the "informants should ask to comment on questions with as little
interruption as possible", but i guess it depends on the purpose of the
interviews.
Johan Gårdstedt 15
December 2013 02:29
Just from reading the headline of your qualitative paper, it seems to be
very interesting. I have never heard of the word "dyadic" before,
what are they meaning with "dyadic data"? It seems that if the method
was hand-picked for the goal of the paper, or do you think they should have
used a different method or combined it with maybe a quantitative one? Also i
wonder what the purpose of this bottom-up transmission survey was and what does
it mean really?
Interesting that you have reflected on problems with the perception of the
participants when answering the questions. You say that these problems involve
cultural differences and social differences. How exactly was that showed? I
feel that a qualitative study should have easier to avoid such problems than a
quantitative one, since the interviewer can adjust depending on the interviewed
person and explain more if its necessary. In a quantitative method, like a
survey, it's probably very easy to get problems because of differences in the
participants.
Marit Aldén 15 December
2013 03:00
Hi Marit, it seems like a very interesting qualitative paper that you have
read. Were there any interesting conclusions made from the authors? I am
impressed with all the interviews that they did, it feels like it is above
average, with 107 subjects, when it comes to a qualitative method such as this.
Just as you I have no experience in interviewing children and i think it is
important when you prepare for an interview to think about who you are interviewing.
As you say, children might have a harder time to interpret questions so i guess
you have to develop them in a specific way.
Carl Ahrsjö 16 December
2013 13:22
Interesting to read about the used methods for your qualitative paper. We
discussed on the seminar today that it is common with using a questionnaire
first and then a focus group but we also had a paper that had done the other
way around, just as your paper; a focus group first and then a questionnaire. I
think it can be very important to use focus groups before a questionnaire if
you do not really know what questions you should ask. The focus group will thus
give you ideas and material to build a good questionnaire. I agree with you
that the moderator in a focus group is very important. For example if there are
only certain people speaking all the time, then the moderator have to try and
get everyone into the discussion. That can be very hard though.
Gustav Boström 16
December 2013 13:57
Hi Gustav, seems like a fascinating qualitative paper. Did they come to any
intruiging conclusions? The 21 participants, was it both men and women? I have
never heard of this inductive method before, seems to be a special method. Does
it seemed as something that should be used more and is it harder to conduct in
comparison with normal qualitative methods?
As you conclude, their pilot testing is good and i think it is very
important to do it independant of which research method you are using. Well
focus groups might be hard but the individual methods at least like interviews
and questionnaires. But it was strange that they counted to the end result. Did
they say anything about why they did that? 17 answers instead of 21 would still
be good in my opinion.
Jakob Florell 16
December 2013 05:48
Hi Jakob, Facebook usage is always interesting to analyze in my opinion.
Did the author say something about the characteristics of these Facebook users
that they interviewed? For example, did they all have good knowledge about
using Facebook and were they daily users or? How did they recruit the subjects
(you mention 16 being students)? I agree that the semi-structured interviews
could be a good choice for this paper but it feels like a questionnaire could
have been a good complement to make more generalizations as well. If we talk
only about qualitative methods, then i think a focus group could have been
good, as Carl talk about in the previous comment. I think this topic would have
been very good to discuss in groups instead of just interviewing one-on-one.
That would have made it easier to differences in user behaviour and to draw
upon parallels between different subjects habits and usage.
Gustav Boström 17
December 2013 13:29
Hi Gustav, i'm learning new methods all the time by reading your blog. I
commented on your last blog about the inductive qualitative method, which was
new to me. I have never heard about using narratives as a research method but
it sounds very interesting. What kind of stories are there typically?
Experiences by other people as with the women affected by breast cancer? I
think it can be very effective in some cases, like the one in your described
paper. When do you think it is good to use this method? What other research
methods lies close to this method would you say?
Carl Ahrsjö 17 December
2013 13:51
Hi Carl, i see that you also talked a lot about focus groups and interviews
on your seminar. I totally agree with your conclusions about it being easier to
speak freely in interviews but that discussion with other might create more
thoughts. What we discussed in our seminar around focus groups was that we
believed it could be a good complement to other methods. None of us wanted to
use it as a standalone method. We also discussed about the role of the
moderator being very important, for example to get everyone to speak.
The narrative and diary methods seems to be very interesting but i have no
experience of them. They seem to be very time efficient methods, with the
participating subjects doing much of the work themselves without interuption by
the researcher. Do you agree?
