Theory and Method for Media Technology

Monday, October 19, 2015

After Theme 6: Qualitative and Case Study Research

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

For the last theme, we are required to select two high impacted media technology research papers ourselves with different focuses on qualitative research and case study, respectively. And then think and discuss some potential problems in and after class. I read the two selected paper [2][4] along with another article assigned by professor [3].

In my opinion, since qualitative research has already been introduced and discussed with comparison to quantitative research in previous class, the case study should be paid more attention during this week’s study. When I was writing the first blog for this theme, I thought I knew what the case study is, but not very sure. So I was looking forward to the following lecture and seminar. Unfortunately it is such a pity that the lecture was unable to be given as planned. Still, my idea about case study has been dramatically changed after the seminar.

In the seminar, our group discussion begins with introducing the papers we selected and sharing our thoughts on the potential questions. We are all interested in one question regarding case study, and then develop the question to discuss the case study with comparison to the prototype we studied earlier. We all agreed that both case study and prototype are used to explain or illustrate the research idea, and case study was not always necessary. In addition, one of my group members thought case study involves people or uses real life example while prototype are not necessary to be physical. With this perspective, my idea was that case study could be seen as a connection between theory and practice. But when we discussed further with Ilias, we found out that a totally different viewpoint to examine what the case study is. Ilias proposed to think the term ‘case study’ with comparison to hypothesis rather than prototype. According to him, research starts from either hypothesis or case study. If you have ideas about the research already, then you can start with your hypothesis. While case study aims to seek something you do not know, it can help formulate a hypothesis for the research. On the other hand, it is also mentioned that both qualitative and quantitative methods can be used in case study research.

After the seminar, I thought my understanding of case study is much improved. I realized my understanding emphasis has been changed from ‘case’ to ‘study’. Here, in this course, case study should be more examined and studied as a research approach rather than an example approach.

Those are all for today’s blog. Thanks for reading. Your valuable comments are welcome. Please let me know if you find anything interesting or want to have a further discussion. I am looking forward to more discussions in seminar with you all.

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study-rese-2/

[2] Te'eni, D., Sagie, A., Schwartz, D. G., Zaidman, N., & Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2001). The process of organizational communication: a model and field study.Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, 44(1), 6-20.

[3] Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of management review, 14(4), 532-550

[4] Wen, Y., Zhu, X., Rodrigues, J. J., & Chen, C. W. (2014). Cloud mobile media: reflections and outlook. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 16(4), 885-902.

Monday, October 12, 2015

After Theme 5: Design Research

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

During last week, we had two lectures regarding theme 5 with no seminars as planned. Three papers have been read to help understand the theme topic [2][3][4]. However, due to the absence of second teacher, our second lecture turns into a teacher-led seminar. Meanwhile, we are requested to read three papers given by professors and then answer several questions accordingly. I found it that the task is easier than previous ones, since it is clearer with guidelines. Yet, I thought that the connection between the lecture and the assignment is not that tight. It would be great to have a seminar to discuss with tutor and classmates, just like what we did before.

In the first lecture Prof. Li proposed five interesting questions around 'idea', so I would like to reflect my study thinking based on some perspectives in this blog.

Firstly, the most common way of coming up with an idea might be to solve a problem. For problem solving, Prof. Li points out that although we always focus on how to solve the problem, in fact the first thing we should ask and answer is how to define a problem. I agree a lot with Prof. Li with this perspective. I think in most cases it is the problem itself that stops us or blinds us when we try to solve a problem.

Secondly, regarding filter ideas: Yes, Thinking is always easier than doing. It is typical that we are all able to brainstorm, but find it difficult to decide what can be written down eventually. Sometimes we have too many ideas, but hard to choose which one is better. In this part Prof Li. highlighted that 'We should not fully believe ourselves' to avoid Tunnel Vision. In a sense, 'everyone is blind', since we only see what we want to see. I found this very philosophical, and quite connected with what we did during last weeks. What I disagree that much is about 'great idea'. Professor said that the easier way to define great idea is using money. I understand that this makes a lot sense in our current world. And of course it IS a useful strategy or advice for us with no doubt. But what about in a historical context?

Then Moving to the discussion on idea validation and evaluation. In general, to find some proof, (and to raise some money). In practice, we need a prototype for showing the idea. This is the part linked with the paper we studied and discussed before the lecture. Before the lecture, I was expecting that this part would be the most important part, but it seems not. It has not been widely introduced and discussed. As a result, I still felt a little confused about 'prototype' after that lecture.

Lastly, Professor introduced some valuable and helpful methods to evaluate an idea, such as 1-way ANOVA and Two Way ANOVAs. They are good illustrated with examples, so I think they might be great. However, it is too fast for me to figure out what it is and how to use it. It is only presented at the introductory level, but this might be the aim of the course. We get chance to know something new, but more work might be needed if we want to learn more about it.

Thanks to the second lecture or seminar, my understanding of 'prototype' is much improved. Basically the discussion confirms my earlier thinking on 'prototype' that it aims to Test the idea as proof of concept or evaluation. Then I followed the two questions proposed by the teacher that 'what can you use the prototype for?' and 'how can we use the prototype?' I think these questions are great to help understanding. After knowing 'we can use design to shape prototype to search for a specific answer', we reach another conclusion that 'the prototype does not need to be a solution itself. After figuring out that 'prototype' is a tool created by the author for the research, we agree that 'Design research focuses on the process, in contrast or comparing with the theory'. Also, we see the whole picture with thinking on 'what the research for?' Finding answers, solving problems, testing theory, and most importantly gaining knowledge. So I think this makes more sense to connect with previous themes, which makes me feel that I now have a better understanding of this course.

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-5-design-research-2/

[2] Réhman, S. U., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn your mobile into the ball: rendering live football game using vibration. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on,10(6), 1022-1033.

[3] Fernaeus, Y., & Tholander, J. (2006, April). Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems (pp. 447-456). ACM.

[4] Lundström, A. (2014, September). Differentiated Driving Range: Exploring a Solution to the Problems with the Guess-O-Meter in Electric Cars. InProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications (pp. 1-8). ACM.

Comments for Theme 4

1. http://reb2572.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-4.html?showComment=1444647240049#c9039723290120406948

2. http://denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-22.html?showComment=1444651853451#c7690532977944018501

3. http://stinazwahlen.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-seminar-theme-4.html?showComment=1444658980693#c5065682055804066875

4. http://lard-have-mercy.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-4-quantitative-research.html?showComment=1444659594751#c3232689986432691328

5. http://suchapriori.blogspot.se/2015/10/post-theme-4.html?showComment=1444661051309#c1114843235128384477

6. http://ixxzw.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-3-after.html?showComment=1444662162748#c6296200138664599870

7. http://thetheoryandmethodofeverything.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-reflections.html?showComment=1444662625766

8. http://capitalmyboy.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-post-theme-post.html?showComment=1444663365803#c1941161001786569144

9. http://happyblogger7.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1444664293494#c3998957619249694280

10. http://thewind-egg.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1444664825365#c2129244116754082813

Friday, October 9, 2015

Before Theme 6 Qualitative and Case Study Research

My selection on the first one is the paper namely 'The process of organizational communication: a model and field study' by Te'eni, D. et. al. [2] published in Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on (Volume:44 , Issue: 1 ). The journal is of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 2.303.

The paper emphasizes three constructs of the communication process: goal-based communication strategies, and message form and medium; seeking to ‘balance cognitive and social communication strategies and to combine new and old measures of the message form (organization, formality and size)’.

Q1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

For the research method, a field study was conducted in their research, with an open-ended interview followed for investigating the field study findings. The field study deals with a large amount of data with quantitative analysis, while the interview is conducted from qualitative perspective.

The benefits and limitations of using the qualitative method can be discussed similarly as what we did during theme 4 study on quantitative research. Again, the benefits of qualitative method include its deep analysis on the analysis, and its function to clarify findings and reaffirm priori by giving explanations. On the other hand, the method also limits to its unavoidable subjectivity, compared to quantitative methods. Also, I think qualitative method sometimes is hard to conduct without descriptive statistics which commonly results from quantitative analysis.

Q2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

The combined use of quantitative and qualitative method is the most important thing I learn from reading this paper. Additionally, it is glad to learn that the author performed a field study to ‘ensure a study of a social phenomenon such as communication in its natural setting rather than a controlled laboratory experiment’, as well as engaged in a qualitative study on the preliminary results with an interview on the organization ‘who had sent or received messages’. The two methods support each other logically and efficiently. Thus the study can be seen as a good example of using quantitative and qualitative methods together in one research.

Q3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

Honestly I did not tell any major methodological problems of the study. However, the use of the qualitative method could be improved with supportive evidence from quantitative analysis, just like argued in previous questions. I think the classic qualitative research aims to provide information but numbers, for a further explanation on analysis.

In addition to the two selected papers, another article ‘Building Theories from Case Study Research [3] was also advised to be read. Based on this reading, I chose the second media technology research paper as Cloud Mobile Media: Reflections and Outlook [4] from the same journal Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on. In the selected paper, a concrete case study was used for further substantiating the proposed design principles for cloud-based mobile media.

Q1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

The case study is a research method to focus on a particular subject. The analysis is within single setting, different from theory discussion. The case study aims to deeply examine the studied case or cases with focuses on several aspects.

Q2. 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 question provides us possibilities to further study the process of building theory with an example. It is shown that although the selected paper did not follow the process of building theory step by step, the logic still can be easily found with the help of the process. I believe this table is very useful and helpful for our future research.

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study-rese-2/

[3] Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building theories from case study research. Academy of management review, 14(4), 532-550

[4] Wen, Y., Zhu, X., Rodrigues, J. J., & Chen, C. W. (2014). Cloud mobile media: reflections and outlook. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 16(4), 885-902.

Monday, October 5, 2015

After Theme 4: Quantitative Research

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

For the last week we studied and discussed a lot on the two main research methodology perspectives, i.e. Quantitative and Qualitative. Although it shows that quantitative research is our theme topic, a comparison with qualitative research is very useful to help us better understand the research methodologies. This is what in particular I learned from the seminar discussion.

During the first hour in the seminar, we are encouraged to share thoughts in small groups on the theme topic and also to discuss on advantages and disadvantages of Quantitative and Qualitative research. Some conclusions of our discussion are listed below.

Quantitative research is more objective while Qualitative research is more subjective.
Quantitative research deals with the data mores directly for trying to answer the WHAT questions, while Qualitative research is more concerned with the WHY questions.
So the results of Quantitative research is often clearer and easier to understand with help of analysis of the data, while Qualitative research results is more analyzed type with explanation.
Quantitative research studied more with obvious data, while Qualitative research is able to find something deeper behind the obvious data.
Quantitative research provides EVIDENCE while Qualitative research provides ANALYSIS.
Quantitative research comes from science, while Qualitative research is more used in humanities.

Furthermore, the seminar leader informed us that design research is always Qualitative.

The limitation for the quantitative research determines that it is common to combine the quantitative analysis with qualitative analysis for research in practice. For example, before conducting a quantitative content analysis, qualitative analysis can be used to help define the variables; or after conducting a quantitative survey, qualitative interviews can help discover more interesting facts behind the data collected from survey.

My efforts for this theme consisted of reading the related papers and books [2][3][4][5][6], answering the questions, writing the blogs as well attending the lecture and seminar. Basically everything needed for this class is achieved. Glad to say that I got a better understanding of quantitative research after this theme, in particular how to relate it within technology domain.

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-4-quantitative-research-2/

[2] Aiello, L. M., Petkos, G., Martin, C., Corney, D., Papadopoulos, S., Skraba, R., ... & Jaimes, A. (2013). Sensing trending topics in Twitter. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on, 15(6), 1268-1282.

[3] Lacey, A., & Luff, D. (2001). Qualitative data analysis (pp. 320-357). Sheffield: Trent Focus.

[4] Neuendorf, K. A. (2002). The content analysis guidebook. Sage.

[5] Robertson, A., & Levin, P. (2010). Europe as Other: Difference in global media discourse. Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift, 112(1).

[6] Gray, J. H., & Densten, I. L. (1998). Integrating quantitative and qualitative analysis using latent and manifest variables. Quality and Quantity, 32(4), 419-431.

Comments for Theme 3

1. http://lard-have-mercy.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-theme-3-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1444058386849#c7205705910140291441

2. http://reb2572.blogspot.se/2015/09/post-theme-3.html?showComment=1444059540868#c290151716517696180

3. http://denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-22.html?showComment=1444060557426#c4859236659379176074

4. http://happyblogger7.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-relection.html?showComment=1444061694459#c58543804876570206

5. http://stinazwahlen.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-reflection.html?showComment=1444062501918#c374770817284597239

6. http://u1vfukfo.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-posting-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1445803242582#c7866293502049162552

7. http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-after.html?showComment=1445803989165

8. http://paullinderoth.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-after.html?showComment=1445804627195

9. http://rchcc.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme3-reflection.html?showComment=1445805241639#c6136067763320610839

10. http://tamfmtol.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1445805765018#c6079127136054949692

Friday, October 2, 2015

Before Theme 5: Design Research

(N.B. This is the study blog for the course Theory and Method for Media Technology. More detailed information regarding the theme as well as the course is available on the course page [1].)

Section 1

In this blog, I will firstly try to answer five questions regarding the Paper by Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration [2]. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6), 1022-1033

How can media technologies be evaluated?

The media technologies can be evaluated from two perspectives, i.e. quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. For example in the study paper above, media technologies are reviewed through discussions on previous research results, such as the discussion on mobile phones at the beginning of the paper. “MOBILE phones are becoming part of everyday life and their prevalence makes them ideal not only for communication but also for entertainment and games. For example, with the rapid growth of 2.5G and 3G mobile networks and DVB-H, we have a new option to enjoy a football game: watching it on mobile phones. Different from traditional means, such as watching football on TV, mobile TV services are rather hungry for power.” It shows that quantitative analysis aims to discuss how the technology is, while qualitative analysis focuses more what is new for the technology.

What role will prototypes play in research?

Prototypes play the role as demonstrator and validator in research. In other words, on one hand prototypes are used to illustrate the key concept or demonstrate the main idea proposed in the research. On the other hand, prototypes are useful to validate the research proposed technology.

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

Developing a proof of concept prototype will contribute to explain the research proposal and turn the concept into a real model for readers to better understand. Meanwhile, through prototypes, it is able to test the feasibility. Additionally, the technology performance can also be able to be tested via prototypes.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

As mentioned earlier, the characteristics of prototypes lie in its demonstration and validation function. The limitations of prototypes can also be found in behind of these functions. As prototypes aim to develop of concept prototype, it is quite common that prototypes are developed in a lab environment instead of real scenario. This also makes the functions demonstrated by prototypes limited in real life. Also, even though the prototypes is developed for demonstration, its demonstrated function is still quite limited due to various reasons.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

The design research can be communicated/presented via technical documents, such as academic paper, project report or conference presentation. Also, it is important to use prototypes to present the research technology and main findings.

Section 2

Then, two papers are suggested to read for the second lecture on Friday with Ylva Fernaeus, which are Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space - Fernaeus & Tholander [3], and Differentiated Driving Range - Lundström [4]. And there are another five questions raised with regard to the two papers as below. I will answer and discuss some of them in this blog.

Can practical design work in itself be considered a 'knowledge contribution'?

Yes, because practical design work in itself also creates new knowledge to the research field. Meantime, it is also quite common to see that new technology has been used practical design work. This can be seen as another way for its knowledge contribution.

Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to design in general?

Yes, there are. The design intention is often much clearer within a research project, compared to design in general. When design in general, there is no clear guidelines for the intended design results. While within a research project, what is expected is always explicit for design.

Is research in tech domains such as these ever replicable? How may we account for aspects such as time/historical setting, skills of the designers, available tools, etc?

Yes, research in tech domains is replicable. Replication indicates the research results are valid. If the research is not replicable, then the research itself might be problematic. For the aspects of the research, we may account for them based on a general setting with explicit explanation of every step to enable the research replicable for others. In other words, no particular setting, skills or tools should be required for research in tech domains.

Sources:

[1] https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/theme-5-design-research-2/

[2] Réhman, S. U., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn your mobile into the ball: rendering live football game using vibration. Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on,10(6), 1022-1033.

Themes

Monday, October 19, 2015

Monday, October 12, 2015

Friday, October 9, 2015

Monday, October 5, 2015

Friday, October 2, 2015