Coming from a theoretical background, I would have to say that it wasn’t easy to grasp some concepts and understand all the technical details. Nevertheless, I found this week’s theme quite interesting, mainly because it provided me with a new understanding of research. By reading the papers and attending the lectures, I realized that designing research is another way of scientific studies, which I did not really consider as such before. Gregor (2006) notes that design and action is a theory type, which discusses how to do something. Design research can provide valuable insights and understandings, ideas, proof of concepts and artifacts which can further the development of knowledge and sciences.
Ylva Ferneaus discussed the difference between design research and research. In the first one, we are based on grounding existing literature, scientific research and projects. Analysis, deeper understanding, critical reflection on implications and challenges are part of the designing research process. It takes place within the scientific context. It is important to convince with facts the research community about the validity of your findings and your theories. Your ideas go through a procedure of scrutiny and checkups in order to be accepted. Research on the other hand doesn't have to be grounded on existing research and literature, neither do the researchers have to share their ideas. What I got from Ylva’s lecture is that design research is not always about commercialization of ideas.
According to me, Haibo Li discussed design research from a different perspective. Focus was placed on the marketization and commercialization of an idea. There are different steps in design research: how to come up with a good idea, how to filter it, how to validate it, how to evaluate it and how to communicate it. The process involves the definition of the right problem and then we will be able to find a solution. Technical evaluation is important, but math is not enough. After all, there are too many ideas out there. You need a business mind to be able to evaluate if it your idea is a breakthrough technology and it is has business potential. The proof of concept enable us to validate the idea, while building a prototype plays the crucial role of evaluation. For the technical communication of the idea it is important to have an entrepreneurial spirit. Innovation training is helpful in enabling us to communicate our knowledge.
We also discussed the necessity of the usability analysis. We should evaluate the usability of a system, design, idea in a scientific way. Usability is defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments (Réhman, Sun, Liu, and Li, 2008).
The lectures enabled me to understand that design research is not restricted in quantitative methodologies. Qualitative methodologies can also be used and they can provide us with a deeper explanation of some phenomena.
To conclude, during this week I re-evaluated design research and I better understood its importance in the advancement of knowledge.
REFERENCES:
Gregor, S.
(2006). The Nature of Theory in Information Systems. MIS Quarterly, 30(3),
611-642.
Fernaeus,
Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming:
outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International
Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM.
Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball:
Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia,
10(6), 1022-1033.
Hej Kat, I liked how you related your description of design research to Gregors understanding of it. But I think that his characterization of design research as "how to do something" a bit vage and unclear after we had the lectures about this topic. I found it interesting how Ylva pointed out that design research also consists of analyzing, building on existing theories and Li mentioned that evaluation and validation also has to be taken into account. It seems as if Gregor wanted design research to be more broad since it "can" cover lots of different approaches. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Gregor's characterization could be a little vague and broad, especially after having attended this week's lectures. I only used this as a starting point because I wanted to note that design research is considered as theory type and as research by the scientific community.
DeleteI also found interesting what Ylva discussed in the lecture-as all types of theories and research, so does design research need to be grounded to previous literature. As you say it builds on existing theories, it consists of analysis and it can provide deeper understanding.
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.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteHi there!
DeleteSince you were not able to attend the first lecture, I would like to add that Ylva also critically reflected on the paper. Among other things she discussed that the design might have been different if the study was conducted today and that even though questionnaires and interviews might help us in validating a research, validation does not depend only on these two. We also discussed on whether statistics would make the study better.
Regarding the second lecture, I do believe that Haibo's lecture was business oriented and I found that really interesting! Especially the elevator pitch and the technical communication of the idea. I do believe that it is important for us to be able to communicate our research and knowledge. And as I said, I find it helpful that some universities have innovation training. After all, we should be prepared for the business field.