Theme 5: Design research

This week we have to reflect on the key points of design research from reading two papers. In both papers artefacts were designed. It was thoroughly explained how and why they designed the artefacts in the specific way and with the specific functions. It was explicitly described what kind of techniques and methods were used. According to Gregor (2006), this a Design and Action theory type, which describes how to do something.  

Comics,Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses (Fernaeus and Jacobsson, 2009)

This paper concerns the design of physical languages for controlling, programming and predicting the behavior of robotic consumer products. Here, the researchers introduce the design concept of actDresses- e.g. using physical clothing, accessories and labels-  and develop new physical languages  based on semiotic theories in the fields of comics and fashion. The concept of actDresses was supplemented by three interaction scenarios designed for different kinds of robotic artefacts:

Case 1: Role assemblage outfits for Pleo, which is a robotic baby dinosaur.

Case 2: A behavior pin collection for GlowBots- a collection of robots with round LED-displays, acceleration sensors for user-interaction, protocols for robot-robot communication.

Case 3: Comic Signs for a commercial vacuum cleaning robot.  

What I got from reading this paper is that designing artefacts involves combining theories from different areas. It is important to discuss what kind of theories the researchers build their theory on, why those theories are used, as well as describe explicitly how the artefact was designed.  Artefacts are used in order to test new designs and thus enhance precision and understating about a phenomenon, provide us with insights. Since it was discussed that future research could examine many more scenarios (Ibid: 8), we could argue that design research contributes to science by producing artefacts, models and methods that can be used in future research as knowledge base (Hevner et al. in Gregor, …).

Turn YourMobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration (Réhman, Sun, Liu, and Li, 2008)

Here they design an experimental system and carry out tests to show that vibration could be used as means of rendering live dynamic information for mobile phones.

Role of prototypes in research and necessity to develop a proof of concept prototype

A prototype is a first design of something that was built in order to test hypotheses and prove them. Prototypes are used in research in order to test new designs and thus enhance precision and understanding of a phenomenon. In the concluding remarks of this paper it is noted that rendering information by vibration on mobile phones was rather new for both the researchers and the mobile users (Ibid: 1032). What I understand from reading this paper is that prototypes are used when researching a topic that was not the focus of prior research. So, a design that will allow us to test specific characteristics might not exist. Therefore, it is important to develop and design a prototype because prior literature has not dealt with this phenomenon. And as I previously discussed, designing prototypes contributes to research by producing artefacts, models, methods that can be used as knowledge base in future research.

In contrast to theorizing about something, a prototype provides results and specific information from experiments. 

Prototypes enable us to evaluate the usability of a system, model and design. Usability is defined as the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can achieve specified goals in particular environments. Based on the results of the experiments, researchers can replicate the design or change some characteristics in order to build the intended design.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

The characteristics of prototypes is they are new and self-designed by researchers in order to be able to test hypotheses and theories through experiments. By designing and testing prototypes we are able to evaluate the usability of something. In this research they proposed a new method and they showed that vibration could be used as means of rendering live dynamic information for mobile phones. 

In general, designing and testing prototypes might be time-consuming and it might turn out to be a failure. Researchers then could try to understand the limitations of prototypes in order to simulate the characteristics of their intended design. What is important is that we can get valuable insights and learn from this procedure.

From this paper, I understand that the limitations of prototypes is that each prototype has different characteristics, which are related to the focus of the research, and that they examine a narrow scenario. Additionally, it was noted that one test prototype is not enough to convince users to buy a product. Further research and designs are necessary. Plus, designing a prototype is a challenging and costly procedure. In this case, it was necessary adoption of training processes.

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.