Theme 5: Design research

Research paper: Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses

Described in this paper is the exploration of how the semiotics of two fields, fashion and comics, could work as inspiration to physical language design. As Fernaeus and Jacobsson proclaim, clothes serve a range of communicative functions, like indicating appropriate behavior, group belongings and expected interactions. Also comics is a form of language which allow to exaggerate and emphasize properties. The visual presentation can produce a direct reading experience, creating an illusion of for example motion and sound, for readers that have learned the principles and sign language of comics, even though the medium itself is static and silent. The researchers that conduct this research think that there is a need to explore other systems and modes of program representations, as a consequence of the increased physical systems that are often not even equipped with screen displays. They also claim that users want to modify and control on their different devices. 

Based on these theories, a design concept of the so-called actDresses is defined. Also, three example scenarios were provided, of how the concept can be used for controlling, programming, and predicting the behavior of robotic systems. These examples are designed as physically embodied sketches, that was possible to realize with readily available technology.

One lesson learned from reading this paper is that visualizing different examples using scenarios is a good way to convey an idea. Scenarios make it easy for us to concretely realize an idea that we also can relate to. Reading this paper also made me understand what innovation revolves around. Innovation is partly about examining new research areas in relation to other existing fields. The way I see it, from investigations that link totally different fields, you are able to come up with new and fresh innovative ideas to develop. Thoughts as these lead my question: Can you think of some other examples of innovative ideas that are based on investigations that combine totally different research fields?

Research paper: Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration

How media technologies can be evaluated

As things stand today, the field of media technology is mainly characterized by the social media and focuses heavily on the human-computer interaction (HCI). In order to analyze and evaluate media technologies, you often use and collect data from actual features in social media systems, sites and services. The exact way of carrying out the evaluation obviously vary as it depends on what to investigate. You can either evaluate features, systems, sites or services that has already entry into force, or evaluate a conceptual design. Conceptual design involves creations where you envision new platform features, systems, sites or services using mock-ups, scenario documents and so on. When to conduct a study within the field of HCI there are three standard parameters that you most often investigate to measure the usability, namely effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. That is what Haibo Li and his colleagues measure by using their evaluation method in the study Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration.

HCI-parameters: Effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction

The three parameters is often evaluated by observing and measure the users reactions when interacting with the particular system. The effectiveness is, as a suggestion, analyzed and evaluated by studying whether or not a task could be accomplished with the specific system at question. To analyze and evaluate the efficiency you often measure the time duration for a user to carry out a specific task with the specific system as support. Also, you can measure the satisfaction for the user to perform a task, by letting the user grade the experience using the specific system. Worth to mention is that you should always take into account that memories and past experiences could possibly affect the data, which in turn can affect the result in some direction. Therefore, you should make sure to chose an evaluation method that does not leave out to verify aspects or factors that might have an impact on the result. The more data the better, in order to increase the level of reliability and validity. Afterwards, you can always exclude findings that end up to be irrelevant. On the contrary, in hindsight it is harder to receive data on things you believe to have influenced the result. Therefore you must also plan your evaluation method in detail and in advance, to not make any mistakes. Mistakes always end up to be extremely time- and cost consuming.

Prototypes’ role in research

Prototypes can beneficially be used to show others a specific idea, or a system under development, with a clear visualization. Prototypes can be designed to resemble the actual product or system that you want to test on the user. They play an important role in iterative design processes, in which you continuously develop the design of the system, based on the user opinion. Therefore, prototypes are a great tool when you are investigating a system that has not completely entry into force, but is still in a development stage. In this context it is worth mentioning the costs of developing well-functioning and properly running systems. Let's say that you are conducting a comparative evaluation of two hypothetical systems that are not completely developed. This to test the users' attitudes toward the basic ideas of the two system. Conducting such an evaluation can lead to a forecast that reveals which one of the two systems that will probably be most appreciated by the users.

References

• 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.