Comments gathered in a google docs

For convenience I have gathered all my comments in a google docs: 

Click here to view my comments

By clicking the link above you'll see comments and discussions made by me and my course mates regarding my blog posts and other students taking the courses' blog posts. 

When writing and commenting I have valued to write a longer comment of greater content than just because of the sake to complete the task of commenting as much as possible. I've made 32 comments during the course.

This tool to write blog posts and read/comment other students blogs has been of great value to me. I feel like I have understood more of the course content than I would have if only attending lectures/seminars and writing some type of essay. I think this way of studying should be applied in other courses held at KTH. This is a very good way of getting students engaged and start discussions. I know that this isn't a course evaluation but I wanted to take the opportunity to communicate how great I think this blogging is. I mean of course the questions for each blog theme can be developed further and the system of commenting too. This, together with whether to have a blog or a google docs, will I write more about in the up-coming course evaluation.

Thank you for reading my blog!

Final Reflection on the content of the course

This is my final reflection on the course. Throughout the course we’ve been exposed to various authors’ and researchers’ work. In the beginning of the course we discussed and analyzed abstract constructs like ‘theory’ and ‘knowledge’. We also discussed how media can act subjective and tell a biased story. This was especially interesting because of the clear connection how Media Technology impacts our everyday life. Later on in the course we received more hands-on knowledge on theory about quantitative and qualitative methods as well as case studies. We also got knowledge on how to design our research and the correlation between theory and research.

It has been very interesting to take this course since I’ve been able to draw parallels and see correlations in which, I think, I never would have seen otherwise. I’ve never been a big fan on philosophy so I had a hard time reading and grasp what Kant and Platos were writing. However when I got the opportunity to discuss the themes and reflect on my own, my view of philosophy switched. I still find it very difficult and sometimes time wasting but I have a different understanding and respect for the subject. I think this can be seen when reading my blog reflections where I draw parallels to my everyday life as well as merge the themes together. For example, I write and reflect on what Kant means with his ‘How can we ever tell something about the world a priori?’ i.e. (according to me) is anything really objective? This sentence has been returning throughout my reflections.

Another interesting part of the course has been the merging of the philosophical and hands-on parts. Because of the theory and knowledge base, I thought of various stuff I wouldn’t have when reading about the different methods. If we were to read about quantitative methods the first week, I would have liked the seminar and I would have found it interesting and useful. However, now when I had gained knowledge about knowledge (haha) and theory I managed to both learn the hands-on things as well as deepening my reflections on a more abstract level. To me this was useful in order to remember the things we learnt but also to connect them to my everyday life. Of course specific knowledge on how to analyze different theory types is hard to relate to your life in general but some things got me thinking about stuff I haven’t thought of before.

This in combination with reading others’ blog post have increased my philosophical thinking. I’ve been in discussions such as: 

• how we know if the world is objective 
• why the Hollywood productions are directed the way they are 
• if the world isn’t defined how space ever can be 
• how we interpret and understand various things in different ways
• why we should be careful when grouping (nominalism) people/stuff together instead of look at them on an individual basis
• the possible correlation between nominalism and prejudices
• the future of social network sites
• the Big Brother society we’re living in, reflecting on and fearing for the future

I liked the method of writing blog posts and commenting on others. I think this in combination with lectures, seminars and articles lead to different point of views regarding the subjects we were studying. Perhaps that was the whole point; to expose us in various ways for the different themes. This is after all what I’ve understood the best way to write a rich and valid essay.

The purpose for this reflection is to ‘reflect about different ways of combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions’. Based on what I’ve learnt during the course I think you should be careful to group (nominalism) essays together and define the perfect way of writing an essay. Eva-Lotta Sallnäs mentioned in her lecture that the outcome of the study depends on which methods you choose to use and how you use them.

In general I think you should take your time with defining the problem, like Haibo Li suggested. This as well as read up alot on the subject. When my friend and I was writing our essay (kexjobb) last spring we divided the reading between us with the sneaky aim to be able to read many more articles. This was a sneaky idea at the time, however I think we would have gained a lot and the essay would have been improved if we read all articles and then discuss them. What my friend reflected on when reading the article could be something I found irrelevant but after discussing it I might switch attitude. However I also realize that you can’t read everything but you can read more. And my conclusion after the essay (kexjobbet) is that we could have read more and give time to reflect and discuss the topic.

So far I’ve been addressing theory and defining the problem to be essential when writing an essay. Furthermore I would say that you should approach the study area with an open mind (inductive) and try to not have any prejudices. I felt when writing the essay (kexjobb) that I wanted to find the problem and start to solve it as soon as possible. I think my partner and I were pretty clear already from the beginning what we wanted to write and what we wanted to conclude. This is time efficient and perhaps a good strategy when learning how to write an essay. However I think it is good to have some meltdowns and frustrating periods where you just want to give up and slam your head in the wall. This will force you to pause and perhaps attack the problem from another angle which I think would be beneficial. Just make sure to wear a helmet when slamming your head in the wall…

My last advice is to, if not already pre-defined, define your problem and conduct case studies. Or at least use the methods that case studies provides such as qualitative and quantitative methods, perhaps field studies and data collection if that suits your research and your purpose with the research. Just remember that your research is unique - collect inspiration from others’ work but figure out your own strategy to conduct as good research as possible.

In my next blog post I will write and link my comments to my fellow students’ blogs.

Even if a minion or a research looks similar to some other, remember that it is still unique and should therefore be treated that way.

Reflections on theme 6: Qualitative and Case Studies Research

We discussed case studies very thoroughly during the seminar. To me I understand ‘case studies’ as a combination of several methods, however ‘case studies’ can also be characterized as being naturally defined and limited as well as inductive (no hypotheses or such things). The main reason to use case studies is to (try to) explain/analyse a real and complex phenomena. We talked about the psychiatric disorder ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and if we always have been able to conduct case studies in that study field. The somewhat biased answer is that it wasn’t possible to do case studies in the field when the construct ‘ADHD’ didn’t exist. This connects back to the earlier themes of the course when we discussed the importance of label and name things.

I wrote that it is a biased answer since I think this area of label things in this course is a bit difficult. In this aspect I agree on that we need definitions and names for stuff in order to communicate smoothly and perhaps also for conducting case studies. However, when it comes to case studies I have learnt that there are two types of it. Either the case can be well-known and thus pre-defined (like ADHD nowadays) or the case can be defined by the scientist herself/himself. Therefore I think it’s arguable to define whether or not a researcher is using case studies.

We talked about an article under the topic of Youtube users. This paper can be argued both to be a research based on several methods or it can be argued to be based on a case study. My point is that we should try to practise nominalism and group things together but we also need to look at every case as a unique one. If we feel that we need to define whether or not a research is a case study.

Moving on… :) We didn’t talk as much as I had wanted to about Eisenhardt and her table. However, my brain was a bit tired after the discussion on case studies. My conclusion is that the table is useful to analyze papers and articles and that it is a bit subjective how you choose to analyze it. In general this theme has taught me that common sense works well in this area. Additionally, it was nice to see correlation with previous themes of the course. Either I’m starting to become a weird philosopher or I’m a bit snowed under thinking about philosophy stuff. I will save this for my final reflection, but spoiler alert, I am surprised how interesting I think this is. I mean I don’t get everything but the things we’re reading about at the moment are pretty much as far away from math and physics as it can be. However the philosophical point of view is that is on the contrary. Math, physics and philosophy are strongly linked together. What I mean is though that we usually calculate and estimate stuff and in this course we’ve been pretty much discussing and thinking of abstract things.

Anyway, the sixth theme was, like the fifth theme, easy to connect to the upcoming essay we are to write. Case studies and qualitative methods are essential and very hands-on knowledge to have. A good article is one where the researcher have used several methods to look at the problem from different angles. Even if you have the same problem it can be solved differently both in terms of how you define the problem (as Haibo Li talked about during his lecture) but also depending on which methods you choose to use.

Reflections on theme 5 part two (Haibo Li)

I managed to attend on Haibo Li’s lecture after all and I’m glad I did! I’ve read several others blog posts saying that theme 3 was so useful and the seminar on theme 4 was so good. However I haven’t really felt the same. I mean of course all pieces of the course have been useful and good in some way but today’s lecture was (at least) to me very useful!

Haibo’s lecture was well-structured with a clear line of argument. He mentioned 5 bulletpoints:

1. How to come up with an problem
2. How to filter the idea
3. How to validate the idea
4. How to evaluate the idea
5. How to communicate the idea

I didn’t have very high expectations on this lecture and he really proved me wrong.It was inspiring to hear what he had to say about the bullet points above. The genius movie clip from “Johnny English” showed the importance on how to define a problem. I think this is knowledge that I will bring with me. I have reacted on how we students at technical univeristies tend to behave and think in a certain way. I don’t mean that everyone do it but I do think some of us at least would benefit to take a step back and define the problem again. However I do think that we sometimes also should do - as Haibo also said in his lecture - JUST DO IT! Haha.

Today at soccer practise (that’s why I’m late with the hand-in, hope that is okay anyway) we did an exercise we do 4 times a week 8 months a year (we do it lots of times in other words…). However, today I thought of doing it in another way. The exercise is basically to throw yourself and catch the ball as soon as possible. I’m a goalkeeper. We usually talk about the angle of the foot when throwing yourself (‘jumping’?) and the hand’s position, etcetc. Today, however, I thought of what my friend looks like when she does it. She usually keep her arms straight when catching the ball. I tried to keep my arms straight and I managed to catch the ball faster than before.

I don’t know if this makes any sense if you’re not a soccer goalie but I do think I did - in someway - what Haibo wanted and solved the problem differently by defining the problem (“to catch the ball asap”) in a new way. Another great character besides Johnny English is a boy from my favorite book called "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" - he also has the ability to define problems and ideas in other ways than the most obvious.

To finish up, I would like to add the knowledge I’ve gained on chilling and not think too many steps ahead. You don’t need to solve problems that haven’t arisen yet. In this way, perhaps the problems won’t even arise.

Theme 6: Qualitative and Case Study Research

For the sixth and final theme of the course we are discussing about qualitative and case study research. Before the lectures next week we are to read:

• Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.

The article describes how to build theories from case study research. It also gives a general definition of the construct ‘case study’ (see below).

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

A case study is well-explained by Eisenhardt as:
“A case study is a way of using a single or several examples of “real-life” phenomena, events or persons to analyze and consequently derive conclusions. Methodologies used in case study research usually include combinations of qualitative and/or quantitative methods as well as empirical and theoretical studies. It can involve different cases and multiple levels of analysis.”

Furthermore I looked some more and I found another well-reasoned definitions of case studies by Gary Thomas:

"Case studies are analyses of persons, events, decisions, periods, projects, policies, institutions, or other systems that are studied holistically by one or more method. The case that is the subject of the inquiry will be an instance of a class of phenomena that provides an analytical frame - an object - within which the study is conducted and which the case illuminates and explicates."

In my bachelor essay (discussing identities on Facebook) my partner in crime and I used focus groups in which we discussed questions regarding our thesis. To begin with it was very much of a qualitative study until we after the sessions noticed that a majority of the participants felt similar about sharing privacy settings. We could actually conclude some quantitative graphs and diagrams from it. Thus we used a type of case study which ended up being both a qualitative and a quantitative study.


For theme six. we were also to choose our own paper that should use qualitative methods. I chose to read:

• Kelling, N. J., Kelling, A. S., & Lennon, J. F. (2013). The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(6), 2656-2664.

The article was very well-reasoned and I thought it was interesting since I’ve lived in the area the paper discusses. The title of the paper is self-describing but basically it investigates which social mediums college students at South Florida Polytechnic University (USFP) use to receive and share information about their university.

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

The article used two experiments. The first was a student survey where students were to answer questions about their social media use and how they conceive news. The other experiment was an analysis of social media data where selected data regarding USFP was conducted. I would say that the first experiment is a quantitative method, while the social media data collection is a qualitative method.

The survey should be the more objective of the two, since it presents data and (could have presented) illustrations based on the result. The data collection method on the other hand is more subjective because the researchers have chosen how to interpret the result. Of course, I think all types of methods are in a way subjective since you can’t ask all questions (i.e. you can’t gain knowledge a priori) but I would rather see it as a scale, where the survey is less subjective than the collection of data.

There are both limitations and benefits with the methods used in the paper. In general, please see the post from theme 4 where I discuss the benefits and limitations of both quantitative and qualitative methods. Specifically for this paper I would say that Kelling et al could have perhaps performed focus groups with participants from the survey and discussed their findings with them. I think they do have a good research but to increase the value of it, I think focus groups would help even further.

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

I hadn’t thought of the method of collecting data. This would have been a useful method in my bachelor thesis where we let the participants in a web survey check if they knew how much personal information they shared in Facebook. This led to a subjective answer from the participant where they could ‘cheat’. If we instead, would have conducted the answers we could get a more objective view of the results.

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

Please see question 1. I would say they could have presented the article with more illustrations to simplify for the reader. When doing illustrations, perhaps Kelling et al would have noticed correlations they haven’t seen before too. I too think, as I wrote above, that the article would benefit from focus groups.

5. 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.

Step 1 ‘Getting started’: Yes, this step was fully achieved in the article. The facts and information about USFP, how college students perceive news and social media was very well-reasoned.

Step 2 ‘Selecting cases’: Yes, I think they were very clear on what population to investigate and they argued for its sake too.

Step 3 ‘Crafting Instruments and protocols’: Yes, the social media data collection was very well-reasoned.

Step 4: ‘Entering the field’: Yes, Knelling et al smoothly connected their web survey and their data collection in a nice way.

Step 5 ‘Analyzing data’: Yes, Knelling et al used several tools to conduct and analyze the data.

Step 6 ‘Sharping evidence’: I think Knelling et al could dig deeper in this area. I think they could be able to see more relationships than they end up doing. By doing more illustrations I think they would get a better picture of their work and perhaps see more correlations.

Step 7 ‘Enfolding literature’: Yes! Kelling et al really draw parallels to the deep and wide literature section they presented in the beginning of the essay.

Step 8 ‘Reaching closure’: Yes, Kelling et al describe what they thought they would see as a result and what they ended up seeing. Thus I do think they reached closure.

I’m not sure if this is the way to approach the paper and analyze it with the table below. However, I’ve done my best to do so but it will be interesting to discuss it further on the seminar. Last time we were to analyze different areas of theory I kind of misunderstood the question. Or no, I interpreted it in another way :-) and it will be interesting to see if I’ve done so this time too. Anyway, some final words on Kelling et al’s article are that I think it was a very well-structured paper that is why I think they’ve achieved most of the steps from Eisenhardt.

Reflections on theme 5: Design Research

I will write my reflection on Eva-Lotta’s part since I don’t know if I can make it to Haibo’s lecture on Monday due to a mandatory lecture in another course. I had very high expectations on the lecture about collaborative haptics. I regret that I didn’t step up and asked my question in the beginning of class. Perhaps than the lecture would have started out better and therefore get more interesting. 

In the other course I’m studying at the moment we are encouraged to participate and I think I really need that push. My question was basically what made Eva-Lotta interested in her field (i.e. study visually impaired children) and I wasn’t sure if that was a question of too low standard… Anyway, no use of crying over spilt milk or perhaps I should think as they say in German: morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle feulen laute (I’m learning some German because of exchange studies next semester).

I thought the lecture was pretty much a recap of the articles we were to read. I had read the articles and I liked them. However, I felt that the lecture was kind of waste of time because of it. Eva-Lotta was nice to listen to but I had hoped that she would have brought some of the machines (desktop / omni) or that she would do some experiments IRL.

I would like to reflect on HCI instead. The lecture gave me insight on what a fantastic tool HCI is to help people. When I was in sixth grade I remember my natural science teacher (NO-lärare) saying that if we (students) we to remember anything from her was this it: “Teknik är för att underlätta vardagen för oss människor” which in english sort of can be translated to “the aim of technology is to simplify the everyday-life for people”. That sentence actually stucked in my mind and at Ev-Lotta’s lecture I thought that Media Technology and HCI very much simplifies the everyday-life for people.

Eva-Lotta talked about her ongoing project with making playgrounds more interactive. I thought this sounded cool! However, perhaps I should reflect on design research since that is the topic of the week. Hm. I think that if I were to work with Eva-Lotta on her project I would do an internet-based web-survey and distribute them to parents asking questions what they think of playgrounds and their children’s digital knowledge. Than I would visit actual playgrounds and observe/interview parents and children. Additionally, I would read lots of articles on the topic HCI, playgrounds, etcetc. Spontaneously I would think that sound steps like a piano would be cool  and perhaps some material where you can form stuff. I’m thinking that it would be beneficial to try to add more senses to the playgrounds. Audio, visual and touch seems to be the most ‘healthy’. I mean I don’t think children should taste stuff at the playground… Perhaps smell stuff though. Anyway, as you hear I think this sounds like a cool project!

Theme 5: Design Research

Next week’s theme is design research. I understood the instructions as we are to write two separate blog post about this two-parted theme. One part of the first article and then another one on the two last articles. I hope it is okay if I write the two themes in one post. I will separate them so you (as a reader) can distinguish where the first part ends and the second part starts.

During theme 5, we will have to lectures given by Haibo Li and Eva-Lotta Sallnäs. Before those we are to read the following articles:

• 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
• Moll, J. and Sallnäs, E-L. (2013). "A haptic tool for group work about geometrical concepts engaging blind and sighted pupils." ACM Transaction on Accessible Computing. 4(4), 1-37. 
• Huang, Y., Moll, J., Sallnäs, E-L., Sundblad, Y. (2012). "Auditory feedback in haptic collaborative interfaces." International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. 70(4), 257-270.

Part one - Haibo Li

The first article on using the mobile phone’s vibrating functions when watching a game of soccer was fairly interesting to me. I am very interested in soccer myself and thought the article opened up for a new dimension on experiencing soccer rather than just watching it. I thought it was a bit hard to understand exactly what Haibo and his co-workers meant sometimes and I hope to get an enhanced view of the research during the upcoming lecture!

How can media technologies be evaluated?

By having an idea how to, for instance only stream the key events of soccer games, media technology is useful to solve a lot of issues of today’s society. We integrate media technology more and more in our everyday life and I think it’s fascinating to see what good solutions we come up with.

The first thing that comes to mind is that media technologies can be evaluated through user-testing. I think the method Haibo Li used in his research was a good way of evaluating his idea. The combination of letting the users in the study test the application and then speak their mind is a good way to conduct truthful and helpful answers I think.

What role will prototypes play in research?

I already think the use of prototypes is a great tool for acquiring better results in research. Haibo Li uses it in his research and Eva-Lotta Sallnäs also uses it in her study. It gives the test person a greater understanding on the topic no matter subject. Perhaps studies in the philosophical area (Kant, Walter, etc) are harder to make prototypes of but I really think it enhances the experience to interact with prototypes. This I mean both in the context of research studies but also in the learning environment such as in school. According to me, the future of prototypes shine bright.

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

I’m not sure I get the question but I think, on the one hand, as said above, that using prototypes give an enhanced experience and that is one way of argue for the use of it. On the other hand (another way of interpreting the question) I think there for sure is a need to explain and argue for the choice of prototype. It is essential to explain for the test person why the prototype is being used and what the aim of the experiment is. The aim of the study is not essential to explain, however for the user to understand the prototype correctly he/she needs to know how it works and why it’s being used in my opinion. I think this is important to engage the test person in the study and for the test person to see the advantages of using media technology in the research.

I did some reading up on the definition of proof-of-concept prototype and according to Technopedia and Leardon my first interpretation of the question seems most suitable. Again, I think prototypes are a phenomenal tool to give a greater understand of the product/idea.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

Prototypes can be of low-fidelity and high-fidelity. They can be close to the final version of the product or a quick paper sketch. In the introduction course to HCI we developed a number of prototypes, both low-fidelity and high-fidelity. This was the first time I created prototypes and I’ve done several more after the course!

If you’re not having so much time and money you can create a prototype that looks like an app for smartphones with the aid of POP or a bit more advanced version with softwares as Axure or Balsamiq. So, the characteristics of prototypes, I would say, are the fact that they’re trying to show you the final product/idea with the help of media technology. Of course you can create a prototype with paper and a pencil, however I think the base idea of prototype is to engage you and enhance the experience of the research you’re participating in.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

Through illustrations, graphs, diagrams, etc. I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I would like Chang’s article, about well-being in correlation of multimodal devices, better if he would have used more illustrations/graphs. In that way I could have understood his research in more ways than just the written text.

Perhaps I’m nagging on about this but through prototypes and media technologies I think the scientist/teacher/whom-ever can present the idea in a much clearer way than only in writing. The use of haptics and audio from the article below illuminates the fact that sighted people and blind people engage and understand each other better when using several communication tools. I think this too is in favor for media technology being used to a greater extent.

Part two - Eva-Lotta Sallnäs

The articles written by Eva-Lotta Sallnäs dealt with haptics and audio tools when working in a group where one in the group is either blind or blindfolded. The first study was on 11-12 years olds and second one was on university students. Again, an interesting area in which I haven’t thought of before.

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

It is more straightforward when observing a single user setting. This is because there are no interactions with other people and you - as a researcher - only need to evaluate and analyze one person. This leads to more to the point results however I think it can be more interesting to reflect on collaborative settings. By analyzing such you get more inputs to your research and even though it’s more complex perhaps (depending on what you’re studying of course!) this can give you richer results.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

As written in the pre-reflection on theme 4 I think you will deepen your research by having both a qualitative and quantitative method. In the best of worlds you can use them in combination to ask the right questions and therefore receive more detailed results. In Haibo Li’s article he (and his coworkers) first used a qualitative method (testing a prototype) and then a quantitative (survey on the experiment). I interpret this as a combination of two methods and I think it gives the research far more deep than if for example only conducting the prototype session.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

I think this is kind of in line with the second question. By being objective and asking objective questions you will be certain that the questions aren’t biased. However when you’re having a qualitative semi-structured interview and would like to ask follow-up questions you need to be subjective and ask the right questions depending on the situation. I do think - as said in the question above - that you should have both subjective and objective methods when conducting results to your research.

Prepare one question that you would like to discuss during the lecture.

I thought the research was very interesting and I would like to know more what made Eva-Lotta get in to this study area. Also, I would like to know what she is investigating at the moment and in what way, she would say, we can integrate media technology further in education purposes - both for visually impaired people but also for sighted people in co-operation (e.g. group work) and individual based learning.