5. Design Research pre-reflection

Without any background in design research I didn’t really know what to expect from this week’s topic. By reading the two suggested research papers I think that I got at least a broad idea what design research is about.

The first paper by Fernaus & Jacobsson “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” covered the field of physical language design for robotic consumer products.

According to the authors, this research project (I don’t want to call it study) was motivated by the emergence of commercial products with advanced control mechanisms. However, these robotic products mostly lack in user-friendly ways to control them.

Their main goal of the design research was therefore to develop a new physical language for controlling and programming robots by combining already existing theories of semiotics. As their theoretical framework they used theories of fashion and comics in order to create visually effective and easily understandable ways to represent physical programs. Both theories are applicable because they essentially deal with physical features or visual sign language.

For the purpose of grounding their theoretical framework they created the concept of “actDresses”, which are physical markings, such as labels, accessories and physical clothes that can be attached to digital artefacts. In the presented research paper, the authors designed actDresses for 1) a robotic dinosaur 2) GlowBots and 3) a vacuum cleaner robot.

In the end the design research showed, and this is what I learned, that robotic products can be controlled and programmed by using loose physical items. I also learned that scientific research isn’t necessarily limited to the collection of data or information. Besides quantitative ore qualitative research methods, it is widely open for more explorative design projects as presented in the paper.

However, the paper can’t give any further information how meaningful the findings are or how applicable their concept of actDresses is. Following research by using quantitative and qualitative methods could provide us with answers to that.

While reading the second paper “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration“ by Réhman, Liu and Li,  it seems as someone heard my critique. The author’s clearly showed how media technologies or prototypes can be evaluated. They used the qualitative method “experiment” by choosing a sample which tested the effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction of the prototype by using it under real-time conditions.

In regard to the presented paper, prototypes are models or early samples which can test concepts, hypothesis or processes in research. They are without any concern necessary to gain new knowledge as they can be seen as the main origin of innovations and inventions.

Before implementing a new technology a proof of concept prototype might be necessary to minimize the risk of a failure. It is a first attempt to prove if the prototype can meet all the core requirements which were prior formulated.

The main characteristic of a prototype is that it is the first model of its type and there are most likely no existing information around for comparison. While in quantitative research it is possible to replicate the findings and compare different studies in order to formulate a generalization or theory, prototypes can only be evaluated with further research by using qualitative and quantitative methods. Whereas with both qualitative or quantitative methods you get an answer (or closer to the answer) of your question, a prototype could fail which means that all efforts, time and money were just wasted (very drastically speaking).

Design research can be presented with sketches of or the actual prototypes or models which can give a better understanding of the functions or the design. While it is often hard to stay focused while reading a research paper, the visualization with sketches or the actual prototype helps to keep the interest. In addition, when the reader already has profound knowledge of the topic it could be sufficient to just have a look on the sketches and the results to understand the findings.

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.