This week we focused on qualitative methods of research and attended a lecture by Ylva Fernaeus, during which she talked about the paper “Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” which was written by her and M. Jacobsson.
Basically, this article can be considered as a research in tangible interaction: it is a study about the semiotics usage. As we know, semiotic discusses signs and sign systems - in the research signs were used to personalize robots and make the work with them easier, by putting the garments on robots and analyzing how this relates to human behavior.
There was an interesting point to me during the lecture when we discussed the nature of empirical knowledge, as it is difficult to say if the survey with actDresses can be considered as a research with empirical methods or not. Authors have a hypothesis that robots can obtain some psychological characteristics, as people tend to personalize their robots (aka laptops, mobile devices, gadgets) - at the same time there is no proofs, or actual samplings, so it is a purely theoretically designed research, that should be discussed and taken further.
During the second part of the lecture we reflected on the content of this article, answering questions from the lecturer, such us “How statistics could help make this paper better?” etc. At the same time it was great to feel the difference between the research and corporate product designs, as Ylva also told us about this distinction: while the research product design means sharing the knowledge with others, creating the Grounded theory (BTW it is a very interesting site if you looking for some help in your research work: Grounded Theory Online), the corporate product design meansinventing products without any knowledge being shared.
Practice
We continued to edit the Wiki pages and study different research methods. I found our discussion during the seminar very interesting and funny, because everyone has something to reflect on in their chosen papers. This practice also helped me to categorize the methods clearly in my mind.
We also decided to look at advantages of various qualitative methods more than on its disadvantages, as the last part was done quite properly already, so we worked on the former.
Personally I found this seminar helpful also because it introduced me to the triangulation technique which I was going to use in my research without knowing a name for it (a good description is here: The use of Triangulation in Social Sciences Research, Journal of Comparative Social Work 2009/1), and also the open coding as a qualitative method which can be used to analyze textual content.
The main result of the week: I know that qualitative research methods look subjective sometimes, because the conclusions made on its basis depend on human interpretation, so this is the reason to use various types of research to prove your findings; and I also found a book which helped me to categorize all the methods and gave the tools to imply them, maybe it could be helpful for you, too, even if it says it is for librarians only: Basic Research Methods for Librarians, Powell, Ronald R. (1997).
