The last week‘s topic was really interesting. Both the lecture and discussion seminar broadened my horizon. The concept research through design was new for me. In my Bachelor studies the focus was set on qualitative and quantitative research. Research design was for me the chosen way about how to conduct a research. That might be true but, especially in my answer to the last question in the first blog post I mixed up research design and research through design (RtD). Although I read the text I didn‘t understand how it works concretely. Now after the last week I feel more comfortable with talking about design through research. Especially in the lecture it was pointed out that in this research method the research intention is to form and identify design. This design could be anything from how a smartphone should look like to user interfaces. This broad spectrum of contents makes RtD quite complex. There are no general approaches like surveys, observations, interviews, etc. to collect your data, but the method has to be chosen, shaped and maybe even developed individually for every research. Before this week I wasn‘t aware of the intricacy behind RtD.
In the seminar we talked about really interesting topics. After all the previous discussions about fundamental understandings like knowledge, one might think that there is not that much to say anymore, but in the seminar Anders made us question it again - and it was good that he did. So what it knowledge? Especially in the social sciences this is hard to answer. I think the most people would say that knowledge in the hard sciences is easier to describe, since every achievement of knowledge is tested and verified for several times. Even in school we still make a lot of experiments that proof the knowledge that is written in our physics or chemistry books. It‘s not that easy in social sciences. The knowledge in our field shall cover theories that mostly explain constructs of behavior. For example: Why do we prefer internet to newspapers? Why does a PSA with a testimonial has bigger influence than one without? How does our behavior change when we are in a Virtual Reality? How the term social sciences already say, it‘s about social behavior, intentions, actions, and so on. The focus is on what happens inside of all of us (and not in a medical way). When we conduct a research and find new knowledge it is only applicable for a specific kind of group in a specific time context. The variety of influences that affect and change our behavior are so multiple that it makes it difficult and almost impossible to replicate researches. We can build theories and try to verify them as much as possible. But then there is still the question if theories or knowledge that were found 50 years ago are still applicable to our behavior today? The world changes, the media changes, we change and our opinions and behavior changes. And all of this happens every day. So does general knowledge in social sciences exist at all that can explain different behaviors? And if it doesn‘t why are we still researching in this field? Because humans always seek for more knowledge and we all try to understand ourselves and each other. It explains the world and humanity, just like the hard sciences do.
One of my fellow students defined knowledge in social sciences as a snapshot of a specific moment and a specific group of people. Anders added that it means for him to bring attention to something previously unknown.
I am still not entirely sure what it means for me, but I think every researcher has to reflect on what knowledge means for themselves. For the moment I can say that we as maybe-future-researchers in social sciences should always seek to being creative and investigate the things that we are interested in. Even if it is just a small piece of knowledge that we are gaining through a research, it is still a puzzle piece to the understanding of the world. And with world I mean our personal world with our perspectives and comprehensions, that are based on our previous knowledge and that shape our values and behavior.
Although I think that you highlighted some relevant complications with regards to the human element within research, I wish you would've gone more into the topic of design research.
AntwortenLöschenYou have risen quite interesting questions. As the future media managers we will deal mostly with the human behavior trying to find the best solutions to meet and satisfy people's demands. In this case, yes, the issue of applicability of the earlier findings erases: it is obvious even from the "Work Intimacy" research that have been published 5 years ago but a lot of statements and conclusions are already out of date. What to say about the older ones?
AntwortenLöschenOn the other hand, some reproduced experiments can bring new insights about how the humans changed over the decades.
Hi! I enjoyed reading your reflection, you point out some very interesting questions.
AntwortenLöschenI agree with you on that theories or knowledge that was gained more then 50 years might not be suitable to us now. And just as you wrote because of the changes in our environment and the evolving technology, replication in social sciences is more difficult. But I do think that replicability to a certain extent is still possible, but that it depends on the aim of the study.
Yop,
AntwortenLöschenI like how you reflected on the evolution on how you thought about it. I agree with the fact that RtD is quiet complex in order to reach what we really want to. Some things we added may not turned out the way we thought they would. For example in an smartphone app, what kind of button the main menu would be in order to works properly, swipe, hold, simple action ?
Finding the correct way to do in order to have correct results may be the essence of RtD.
Your fellow student made a valid point, im glad you reflected on that and shared it on the blog. Snapshot of a specific moment and group of people. Bringing attention so something unknown is the based of our first theme with Socrate. Knowing what we dont... This is pretty interesting to find that everything is related.
thank you for your reflection !
Thanks for interesting and good reflections. You wrote in the lecture “it was pointed out that in this research method the research intention is to form and identify design” I think it’s an interesting way to put it. I understood it in a similar manner that the main purpose in design-oriented research is to produce or develop new or existing systems an trough this innovation “change” how the world works compared to more science-oriented research that use theories to understand observations of the world.
AntwortenLöschenIn your first blog post of theme 5 you wrote “design in a research context means the framework that you giving your research to get to a desired outcome” when answering the questions what differ from design in general and in research project. I believe (correct me if I’m wrong because it was a really vague question) no matter of your research method your purpose within a research project is in somehow to create reusable knowledge it could be in different manners as produce knowledge to move into future products or as in theory building, but design in general means to create something new.
Hi,
AntwortenLöschenYou pose some quite interesting questions in your reflection. I think that in this day and age we have to be rather openminded about the concept of knowledge production, especially since - as you say - technology and society is in constant development, which is why knowledge also becomes "outdated" and need to evolve. I think design research is a very typical example of how modern knowledge production has to keep up constant transformation in order to stay valid. Therefore, I believe a lot of the knowledge production in design research is not always the result of the study but the process itself.