The first lecture discussed the importance of the question you are looking into - how you formulate it affects the entire study and needs to be precise. Without knowing the problem, you can’t solve it. This was emphasized a lot when we did the bachelor thesis work, and formulating the question properly helps narrowing down the subject into what is relevant. Numbers from the lecture, which I think are more figurative than scientifictly ensured, said that 90% of the importance is defining the problem and 10% to actually solve it. Formulating the problem is key.
During the second lecture, we talked about design research and prototypes. To me, making a difference between prototypes in industry and in research was new. I hadn’t thought about it before but it’s true that they are used in different ways. In research, a prototype is more about finding answers, solving problems and to gain knowledge. In industry it’s to prove a concept, to test an idea and to evaluate it. A difference might be that a prototype in the industry is made to be used later on. When I wrote the pre-post, I wrote with the perspective of prototypes in industry.
During the second lecture, we talked about design research and prototypes. To me, making a difference between prototypes in industry and in research was new. I hadn’t thought about it before but it’s true that they are used in different ways. In research, a prototype is more about finding answers, solving problems and to gain knowledge. In industry it’s to prove a concept, to test an idea and to evaluate it. A difference might be that a prototype in the industry is made to be used later on. When I wrote the pre-post, I wrote with the perspective of prototypes in industry.
From what I've heard at a seminar with Ilias, lots of time can be spent on the design of a study - even years. To spend that much time on design is crazy to me, but I understand why the design is important. I think the idea of piloting a design before using it is wise, to get feedback on how the study is made, and it's something I wish I did when we made some research last year. That way, when you actually start the study you don't make errors in the beginning.
Dear Rebecka,
SvaraRaderaI'm sorry to hear that you missed a lecture this week, I hope that the notes you got helped you at least a little bit on the way of understanding what was gone through. I don't know if I agree with what was said about the differences on prototypes between research and business. To me, they both want the same thing: knowledge; and they acquire this knowledge by adding analysis and evaluation of the prototype. I also think that in both cases the aim of using a prototype is to test an idea and solve some kind of problem. But things easily get intertwined and mashed up, so in some cases this isn't true, but I believe that in most cases, there are no difference in research and business.
Hej,
SvaraRaderaI'm not sure I really agree with you that prototypes in the industry are made to be used afterwards, what are you particularly referring to? I think the prototypes during research are never made to actually be used afterwards but just to test them and use the learnings from them in further development.
Nevertheless, I agree with you on your main take-away from the first lecture that the focus on the research question helps the entire research. During my bachelor's thesis this wasn't emphasised as much, actually. This also led to many people formulating the research question way too broad - if only we could have attended this seminar beforehand.
Hi,
SvaraRaderaI think that the notes of the first lecture helped you understand in my opinion the most important part of the lecture. The way that we define the research question is the most important part of giving an answer to that. We usually run directly to find a solution before we define again the problem. If we spend more time to define the problem then it will be easier to find the solution. I am not sure if I agree with you in your reflections of the second lecture. It was for me also hard to understand some parts of it. I hope that by reading to other people reflections you will get a better understanding.
Hello!
SvaraRaderaI completely agree with your sentiment that it would have been great to pilot our research designs for our bachelor theses, since so much small errors really get in your way when conducting "poorly" designed research. I piloted my questionnaire, but not some of the other integral parts of my research which in hindsight wasn't perfect.
As others has said your distinction between the use of prototypes in industry and research doesn't really agree with my view. The use of prototypes can, in my opinion, be the same between the two, but I guess that it's more common in research to use prototypes just as a provocation to gain new knowledge and it doesn't have to solve any problems.
Hi!
SvaraRaderaI agree that there was a focus on having a great formulation of the research problem in the bachelor thesis. However, I doubt that any group went with Haibo’s 90/10 division, more like 20/80 - perhaps? I say this since basically the course is administered in a way that “forces” you to come up with a problem during the first couple of weeks in order to have the rest of the time for defining the solution. Though one might argue that the problem definition was changeable throughout the entire process, I still believe the fundamentals were there from like week 2. It was interesting to see you contemplate on the notion of prototype differences in industry and research. I believe most design-related processes differ quite a lot based on where they are implemented and to which end. Great post on, in my opinion, one of the harder themes to reflect upon - keep up the good job!
I guess you were able to gain some more inside into the topic event though you could only use the notes from the lecture. I agree with you that it is very important to define the problem correctly before doing research. But I also think that the distribution of spending 90% of your time defining the problem and 10% for solving it, is not a scientifically proven theory. Which means it us more like an unproven hypothesis. And in my opinion it is critical to mention specific numbers if they are not proven. Moreover, I think that the numbers are slightly exaggerated.
SvaraRaderaHi,
SvaraRaderaeven if you missed one lecture I felt that you did a good job portraying the main points from the lecture. Worth mentioning is that he even went through a couple of steps such as how you should think when choosing, validating, evaluating and marketing your idea. If you are interested these could be good headlines to use when researching more about prototyping. As mentioned I don't agree on the difference on the research and industrial prototypes. One primarily difference although is that when using prototypes in design research it's primarily to gain knowledge. Keep up the good work!
Hej,
SvaraRaderaIt is astonishing that you did such a great job despite the fact that you were not able to attend a lecture due to simultaneously happening lecture. However, I think your classmates and you did a great job as you covered all main aspects. I especially liked the hungry bear example, which explained in my opinion very well how a problem can be solved and defined. This also makes it clear that one should spend far more time to think about the existing problem in advance before waste energy and resources.
I totally agree with you that asking the right question is by far the most important aspect of a research. And as you mentioned the way you approach it is of the utmost importance. You brought up another interesting issue that I was hoping somebody would pick up on and kinda doesn’t follow what the lecturer said was the 90-10 ratio. As you also mentioned, It was just figurative I would say as well. Just take the example of the bear as Haibo mentioned, just imagine what would happen if you are chased by a bear and you spend 90% of your time thinking and edging the problem?
SvaraRaderaVery interesting reflection. You have done a good job!
I only attended the first lecture and did not have any notes available from the second so good job at covering that up! I find it interesting that this notion of spending so much time formulating a problem is told to us so much, but personally for me it's still kind of hard to actually do just that; spend time to rethink and ask yourself: "is this really what we want to do?". I know for my own experience in the bachelor thesis we had to redo almost half of the project because we didn't do just this. We settled with the problem quite quick, and when we did not get enough participants we couldn't answer the problem so we had to redo it.
SvaraRaderaInteresting reflection, keep it up!
Hi!
SvaraRaderaThanks for the pleasant and insightful analysis of theme 5, and a well written blog post. Despite the fact that you unfortunately missed a lecture dose it look like you've got a good understanding of the theme 5. I agree with you about your analysis that it is extremely important to define the problem correctly and that it is the key if you want to succeed.
Thanks for a good blog post!
/Paul
Hi!
SvaraRaderaYour reflection is well-written and easy to follow. I enjoy reading it a lot. I agree with you that for the first lecture, the teacher emphasized a lot on how important on problem formulating, which definitely is but may be not that new to us. What I found interesting in your blog is the discussion you made on different uses of prototype. 'In research, a prototype is more about finding answers, solving problems and to gain knowledge. In industry it’s to prove a concept, to test an idea and to evaluate it.' For me it is a good argument which I did not think too much before, but I agree with you that they are quite different based on their different purposes. Thanks for pointing it out,and sharing your insightful ideas. Good job!