Comments by Johan Weinl

Comment on Adam Roséns: Theme 2: Critical Media Studies the 21 november 2013 03:14

You mention that you don´t agree whit the point concerning how bad new media is for the mankind.

I think that his text is very critical to all kinds of media, and I agree a little bit whit you. But if you look at a mor wider perspective, isn't there any part of new that can be bad for society?

Comment on Torbjörn Axelssons: Evaluating and reflecting upon Theme 2 the 21 november 2013 12:28 

I agree whit you when you say that this is something that you can apply to ourself. I think that I at sometimes have spoken about certain fact witch I know isn't 100% true. Do you think that it is good to have these knowledge? It could end up whit that no one trusts each others facts.

Comment on Torbjörn Axelssons: Theme 3: Research and Theory the 26 november 2013 15:29

You say that: 

"the more variables you introduce in a scientific method or theory, the more depth and deeper insights could be achieved".

When you say variables, I am thinking about different aspect of political views. Is this what you mean by it?

Comment on Adam Roséns: Theme 3: Research and Theory the 26 november 2013 06:24

You write that:

"Facebook only been launched for two years when the observations from Lewis et al. started in 2006, hadn't much previous studies on Facebook users been done before"

Don't you think that most of the theories basted on gathered data comes from major analyses?

Comment on Adam Roséns:  Theme 5: Design Research the 11 december 2013 01:36

Hi Adam!
I actually agree a bit with your conclusion about the paper on the vibrating phone on soccer-games when you say that only a small part of the paper was relating the human aspect. 
This was however a pretty straight forward technical paper, compared to other more "fussier" papers that tents to be about how humans work. 
I actually liked this paper because of that reson, but as I said above, it would be nice to have a more human aspect of the problem, so what would you write about without making the paper less fussier?

Comment on Adam Roséns: Theme 6: Qualitative and Case Study Research the18 december 2013 02:09

Hi Adam!

Very interesting topic about cyber--bullying. I personally believe that cyber-bullying or bullying in general is one of the worst health problem in western society and I insist that this is something that needs to be stopped!

That´s what concerns me about the text as you describe it. The author seems to only say what actually is going on in the cyber-world and doesn't seem to have an answer for how to stop it.

Do you have any answers for how to stop it after you´ve read this text?

Comment on Torbjörn Axelssons:  Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research 18 december 2013 13:04

You write:
"A problem with the method is this particular uncertainty - that they did not state in more detail how they formatted and conducted their focus groups and interviews. The results they extract therefore receives an image of quite arbitrary data, which is unfortunate".
This I agree with, it doesn't give out any information about in what environment the interviews was conducted in and how it could effect the results.
Do you think that because of this, it would have had a different outcome in the results

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research post

This week has been about Qualitative research and about case studies.
I have had some experience with this topic, because we mainly used these metodes during our bachelor thesis. It is a good way to get information about a very specific topic from people that could have a lot of experiences of that particular topic. This could also be a problem and that is the most important things that I've learned during this week.

Case-studies gives, as I said above "information about a very specific topic from people that could have a lot of experiences of that particular topic". The main problem with this is that you exclude the rest of the people and in some certainties it could be bad. I don't have any real example of these kinds of situations, but one imaginary idea could be this: The government decides to build a new highway and qualitative studies are conducted with experts using a case study. The expert then gives a conclusion of where and how the highway should be built, and everybody is happy. By only doing this, you miss out the rest of the population. Although, the rest of the people, that doesn't counts as experts, aren't getting anything said themselves about this proposition.      

This problem is something I believe that everyone must be aware of when conducting a case study. It needs to be compared with other test results so that the overall conclusion can be determinated.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

This week I've been focusing about the media technology that regards cameras and the science of health. I've chosen an article that's called Low-cost compact cameras: a medical application in CMT disease monitoring by Albert K Chong and it has an impact factor of 1.44. In this research-paper Chong is making a qualitative research about a disease which is called Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMT) that is a “genetically and clinically heterogeneous group of inherited disorders of the peripheral nervous system characterised by progressive loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation across various parts of the body” (Wikipedia). This disease often starts in a persons foot. What basically happens is that the muscle starts to shrink (and thereby the foot) and it could spread to the rest of the body. What Chong is trying to investigate is that if low-cost compact cameras could help to predict if a person has the CMT disease. The measurements needs to be very precise in order to determine if the person in question has the CMT disease. This makes this a qualitative research and that's why i chose it.

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
The methods that are used in this paper is a mechanical technique. By this I mean gathering a lot of very precise data, and then make a conclusion based on mathematical statistics. The benefits using this method is that you get a very accurate data, and in terms of a medical condition, getting accurate data is crucial in order to determine a disease. The only limitation with this method that I can come up with is that it is a very time-consuming way of a very accurate measure. This is just i hypophysis, but if there is a disease out there that could be detected the same way as above (by making some measurements of the body), and time is a very important key, this could pose a problem for the patient.

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

This paper has described how measurements were made in this experiment. I can not say that I am sure that this is the same for all qualitative methods there is. What I can say though is what i’ve learned that in order to make this qualitative measure you need to be very precise making these measurements in order to make a realistic conclusion..

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

There aren't actually many methodological problems in this paper I think. There are good ways of how the measurements are being made, and the author makes it very clear that in this experiment, the test results need to be at a very precise level because of the human health that is involved. One thing that I can point out, as I said above is that this technique is a bit to time-consuming to make this, so far an appropriate choice in modern hospital.   

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

A case Study is a research method that aims to provide in-depth knowledge of the investigating. The characteristics of the case study is that it focuses on a phenomenon that is often difficult to distinguish from the phenomenon's context. Often the focus is on a single (or few) cases, which it then examines the "deep" to get more detailed knowledge than what you can get at such a survey study. The case study method can be used both in the social sciences and the natural sciences, the main difference between them is the way to measure various parameters and variables. The case study occurs mostly within the social sciences.

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.

        

The paper that I’ve chosen is called ‘’Expert Search for Radio and Television: a Case Study

amongst Dutch Broadcast Professionals’’ by Wietske van den Heuvel and this paper reports the results of a qualitative case study amongst eight Dutch broadcast professionals who frequently use the online search system of The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. The study is also based on the assumption that the task affects the search strategy. Different test subjects are observed and interviewed while following a scenario with tasks designed around different factors.

The result of this paper shows that the task does not affect the search strategies of the test persons and that the search strategies differs between test persons, not between tasks.

After reading the text Building Theories from Case Study Research by Eisenhardt, K. M. I. realized that it isn't an easy task to take a case study and then try to make a good theory or conclusion.  Eisenhardt, K. M. writes:

“the intensive use of empirical evidence can yield theory which is overly complex” and in the case above with Heuvel W. V. D. this is the complete opposite according to me. The case study that is being done consist of only eight different broadcast professions. By combining this sentence and the conclusion i would say could be mixed into the phrase: “the unintensive use of empirical evidence can yield theory which is underlie complex”, so in this case the Selecting cases is according to me the “Selecting Cases” and “Analyzing Data” has the most weakness in this paper.

One part that I felt was better than I suspected, was that the author used a lot of different categories of people, and by different categories I mean different work duties, people with different education, ages experiences etcetera(chapter 4.2). I didn't actually found anything in the text by Eisenhardt, K. M. I. that had this example as a strength, but the closest I believe that it would relate to is “Crafting Instruments and Protocols” and “Entering the Field”.

Theme 5: Design research post

The last weeks theme has been about design research.
I had a hard time in the beginning to relate the two papers that we got. One was about dressing out toys and one was a bit mor technical complicated to understand. I did not see what was sort of binding them together.
Now however after some lectures and aftermath I have gotten a better clue, but still not to a hundred procent i believe. The design concept i believe is a pretty complex subject witch can be applied on many subjects in the reality.
I liked the text from Haibo Li. et al a lot. I was a bit technical but I think the text was pretty straight forward witch made is a lot easier to read. The second text from Ylva Ferneaus was a bit more fuzzy to me. Some parts of the text was very interesting but a lot of the text was focusing on the a subject that wasn't related to technology witch made it more hard to understand.
The things that I've actually learned this week is how prototypes should work and when in the designprocess i could be good to have a focus-group testing a prototype. It's still hard I think to actually say exactly when a prototype should be tested, but it has given me a knowledge aboud the limitations or benefits what happens if you test a prototype to early or to soon.

Theme 5: Design research

 Reflect on the key points and what you learnt by reading the text

This text gave me insight about what actually i happening in our technology-society right now. If you just are into buying a simple laptop, there are a lot of design-proposals that you can choose from. If you just look at the two major computer-companies (apple and windows) you could reflect on the choice that everyone makes when buying one of these computers. Assuming that the person isn't depended on money when buying a computer, than I believe that the choice that is made is most relevant to the design. If the person isn't interested in the actual technological aspects of the software or brand that is in a computer, the design in this case it could refer to the actual look of the computer, usability or what typ of experience the person has using a computer or a software.  
I would say that the things that I've learned is that I will bring the insight i got reading this text when I in the future are going to buy a certain product.   
The question that I would ask is, does this type of design affects the way the different gender could be a problem. For instans a racer-blade is the exact same technology, but the product is directed to both men and women, could this be a problem for society regarded the design?

2. What role will prototypes play in research?

I believe that prototypes will have a very huge role in research, especially if it is a reachers that has the aim of creating a new product. To create a product the researchers should in an early stage test this product at a pretty early stage. This is because a field-study, with a large variety of people with different ways of living gives an early message to those that are researching within this project if something needs to be changed in the design. 

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

A proof of concept prototyp is, according to wikipedia "a realization of a certain method or idea to demonstrate its feasibility", and I think that the answer lies just there. To further develop a prototyp who's technology is relatively new, you need to make sure that this technique actually works in full scale. I however I believe that the proof of concept prototype doesn't need to be tested as large on some technology that already exist.   

4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

I think that the characteristics are the limitations. If you have a focus group thats testing the prototype the prototype won't actually be finished when tests are done. This is i believe the limitation but it is also the purpose of a prototype. This is something that I believe will distract the test-grope so instead of focusing on the actual product that will be finished, the test-group will put lots of focus on whats not there.  

Theme 4: Quantitative research - post

This week has been about quantitative measures and how to properly analyzing it. If you compare this chapter to the previous that was about theory, I think that this area was much easier to actually understand. One question that made me confused last week was "what theory is and isn't". In this case just looking at quantity it is much easier to say what a quantitative research is and isn't.

The things that I've learned, which I also has mentioned on my pre-post, is that it is a huge differens making a quantitative reachers that involves the human factor. It is a much more complex test-subject rather than something else that will behave more or less according to statistics, for example a machine of some sort.