The final post

Hi there!

This post is a reflection of how a master thesis could look like. I have had some discussions about a thesis project where the research question would be "How to increase the number of successful payments from mobile users on a web platform" and this is one way to perform research about this problem:

First of all this research topic needs to be narrowed down as Haibo Li talked about during his lecture, the definition of a problem is the most important thing. For this research question I need to determine in which area of research this research question belongs to. Is it usability of the interface, is it the service itself, is it a price issue, is it the mobile device or is it all these factors combined? -  Why are customers quitting the service before payment when using a mobile device? This is something that needs to be answered before the "How" can be thought about. So I start by dividing my research topic into smaller questions - Why are people quiting the service and how can I resolve this issue. 

To be able to solve the Why I need to detect where in the process this occurs. Since this is a web service analytical tools can be used for a good quantitative measure of where the error occurs, on what stage of the payment process does mobile users quit. When I know where to look I need to use more qualitativ methods in order to detect why the error occurs on that page. For this I could use a focus group where users think out loud, while using this service. Since I know where to look it is much easier to detect possible reasons for the problem.

Alright! Now when I know why and where the error is I can focus on how to solve the problem. To do this I need more knowledge and here I will use theory studies. This will be mainly focused towards, mobile users, mobile services and mobile design since these are three important factors for a service such as this one. It is important that the theories can confirm the earlier results in order to be used in the same context. From these theories I would like to make a test of some kind of modification -a prototype of the original service where theories and my findings are taking into consideration when making the design. If I can test my modification I can analyze the results and come up with a conclusion. I think that all of these different factors will help me generate a great conclusion that could be used in order to improve the understanding of mobile technology.

There are so many different ways of combining different methods. I agree with Haibo Lee, defining the problem is the key issue when performing research. Some research questions are to complex to be defined so they need to be divided in to smaller and simpler questions. When this is done it is easier to adress the right kind of methods for that particular question and also it is easier for us to understand the question and get the whole picture of the research topic. All questions have different levels of complexity and as a researcher you should always try to understand the complexity before you start the research. The complexity represents different layers which all can be researched with different kinds of methods.

I feel that it is hard to perform a case study when doing the master thesis at KTH. In order to be approved, at least what we have been told the thesis need to be quite generalized in order to be approved by the examinator. Case studies are time consuming and they generate a lot of different kinds of data which can be used in several ways. 

This course have taught me a great deal of methodology and theory. I hope that I can use this knowledge when writing my thesis this spring. The most confusing part was the first two weeks but I kind of enjoyed them at the same time. Looking back I believe that philosophy is an important part of research even though it is kind of a soft subject and hard to measure. It brings an extra touch to the research and softens the edges. The most important knowledge from this course is the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods, when they should be used and how they could be combine to achieve good results. I think that the weakest part was the design research unfortunately. It was hard to follow and I really wanted to learn more about that particular topic. All and all I feel a lot more confident about research and I'm actually looking forward to writing my master thesis and I'm sure that this course have improved my research skills. After my graduation I'm considering working as an analyst and I'm convinced that my knowledge from this course will help me a lot in that field of work. To be able to analyze data properly you need to be able to see the whole picture in a problem and to connect the dots. After this course I feel more confident with problem solving. When I'm looking at a complex research question I feel that this course have made it easier for me to understand the process of defining and solving the problem.

Earlier comments:

Kommentarer:

Theme 1 Jenny Bern

http://jennybern.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory.html

Theme 1 Charlotte Åbyhammar

http://theoriandmethod-charlotte.blogspot.se/2014/09/theory-of-knowledge-and-theory-of.html

Theme 1 reflection viktor leandersson

http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/09/post-seminar-1.html

Theme 1 reflection Mikael Knutsson

http://dm2572mikaelknutsson.blogspot.se/2014/09/post-seminar-1-reflection.html

Anna Evaldsson

http://theoryandmethod-anna.blogspot.se/2014/09/theory-of-knowledge-and-theory-of_12.html?showComment=1414091021922#c7173809569418281800

theme 2 reflection magnus Westlund

http://dm2572-magnuswestlund.blogspot.se/2014/09/post-seminar-2.html

Theme 2 reflection Hanna bylund

http://bylundtmm14.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflections-after-second-seminar.html

Theme 2 reflection Johannes Törnqvist

http://johannestmblog.blogspot.se/2014/09/blogpost-3.html

Theme 2 Daniel Lindström

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies.html?showComment=1414092473075#c4993457184583072356

Samuel Lindberg

http://samueldm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-post-reflection.html?showComment=1414092646467#c33541071848925044

Theme 3 Reflection Malin Bokström

http://kthkurs.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflection-after-theme-3.html

Theme 3 Reflection Stephanie Flodman

http://stephanietheoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-reflection.html

theme 3 Erik Rosberg

http://dm2572-91roseri.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-post.html

Theme 3 Charlotte Åbyhammar

http://theoriandmethod-charlotte.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-part-2-research-and-theory.html

Theme 3 Daniel Lindström

http://dm2572-dlindstrom.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-post.html?showComment=1414605974899

Theme 4

Christian Virtala

Great post about this subject! It seemed like an interesting research paper. I think it is interesting how data could be collected without using a survey or questionnaire. I believe that big data analysis will be used a lot more in todays research as the technology becomes more understandable and useable for researchers. I agree with what you say about knowing what kind of questions to ask. Today, we live in a society where we have all the answers, we just don't know the questions yet.

Andreas Almqvist Gref

http://gref-tmm.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-after.html

Jerry Fan

Very impressive work with the table, this is probably something I would use before deciding what kind of research method I should use. Keep up to good work!

Oscar Aldrin

http://teoriochmetod.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-reflections.html

Ma Xuxiao

It seems as the web has a lot of advantages against normal use of paper right? I still think it is good that Olle showed some of the advantages of paper. As you mention the web makes it possible to make the surveys more interactive and more intuitive which has the possibility to generate results with higher quality for the research.

Theme 5

Johan Kasperi

http://dm2572-johan-kasperi.blogspot.se/2014/10/post-theme-5.html

Simon Fransson

http://dm2572simonfra.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-design-research-pre.html

Ilona Kammatova

http://dm2572ilona.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflections-on-theme-5-after.html?showComment=1414080714528

Kristina Roman

http://dm2573kristina.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-design-research.html?showComment=1414080917521#c5150288635367682337'

Åsa lind

http://dm2572aslind.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-reflection.html?showComment=1414081543878#c5287782439097206277

Theme 6

Mikael Knutsson

http://dm2572mikaelknutsson.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-post-reflection.html?showComment=1414081816620#c5592286890058511653

Johan huu

http://dm2572johanhuu.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1414082357129#c3175359077819356191

Ayesha Ahsan

http://theory-of-media-technology.blogspot.se/2014/10/post-reflection-theme-6.html?showComment=1414089777075#c4089033116533465630

Stephanie

http://stephanietheoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1414090308117#c3143674723433410521

Anna Evaldsson

http://theoryandmethod-anna.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html?showComment=1414090643857#c7485576447823703134

theme 6 reflection

This week we talked a lot about how dependent case studies are of the competence of the researcher. With Case studies you are exposed to huge amounts of data which might result in "unobjective " analysis of the data collected. Eisennhart commented on this and emphasized on that for a case study research, it is preferred that there are several researchers who are appointed to different kinds of methods such as quantitative or qualitative methods.

Leif mentioned that there are similarities with police investigation and case studies which is pretty interesting. I believe that a lot of the research methods in the academic world can be applied to other areas.

Also we talked about the randomness of case studies. Sometimes when people have a 'hunch' of something and follow it up they make very important discoveries put sometimes it results in a dead end. It is important as a researcher to be able to "kill your darlings" in order for you to be able to continue and produce a successful research.

theme 5 reflection

During the lecture by Eva-Lotta we talked a bit about the balance between qualitative and quantitative research. She said that for research made in a new area where there were little or no previous knowledge the research should be weighted against qualitative research methods to get a better understanding of the research question. Making that analysis might discover more important topics and so forth which will eventually form the proper research question for that topic.

We talked some about content analysis.
It's a very common way to look at a transcript and to interpret the different kinds of data in a qualitative way to find the essence of the transcript.

After the first discussion Eva-Lotta presented her work about haptics. I thought it was very interesting and she related it back to the topic of design research and how all the aspects of user experience should be considered such as face gestures, Gaze, gestures, emotion etc.

I think lecture gave great insight on how it is to work with prototyping when performing research.

Haibo Li's lecture was about what is media technology from a engineering perspective and what is important when writing a master thesis.

He said that the general task for an engineer is to be a problem solver.
Haibo emphasized on the importance of defining a problem when doing research. He said that you should put about 90% of your time into defining the problem rather then trying to solve it.

Haibo talked a lot about the importance of math. How the human mind are restricted to understanding results. When we put things into numbers it is much easier for our mind to grasp. He showed this with volume of the globe = The biggest volume is in the top shell. This is very understandable when seeing the numbers put if we look at a visualization of the volume it is hard to believe.

Theme 6 Qualitative and case study research

Hi everyone!
For this weeks theme I have chosen the research journal: Computers in Human Behavior. The article that I picked is called “Maybe you don’t want to face it” – College students’ perspectives on cyberbullying by Katie Crosslin, Mandy Golman.

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

For this research they used six focus group which they recruited on universities. The participants were reinbursted with a gift card of 25 dollars for their time. The discussions were held with a moderator and a note taker with great experience in qualitative research. Questions were answered with open ended answers. The discussions and interviews were recorded on audio which later were transcribed. By doing this the researcher got a high amount of quality information to analyse. The benefits of doing an open answer interview or discussion like in this case is that it is very easy to ask follow up questions and to get instant feedback. Many answers calls for a new question especially in a topic such as bullying which is a complex question. The limitations of this is the number of answers - it is hard to generalise over a bigger number of people and that answers might to complex to analys. Also this demands for good questions which helps the user to clarify his/hers answer

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

It is good to use when you have a topic that needs to be discussed in order to get the right kind of answer. If you have a research question which holds "soft topics" it is hard to find numbers as an answer. It is also a good way to discover further research topics in the same area - questions that arise during discussions.

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

I think that focus groups was the main methodological problem since the topic was about bullying. I believe there is a risk people will be affected by the group in there answers. It is a sensitive topic, a topic a lot of people might have been a exposed to and thus it might be hard to say what they are actually feeling when there are other people around. I think that they might got more accurate answers doing the questions one on one but in the mean time this is not very cost effective so it is a though choice.

For the second part of this weeks assignment I have chosen the research paper:

Connecting in mobile communities: an African case study
by Mirjam de Bruijn


1. Hello first year! 
A case study is a a way of performing broad research on a specific phenomenon to get a throughout understanding. There can be only one or multiple cases that are used in the study this generates a lot of data which are used in different levels of analysis. This data are of different types and could be everything from observations to surveys among population. To goal is often to build a foundation for a new theory.


2.

Strengths:
Starts with a scenario from a true story of a family - This gives meaning to the case study and ties the research question to a story which makes it easier to relate to. 

A lot of different types of data can be collected and analysed. This gives a better understanding of the issues which enables the researcher to come up with a better solutions which can be applied to real world cases.

This research could be used for similar cases.

Weaknesses:
Bad structure makes it slow to read. As a reader you get dependent on reading the whole thing otherwise it does not make fully sense. 

Case studies generates enormous amounts of data which must be analysed in a correct way.

Since research cases like these are unique it might be harder to relate to this research for a more general research question. The way it is written it is hard to find anything concrete.

Theme 4 Reflection

During this weeks seminar we discussed qualitative vs quantitative with Olle Bältner.
We formed groups and discussed the advantages with qualitative methods vs quantitative. Here are some of the suggestions:

The advantages with qualitative methods:
- Deeper and more thorough analysis.
- Understand peoples thoughts and feelings - more factors that are being showed in the analysis
- More focus on understanding rather than facts
- Use different type of technologies to collect data such as audio recording, video recording etc.

Advantages with quantitative methods:
- Easy to visualize
- Easy to compare and compile
- Reproducible
- Easy to generalize
- Anonymous

Olle talked some about questionnaire construction.
- The trick is not to do it technically but to ask the questions.
- It is very important to test the questions before doing the survey.
- Test the survey !!
Always have an uneven amount of options so people can mark "middle" if they don't have an opinion.
Make a pilot test and let the participants think aloud while they are answering the survey.

Web vs Paper questionnaires
There are some disadvantages with web
- Uneven distribution, availability, technical issues, hard to read from screen, Layout cannot be controlled, higher initial cost, lower answer frequency

Advantage
- Low marginal cost
- Immediate digital storage
- Immediate evaluation of answers
- Logic reduces number of questions

What could be concluded from this is that it is really important to know what kind of results you want and what kind of questions you are going to ask before you decide what kind of method you are going to use.

Theme 5

1.How can media technologies be evaluated?

Media technologies are more technologies that serves the purpose of being used by people for information and communication. Haibo Li and his colleagues used usability testing for their prototype which is an effective way of testing media technologies.

2.What role will prototypes play in research?

The prototyp tests the concept of the hypothesis. 

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

It is important to discover flaws and problems with a prototyp in early stages of research to avoid unnecessary development. 

4.What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

The prototyp is a cheap and simplified version of the final product and is not meant to be released for the market. Cheap materials is often used which may compromise the user experience of the prototyp. It is important that researchers don't get attached to their prototyp since that may affect the outcome of the testing. A prototyp should be built fast and fail fast in order to move on and improve.

5.How can design research be communicated/presented?

Design is a complex process with many factors that affect the outcome of the design. It is important that the researcher clarifies the purpose of the design, otherwise the design itself is hard to measure. Design concepts can be illustrated with  mockups, and models etc.

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1.How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

A collaborative setting lets the participants to communicate in a much more efficient way because they can express there thoughts in a conversation that is natural to them. The communication between the sighted and the non-sighted participant lets the researcher know what in particular the non-sighted person needs in order to complete the task. 

2.How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

Often research papers manages complex question that needs answers from many different kind of questions. Qualitative and quantitative methods answers different types of questions and because of that they are often a good complement for the thesis question.

3.How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?
Subjective methods gives more room for interpretation from the researcher but often it needs to be backed upp by objective methods in order to gain some credibility.

theme 4

The Article I have chosen for this weeks theme is called:

"The Benefits of Facebook ‘‘Friends:’’ Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites" by Nicole B. Ellison, Charles Steinfield and Cliff Lampe

1. This article is about the relationship between the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and the formation and maintenance of social capital. For instance this is based on a survey conducted on 286 students in USA which could be regarded as a quantitative method.  This method is a good way to get demographic information about users of the survey which can later be analyzed. The survey included several questions about Facebook, social capital, self esteem, well being and so forth. From the results of this survey the authors can try to find patterns and relationship between the different questions and answers in the survey, which could be used as argumentation and scientific proof. The limitations with a survey of this kind is that the quality of the answers is pretty low - only a few alternativ. With open answer questions the answer contains higher quality of information but in the same time it is more time demanding.

2. Quantitative methods should be used for finding general patterns in a big group. It is useable only with short answer questions such as yes or no questions.

3. The main issue with this method in this particular paper is that there is a lot of questions that could be linked to other circumstances than the use of Social media. I think this is an issue with a lot of quantitative research, especially within the health sector and the habit of people. If you would listen to all the research about what you should eat you can conclude that you can eat almost anything. It is hard to generalize something specific if you don't look at all the aspects of a problem and this is a very big challenge for research.

The benefit of quantitative methods is that you get a very general static result which reflects the opinions of the society which can be translated into percentage and numbers. By doing so it is easy to find patterns and relationships between different factors. The downside of this is that the answers contains only a little bit of information and sometimes a problem is to complex to be satisfied with a simple answer.

Qualitative methods are on the other hand very rich of information. The problem is quite the opposite to quantitative methods, qualitative methods are to time consuming to be able to be used on a larger scale and therefor the answers of such questions cannot be reflected upon a bigger crowd of people.