Theme 5: Design research [post 1]

How can media technologies be evaluated?

Personally I think that is a hard question to answer completely, but if I look at the texts we have read for this week I will try to evaluate it. Media technology is a pig area of research, it has many different branches stretching out from this subject, anything from web, to communication and technology. When researching media technology you can see research papers that want to understand technology better and try to study it. From the text we read we can see that they are both about design in a system, but they differ. One is more focused on the technological part of design while the other is more focused on the communicative part. And this is what Media technology is all about, you can research similar areas but with different focuses.

What role will prototypes play in research?

If this questions mean “what role will it have in the future”, then I think it will have a bigger role in some research areas and in some areas it will not change at all. Prototypes will probably make research more “real” as in you could actually, with a prototype make people se that your research works. I also think it can enhance the research by giving an actual example of that research. But for me I think it depends what kind of business you are in and in the Media technology business or area it will have a bigger role than say for example physiology areas. That does not mean I don’t think prototypes could help in other areas but that Media technology will have better use of it.

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

As the questions says it is “proof of concept” meaning that you can prove that the concept you are out of using could work in a real life situation. Or at least that is what Haibo Li and his colleges are trying to explain in their research paper. Not all concepts are good or will work in real life so to make a prototype and test it would make you see if it could work or not. If you would not do it, it could result in you having to change the concept after a long time of research and have to start all over again, but by making a prototype you could avoid it.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

A prototype is a “mini version” of what you want to create or just a “test version” of what you are trying to develop. For example if you try creating an application you might not have all the resources right away and so to get resources you might try to pitch the idea to someone by showing of a prototype of that idea. The limitations on prototypes though are that they are not a complete product and can be lacking in functions and its exact interaction between product and human. Prototypes are sometimes limited in what they can do because they are for example not made in the exact material as it should be or the program doesn’t work as it should because of limited time on the project.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

I would present it in a way that people could actually see the design and maybe even try it out. Because else the design is just numbers on a paper and not something real and I think it would be more interesting for people who read or hear about it to try it or see if it works(trough video etc.). For example, in Fernaeus and Jacobsson research they talked about a robot called “Pleo” that looks like a dinosaur. Who would not want to actually se how it worked and you put cloths on it. So the best way I could think of communicating or presenting design research is by showing(trough video) or letting people experience the research first hand.

Side note:

The things that I learned from the two text where a few, so I embedded them in the questions to make my answers more clear.

References:

Fernaeus.Y, Jacobsson.M, Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses (2009) Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Kista Sweden.

Réhmen.S, Sun.J, Liu.L, Li.H, Turn your mobile into the ball: Rendering live football game using vibrations (2008) IEEE Transactions on multimedia, VOL.10