Reflections after theme 6

From the lecture with Haibo I learned that you first need to define a problem when designing a research and that it is really important to define the problem. Haibo also talked about that 90% of your research time is spent on finding problems and to come up with an idea of how to solve it. I thought it was a lot, but as the optimistic person I am, I have never reflected upon that you will encounter obstacles and problems along the way. Though you often design a research in a specific area that has not been researched in before, it is therefore a possibility that you will encounter problems along the way. I can recognize myself with what Haibo told oss in the lecture and in designing research, from my bachelor thesis. Me and my companion designed our research with qualitative and quantitative methods to come up with the best and most stable results. It was really hard in the beginning to come up with the most solid definition of the problem but when we got past that stage our research continued with less obstacles and problems. It is therefore important to design a research in the most stable way. Though we did not make a research where a prototype was involved, I can still recognize myself in some of the things Haibo talked about. I also reflected upon that it is an important step to generate a good reality-based prototype to get the best results for the research you are designing. Haibo also told us several times that when designing a research it is good to use math. Because with math, you can always, in one way or another, solve problems. I also learned that a design research can consist several parameters. Haibo gave us the example when designing e.g a toy where both color and usability can play a big part. So there are several variables you need to think about while designing a research, and as a result of this, I think that more problems can occur. So when reflecting upon this, I now understand that 90% of the time while designing a research is spent on solving problems.

I also think that Eva-Lotta’s and Haibo’s lecture complemented each other. Because you got the basic ideas from Haibo, and then you also understood Eva-Lotta and her colleagues research much better too.

We also had a seminar which was mostly about case-studies. Preparations for the seminar was to read a research paper about case-studies and later on, answer some questions about it. We also read a qualitative research paper. The seminar with Leif focused on the case-study papers. The structure of the seminar was first to discuss our chosen papers in groups and later on all together. I think the paper I read, The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university, was quite hard to understand and after the seminar I realised I had misunderstood the paper a bit. In my pre-reflection I wrote that the study consisted two cases, but that was actually just two different methods they used to evaluate one case, which was to evaluate the closure of the University of South Florida Polytechnic through different social media’s. During the seminar we also discussed what the difference between an ordinary research study and a case-study is. During the seminar, me and my discussion group started reflecting upon if there was a difference between these two types of research. At first I got a little confused though I though my chosen qualitative paper Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube also could be a case-study. But I also learned that they were two different research’s and you could not really compare them. The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university was an already ongoing project and it was stated that the university would close. While the other paper investigated how users handled the SNS Youtube and there was not a clear/concrete case of SNS to investigate. Leif brought up a brilliant example about the disease ADHD. For example 20 years ago, we did not know what ADHD was because there wasn’t a diagnose about it. But today we have knowledge about ADHD and can therefore make a case-study about it. Namely, a case-study is something that already exists and you can investigate several variables around the already existing phenomenon. For example investigating variables that is affected of the phenomenon. In a case-study one can combine several methods to investigate a phenomenon. A case-study is something that has a limitation of time and space. As Eisenhardt describes, you can build theories by examining a case-study. Eisenhardt’s (Table 1) describes the different steps that a case-study consists of. At first, I did not really understand the step one-part describing “Possibly a priori constructs”. But after the seminar I understood that a case-study is unique and you can not confirm anything in advance.   

We also talked about what a case-study is not. I came to the conclusion that the qualitative paper I read is not a case-study because they are not investigating an already existing phenomenon. The researcher has a research question she wants to answer and then combining different methods to come up with a conclusion.

In the beginning of theme 6, I had a very vague view of what a case-study really is and how it is different from other studies. But after the seminar with Leif I now know the difference and I possess good knowledge about case-studies, and also other kind of studies, which is an advantage for my upcoming thesis. I also want to add that all seminars have broaden my knowledge within every theme and in someway, I now realize that they in one way or another, go hand in hand with each other.