Task 8: Reflection on project work

Last words on field research project!

In general the project was a success! not because everything went smoothly or it generated valuable data! Actually it had its dose of confusion and frustration, but because we got to try field work, and to find out its good and difficult aspects in practice. I can see that how much of problem it could cause if I would start doing such work for the first time within a design project(with "no idea" state that i had when i started this course!).

Looking back to the initial project plan, there are changes: some because the original proposal was naively planned and some other because we failed to fully conduct it.
First thing that we did different was the part that we suggested to fit the data into a theory of group work or activity theory. After some consulting sessions we found out that this may not be part of field work but more analysing step. It was our decision to skip this step.
Second thing that went different from plan was that we wanted to interview all the stakeholders but we could not. This was mainly our fault and because of poor planing/time estimation. we left this part for last weeks and then it was during exam time which we could not find students who had free time for interviews.

I think next time I go for ethnographic study, I will study the problem beforehand. Reading related documents, and all the related material that I can find out of the field itself. like in case of our project's context, I would look into university websites, tools, regulations and available documents.
Next thing I will do differently is that I will try to formulate a research question or hypothesis for myself! It can help to have some initial hypothesises to start with. and based on a set of initial hypothesises I will direct the field work in more defined way.

Personal take aways:
-Read the books written about the task, before starting doing things! somebody already done these things!
-Planning is important: somethings can't be repeated, some tasks may take longer than thought.
-Organising and sorting gathered data, and analysing them on time is very useful: I can't imagine writing the final paper without affinity notes and task sequence and interpretation notes that we had for each subject. you think that you wont forget anything, but after some weeks I could not remember most of the details. and I had no time and interest to listen to endless interview recordings afterwards!

M7 group work

Final Concept Map
Kadri-Maria Mitt, Marieh Sayadchi, Alise Semjonova

this is the concept map based on top ones from our collective 30 main concepts. Of course in this stage we could connect everything but we tried to keep only direct links. With this much of connectivity in our map, we can get from any concept to any other.

paper: INNOVATION DIFFUSION AND NEW PRODUCT GROWTH MODELS IN MARKETING

This paper describes product growth model and summarises the state of the art in innovation diffusion models in marketing new product. it concerns about including marketing effects on growth models. the progress of the innovation diffusion models :

1. simple model: first time buyer
basic models of product sale growth:
In modelling the growth of the first-time buyers of a product, the basic diffusion models consider only two segments in the diffusion process: potential market and current market—and two transfer mechanisms to influence the potential customers to adopt the product—mass-media communication and word-of-mouth communication. Furthermore, these models assume a constant total population of potential customers over the entire life of the product.
These models are primarily concerned with modelling nit), the flow of customers from the potential market to the current market.


2. Extended modes:
Extended models try to incorporate other influences in growth model such as marketing and time dependency of previously constant parameters(such as potential market).
this approaches started because basic models dont give useful information about marketing effects.

some attempts to include different parameters:
-In some application external influence is small and marketing strategy changes the model, based on model’s change we can understand the effect
-Constants for external and internal influences should be function of time
-external effect as price
-Sorts of advertising to be included in word of mouth
-Studying the simultaneous growth of related products
-Marketing: is to effect the total number of potential customers
-parameters derived from an empirical analysis of past new product introductions and experience surveys
-not all word of mouth is positive

the problem with most of the extended models is that they mainly miss to incorporate all the parameters at once, repeat or replacement sale.

[M7] Conclusions

What I take away from these reading exercises, apart from quite large set of english vocabulary that I did not know they existed before!, is:

- Theory is important to reason about the problem, to develop a common vocabulary to communicate ideas, to have a framework to evaluate and predict effects, and to improve.(about the improvement: it is very difficult to change and improve something when we don't have a theory as a "frame of reference" behind what we are doing) and of course it is not everything, and it does not mean that we should force fit things into theories!

- There is not only one(or even limited number ) of "right" way to research and develop in HCI. one theory or approach might be more suited to a particular setting but other may fit another situation.
it is important to keep an open mind about new approaches particularly in ever changing technologic world.

- As a student or anyone who practices design in HCI, we should keep in mind that many theories and approaches need skill and practice to be understood and work properly.

The last chapter (this sounded so sad!)
Last chapter gives an overview of the evolution in HCI, starting from importing pure theories from other fields such as psychology and cognitive science to practical frameworks tailored for HCI type of practice and hybrid approaches which combines methods from different sources.
It then analyses the success of different approaches : a framework should be abstract enough to be applied in different problem setting and with different tool sets, but at the same time prescriptive enough to be able to map into real life situations.
HCI researchers should try to close the gap between theory and practice by developing practical frameworks for theories. the contribution of each theory to to the field should be valued. and discarding all the old theories in rise of a new one should be limited: at the end each of them are pieces of the same one bigger picture.


30 concepts: cognitive psychology, user capabilities, user limitations, goals, design, artefact, interaction , group work, society, human, cultural values, social values, design, community, ethnography, context, learning, technology, experience, emotions, reflection, rules, tools, activity, lifestyle, value sensitive, learning, usability

free software , open source software

If we see free software as a movement, the rest of its properties follows naturally. the first uneasy point about free software for me , was the fact that it does not have clear enough definition. it has some principles but not in much detail. but then again free software is an idea and movement, not a licensing framework.
on the other hand open source is much more prescriptive and the licenses that go under open source are clearly stated.

although many may argue that name "free" is ambiguous and can have two, free as beer and free as freedom, meaning; I see the term "open source" much more unclear. having the source open and available is a must in both cases but it is not enough to make a software an "open source" software.
both of these two aim to extend freedom of user and ease the spread of information.  and they are mostly very similar, but sometimes differences show up in detail of licenses. and I think for practical purposes, like publishing a software in current condition, compatibility and so on, open source gives better possibilities.
however I see more potential in free software, to generate and foster new ideas, and more adaptive to new circumstances. specially I believe that all the softwares we release as free and open source should go under permissive license like MIT which only requires mentioning the name and crediting the original authors and allows all kinds of use and modification, I personally see no point in forcing open source or free licenses to everyone.

>>there is a huge need to standardise these terms! they are extremely confusing and they have so many branches and derivatives(I guess this comes from freedom, anybody can define the license he/she feels right!)

Critical Design Brief [M5]: how to save water

How To Save Water:
-Lets not!

The web service that we are designing for :
http://www.tallinnavesi.ee/en/For-Business/Service-Contract/Signing-and-terminating

The website of Tallinna Vesi gives hints and suggestions to keep the sea clean and save water in daily usages. We decided to explore the scenario when humans are short in drinkable water because of too wasteful usage. Although Estonia may currently seem far from this state, water scarcity already affects every continent and around 2.8 billion people around the world; these people don’t have access to clean water at least one month out of every year. More than 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water right now.[wikipedia] If we continue using water thoughtlessly, these numbers will grow to the limits of global crisis. In order to bring attention to the problem we’re showing the children as victims and targeting their parents - we are showing what will happen if we don’t leave drinkable water to future generations.



Our critical design brief:
Targeted issue of our design is shortage in drinkable water.

Our project criticizes the careless use of drinkable water and the fact that people tend to think that the point where we face a critical situation in water scarcity is very far from them or their children. We try to engage people with bringing this issue closer to their personal lives, with involving their children. Targeted audiences of this design can be any adult with children or anyone who plans to have kids in the future. The project provokes people through showing how one’s kid should prepare for future shortage in drinking water, combining scientific background with dark humor.


The scenario:
Imagine the time that we have exhausted the drinkable water on the planet to the extent that there is no more water to drink. In such situation we have no choice but to stop water consumption and adapt our bodies to this new condition. Based on researches done on indian yogic (see link:http://phys.org/news191743491.html and http://www.unbelievable-facts.com/2013/06/a-man-who-survived-without-food-and.html) many training centers are opened to teach people how to survive without drinking water.

The yogic from the link claims that he started from the age of 8 and had not drunk water ever since.


The proposal:
“Desert Camel training center”

This training center is specialized for children and it promises to train kids to survive without water. They use the newest methods and best trainers and promise to teach the kids to stop drinking water in a three month long course.

The poster for this trainings:

Our Group: Marieh Sayadchi, Maria Medina, Helen Habakuk, Alise Semjonova