Exercise: Create and Test a protocol for one chosen research method

Experiment with a research method

One of the goals for design thinking is gather feedback on how a design performs and/or the gap or need for action. We employ research methods to gather feedback, gather empirical data, gather evidence, to learn about needs, goals and how a design performs.

A small scale study conducted in order to develop a design brief. 

The approach taken with this class is that each student chooses one or more research methods to apply to their own empirical investigation (the research project). Rather than presenting standard versions of the very many research methods available, each student is expected to identify and independently search for method-relevant research articles to inform their understanding, inspire their own devised research method structure, and apply their chosen method to their own project. In summary: choose a method; devise a protocol (informed by investigating the literature on the method); apply the method to investigate user interaction in the world; gather data and insights to inform future design interventions to address needs and issues.

Scope

You can select from the lists offered below (The Methods Finder, The IDEO Methods Cards, The NN/g Nielsen Norman Group UX Research Methods library, or a research methods book from the UCD library).

Choose one research method to trial and devise a scenario to apply the research method and comment on how informative/useful it is. 

1. Protocol: Devise some steps and instructions to apply the research method to the scenario.
2. Evidence: Gather some data - test the protocol by applying your instructions to an example scenario.
3. Results: 1 (one) page write-up to present your findings and analysis.

Seek inspiration for your chosen research method using:

The Methods Finder

or

The IDEO Methods Cards

or

The NN/g Nielsen Norman Group UX Research Methods library

or

A research methods book from the UCD library

A research method to be the holistic approach taken to gather data, an overall approach taken to gather data. Interviews, observation studies, etc. are research methods. You can of course employ more than one research method to gather data. 

The protocol/recipe for a method sets out the steps you've followed, the method description, a recipe as such. The protocol describes the chosen research method sufficient that someone else could follow the same steps and end up generating much the same data and analysing it in much the same way. 

For example an observation study will involve steps like gathering evidence (photographic, text, or audio or something else) perhaps writing contemporaneous field notes; saving, transcribing and preparing the data in some way (anonymising it, or removing duplicates, etc.); analysis (selecting important elements, counting things, etc.).

Context/Scenario:

Identify a scenario - using some tech or object to attain a goal. 

Possible examples might be:

• Parcel drop services + returning a parcel
• Anything with a touchscreen + e.g. pay for transaction
• UCD directional maps online and on-campus + e.g. go from bus stop to the sports centre
• Dublin Bus website + arrival time of the next 46A
• ATM machine + make a deposit
• Train/LUAs ticketing + pick up a pre-paid ticket
• Supermarket Self-service checkout machines + apply discount coupon
• Copier machines at the Copi-Print system + print a colour A3 poster
• UCard Top-up + find balance
• Printer + print an email
• Kindle or other E-reader + purchase a book
• Brightspace (from student’s perspective) + submit an assignment
• Alarm System + review the alarm log
• Airport Self-service Checkin + checkin online and checkin bag at tag and drop
• Online Shopping website + search for a specific size shoe
• UCD Library catalogue + find a book by <name>
• Stairs + fire drill
• Doorways + enter/leave the building using a wheelchair
• Queuing in a café + order and payment activities
• Anywhere with a queue + maintaining Covid social distance

Evaluation:

Discussion of findings. 

Comment on usefulness of method. 

Comment on the form of the data. 

Comment on ways to analyse the data. 

Comment on how to interpret the data. 

Suggest ways of scaling or improving the protocol.

Note method-relevant research articles for the protocol.

Ireland's Universal Design Grand Challenge...

What is the Universal Design Grand Challenge?

The Universal Design Grand Challenge (UDGC) is a student competition that promotes and awards excellence in student projects that feature solutions that work for everyone. The UDGC invites third level students in their final two years of study, post grads and recent graduates to enter their best student project.

Each year, nine finalists from third-level institutions around Ireland present their designs to a panel of industry experts as part of the National Final. Winners are then announced in 3 categories:

• Built Environment,
• Technology,
• Products and Services.

In addition, there will also be a Peoples' Choice Winner and an Enterprise Ireland* “Universal Design Commercialisation Award”.

All finalists benefited from expert pitch training as part of the competition process. The winner of each category received a cash prize and the coveted Universal Design Grand Challenge trophy for that category.

https://universaldesign.ie/awards/

The NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition 2023

The NovaUCD Student Enterprise Competition is now in its 9th year and provides a framework to support UCD undergraduate and postgraduate students who want to work together to develop and grow start-up companies.  
Taking place from May 29th – June 23rd @ NovaUCD.  
The aim of this competition is to assist students in refining their start-up ideas through a series of structured workshops, including taught content from industry experts, interactive workshops, regular pitching sessions and mentoring. Accessing the competition is via a short application form and 5 min recorded video pitch on or before March 24th. A final pitching event takes place on June 23rd and the competition winner will be selected. Prizes are as follows:
1st prize: €5000
2nd: €3000
3rd: €2000
More info is available on our website:
https://www.ucd.ie/innovation/researchers-and-students/novaucd-student-enterprise-competition/

Writing a precis

The commentary or précis of a reading/article conveys what you learnt and how you might employ the knowledge. In addition you can employ a critical or analytical interpretation, i.e. what is the intention of the authors, who is the audience, how valid are the claims?

Patterns for a basic précis:

• Sentence 1:Name of author, genre, and title of work, date in parenthesis; a rhetorically accurate verb (such as "claims," "argues," "asserts," "suggests"); and a THAT clause containing the major assertion or thesis statement in the work. 
• Sentence 2: An explanation of HOW the author develops and supports the thesis, usually in chronological order. 
• Sentence 3: A statement of the author's apparent purpose, followed by an "in order to" phrase. 
• Sentence 4: A significant quote from the paper used in a sentence.

Focus on the article being reviewed, not so much on other readings, books, articles etc.

Please do identify key quotes from the article. These a short statements or at most a sentence or two that distill some essential aspect of the article. A key quote is used: to point to the authors' evidence or claims; to make a justification for your own arguments; to act as a foundation for your own ideas. However, there must be clear delineation between the authors' content and your use of it therefore.

• For quotes: use quotation marks followed by cite.
• For paraphrasing: follow with cite.
• For extracts and transformations like lists and tables: explain source followed by cite.
• When reviewing, do not quote the author's quotes of other authors. Instead, quote an original passage written by the author of the article you are reviewing.

Please use double quotation marks and page number to identify "the quoted text" p. 23. You could apply one of the standard citation methods if you like e.g. Harvard style:

• (Surname et al., Publication Year, p.#)
• (Surname et al., Publication Year, pp.#-range)

Something like "some text" (AuthorSurname et al, 2033, p.7), or similar according to the citation standard required for the document.

The 'citing an article in your writing' exercise

How to cite Battarbee et al. (2014)

(refer to https://ucddt2.blogspot.com/2020/01/exercise-writing-for-research.html)

1. (into your Word document) Paste a copy of the short precis you wrote for "Empathy on the Edge: Scaling and sustaining a human-centered approach in the evolving practice of design" By Katja Battarbee, Jane Fulton Suri, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard,"

2. (into your Word document) Enter the following minimal citation details

authors = Battarbee, Katja and Suri, Jane Fulton and Howard, Suzanne Gibbs
title = Empathy on the edge: scaling and sustaining a human-centered approach in the evolving practice of design
publisher = IDEO
year = 2014

3. (into your Word document) insert the citation beside your writing (refer to the associated exercise https://ucddt2.blogspot.com/2020/01/exercise-writing-for-research.html)

The outcome of this exercise is to have written a short paragraph asserting a claim or explaining something and to have correctly cited Battarbee et al. (2014) beside that sentence or paragraph.

Exercise: Writing for research

Using technology to manage a bibliography, referencing and in-text citations.
This exercise looks at MS Word style sheets and References... while the example illustrations are from MS Word for MacOS the same function is available for Windows and for Microsoft 365 web versions albeit with minor differences in screen layouts and functionality.

1. Save a copy of the ECIS template to your own drive (ECIS-inspired-template.doc in Google Drive link).
2. Rename your file using the following pattern "Surname_MyResearchProject_2019.doc".
For example my own paper is saved as "HigginsEtAl_WorkingInVirtualLight_2019.doc". I have used the author convention "SurnameEtAl" as there are three or more authors.
3. From the MS Ribbon "Home" open the Styles Panel. The "Current style" field show the current text style wherever the cursor is in your Word file. Alternately navigate to top menu "Format>Style" for similar.

The current style at cursor location

4. Select section 1 "First level heading" and rename it "Introduction"

5. Paste and match formatting using following unformatted text as new paragraphs for section 1

Critical management studies appreciate that products and services, produced with technologies, by organisations, and the involvement of users, rely upon "actors having formal and symbolic resources for the exercise of... systematic forms of control over organisational participants, and indirectly over other groups and non-human objects"\citep{AlvDee2000aa}. The techniques and skill of management for producing digital goods and services (through software, hardware and systems) at its best aims to resolve this through the delicate, democratic balancing of power, control of resources, shaping of work culture, and leadership \citep{Kid1981aa}. The following brief introduction to the literature positions this study within the broad field of management information systems and seeks to inform further creative, design, and development initiatives.This study looks at...

6. Confirm that the paragraph current style is "Basic text"

7. Select the following text and change its style to "Subtle Emphasis". You many need to filter the style list selection at the bottom of the styles window.

“actors having formal and symbolic resources for the exercise of... systematic forms of control over organisational participants, and indirectly over other groups and non-human objects”

8. With the MS Ribbon "References" active...

Select the LaTeX citation command \citep{AlvDee2000aa} and replace it with the MS Word equivalent citation, i.e. from the References Ribbon select "Insert Citation". You may need to create a new entry in the Word file's Citations collection

Create a new citation source record

Enter a new source record as follows (n.b. add ", p. 7" to be thorough)

MS Word's new citation source editor

9. Similarly replace the LaTex/Bibtex command for Kidder "\citep{Kid1981aa}" with

Adding Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine to the citation list in your MS Word document

10. Now regenerate the bibliography at the end of the draft paper by navigating to the "References" section, and selecting "Bibliography" to insert a new bibliography. You'll end up deleting the previous copy. You'll also need to reapply the style "Reference" to this text

n.b. the bibliography style-type (Harvard - Anglia) and the insert "Bibliography" command

Note that some data entries in your reference database will not be displayed in the bibliography/references generated by Word. This is entirely normal as each reference style presents a selective subset of the data entered. It is what makes each referencing (e.g. APA, Harvard, Chicago, Numbered etc) style unique and distinctive.

Behind the Scenes (another video about IDEO0

The Avalanche case

From Bill Buxton's "Sketching User Experiences" (Buxton, 2007).
This case sets up the issues for high-tech design, design that works 'in the wild', that works for real people in real situations and facilitates achieving their human goals.

Bill Buxton sets the scene with the avalanche responder case. It is an incident experienced by his good friend Saul Greenberg, Saul's wife, and three friends when skiing in high mountainous terrain in Canmore and Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada.

The group was traversing a valley slope when a lethal avalanche fell across their path. The three skiers in the middle of the group were caught in the slide. The lead (Saul's wife) and the last skier could only watch the disaster unfold as three of the following skiers were engulfed by the avalanche. One was simply knocked down, one was buried up to her shoulders, and the last, Saul, was missing.

Avalanche path and path of ski group collide

"Steve, who was higher, checked up on Shane (who was okay), then immediately went to his wife. He freed her arms, and made sure her head was above the snow." 

"Judy went directly to the spot where she had last seen Saul... In order to pinpoint Saul's location, Judy used her avalanche transceiver. ... Using this, she walked a particular pattern on the snow, employing the loudness of a ping (determined by the strength of a signal from Saul's transceiver) to guide her closer and closer to a spot above where he was buried." 

"Judy started digging. Steve arrived and asked if she had verified the spot with her probe, she hadn’t. Judy was confident that she had the right spot, but by this time she had had to dig so deep that her confidence was wavering…"

Saul had tried to ski his way out of it but got caught in the hollow (avalanches can travel at up to 200km/hr whereas 40km/hr is really fast for a skier).

Saul got caught in the trough, a ‘feature trap’, that also meant he was buried deep! But he had cupped his hand over his mouth and nose, preserving a small air space so he could breathe.

He waited, buried under the weight of the snow, and tried to relax. He had to trust in his partners, their training, his and their gear.

None of the participants had ever been in this situation before. Time elapsed from avalanche impact to rescue was about 10 minutes. Under the conditions, after 20 minutes he would have been dead.

(Buxton, 2007) 

What is normal procedure when traversing avalanche prone terrain? The equipment carried consists of transceivers, probes, and collapsible shovels. But more than just the technology; it also requires knowledge, shared practices, skills, and analysis of a concrete situation (among others).

When skiing in avalanche prone conditions, you work one of a number of simple systems depending on the severity of the risk. The normal procedure when traversing is to spread out and post lookouts at either end, and traverse one-by-one. If an avalanche occurs:

1. Retain one lookout (you may be hit by another avalanche). 
2. Triage; rescue the most able first (and they may be able to assist later). 
3. Go to the approximate location of buried victims, judge if carried onwards, then guide using transceiver. 
4. Use an avalanche probe to locate the body. 
5. When the victim is felt you start to dig and dig. 

Question: After the 'who'; what saved Saul?

---

Additional material:

Instructional videos by Canadian Forest Rescue SEE SAFETY (http://www.fsavalanche.org/).
Harry Hamlin from MSRGear talking about "Avalanche Rescue: How to Use Your Beacon, Probe & Shovel" https://youtu.be/X90kUtxMd_Q
Also see BCA backcountry access playlist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnHXLVA2FcE
Similar case: 6 skiers survive backcountry avalanche near Whistler: Report by CBC (link).
Design related sources: 

Buxton, B. (2007) Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design, San Francisco, Morgan Kaufmann. (Video examples for the book can be found at the publisher's companion site)
Bill Buxton's homepage (billbuxton.com)