Course #2: preparing research studies
nicolas nova | liftlab
Head, Geneva | October, 29th 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Article presentation
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Research plan
1. Question: Which research question are to be
asked? (see course 1 for example)
2. Data collection technique: Which data will
answer those questions?
3. Sampling: Where, and from whom, those data
can be obtained?
4. In what form the data will be collected
5. How, by whom, and to whom results will be
disseminated
Adapted from to “Designing and conducting ethnographic research”
by LeCompte and Shensul
Thursday, October 29, 2009

What do I Why do I What kind of Whom do I
Where can I Timelines for
need to need to know data will contact for
answer the find the data? acquisition
know? this? access?
question?
Adapted from to “Designing and conducting ethnographic research” by
LeCompte and Shensul
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Sampling?
the practice concerned with the selection of case
(people, activity, group, situation) intended to yield
some knowledge
in quantitative research, sampling is about selecting
(randomly) a sufficiently large amount of cases
within a given mother population,
in qualitative research, there are different
approaches...
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Sampling strategies in qualitative
research
different approaches depending on:
1. logistics:
- can I get permission to study a group? a budget to
pay participants?
- do I have the resources? time? how far away is the
group?
- will the participant accept? talk to me?
2. research question
- what do I need to know?
- how to bound or operationally define the group?
- the goal: representative or selective
See examples afterwards adapted from Miles &
Huberman (1994)
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Type of sampling Main usage in design
Get a representative sample of the
Random (pick-up participants randomly)
population
Homogeneous (select participants that
Provide better focus and safer conclusions
corresponds to the same criteria)
Maximal variation (select highly different
participants according to one or more Give better scope to the research results
criteria)
Based on your theory (depends on your Test an hypothesis, test your design
questions, hypotheses) questions
Extreme cases (pick-up only weird and Test the boundaries of a model or seek
deviant cases) new possibilities
Typical (choose people who are
Find what is average, typical or “normal”
representative of a population)
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Type of sampling Main usage in design
In-depth study to know specific details
Intense (find only one unique case)
about the question
According to a dimension or criteria Study a particular phenomena
Snow ball / Opportunistic (select people
Explore new angles and re-adjust the
based on information collected during
research questions
research)
According to reputation (choose
participant based on recommendation by Explore more deeply
experts)
Make comparisons between groups / test
Comparative method
hypotheses
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Research and data quality
Reliability: the degree of consistency for the same
object by different observers, by the same observer at
different moments, by the same observer with
(moderately) different tools
Internal validity: can you justify your
interpretations? can you state your biases?
External validity: can you generalize (other people,
other contexts)?
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Paradigm: the set of practices that define
a scientific discipline... and your
orientation (e.g relativist-positivist
spectrum)
Approach: a set of methods to study
situations with different goals (e.g.
controlled experiments, field studies)
Thursday, October 29, 2009

From Jarvinen, P. (2001). How to select an appropriate
research method in ergonomic studies?
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Conceptual/theoretical frameworks:
provide an overview of a phenomenon,
help to formulate questions , list
dimensions of a situation and enable to
structure the analysis
in design research, frameworks are less
employed than in other domains
two examples though
Thursday, October 29, 2009

activity theory (Y.Engeström)
Tools
Subject Object Outcome
Rules Community Division of labor
Thursday, October 29, 2009

grounded theory (strauss and corbin)
Inductive approach, from the ground-up as it begins with
a research situation with no specific theory at first. Within
that situation, your task as researcher is to understand
what is happening there.
Your task is to identify categories (roughly equivalent to
themes or variables) and their properties (in effect their
sub-categories).
➡ We will adopt this perspective and aim at uncovering
“thick descriptions” and “informed opinions” which are
relevant for design purposes
Thursday, October 29, 2009

The description dimension we are
looking for:
Who
What
Where
When
How
“Why”? not so much (we’ll get to that later)
The answers to these question will be obtained
through different research techniques: observations,
photographic investigations, interviews, etc. Each of
the upcoming course will address a specific technique
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Project discussion
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Menu for next courses
➡ Course’s blog: http://usages.wordpress.com/
➡ Next course will be about observation and photographic
investigation
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Assignement
➡ Each student will have to read a research paper and present it to
the class:
• 10 minutes, no slides
• Outline: summary + why is it relevant for design + personal opinion
• For next course:“Where’s the phone? A study of Mobile Phone
Location in Public Spaces by Ichikawa, F., Chipchase J., & Grignani R.
(http://bit.ly/2TSxQ7)
➡ Project:
• Define your research question based on the table presented on Slide 4
• Define your sampling strategy, justify your choice
• Prepare a 5 minutes presentations with 2 slides: one for the research question
table, one for the sampling strategy, we will discuss the results in class at the next
course
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Let’s discuss your research question
Thursday, October 29, 2009

thanks
nicolas@liftlab.com
Thursday, October 29, 2009