The Second Week

First week lectures and recordings were overwhelming for me because I had no previous knowledge in philosophy nor in social science. With English as my second language, I did not quite capture the idea about the paradigms and their elements except for methodology, which I learned in experimental science. The in-class discussion has gave me some idea of these terms, but I need to see real world examples to understand them better. Otherwise, I would not be able to participate well in real-time discussions. --My friends, please point me some directions on how to catch up!

My journey in UX has also started for a month. Now I have a basic idea of the design thinking process and the role of a UX person in the whole project development life cycle. Combined with my previous background, I see myself fitting the role as a UX researcher, where I conduct interviews, do primary and secondary research and observations to understand the users and develop personas to support the user experience design. I can take advantage of my empathy and data analytics skills to accomplish these tasks. This has also gave me some direction for a research topic.

As for the research, I looked through some theses completed in the MI program to learn about a possible research scope. I also applied the literature review method mentioned in the text book (Kristin Luker, 2008) and searched for key terms about UX research in the UT Library database. In a UX research agenda (Hassenzahl et al. 2006), I found three prominent perspectives of UX: addressing human needs beyond the instrumental, affective and emotional aspects of interaction, and nature of experience. I am planning to narrow down my search in "beyond the instrumental" and hope to discover interesting topics.

An interesting MI thesis I saw was about the design of an interactive aid to support older adult's adoption of technology. It took a quantitative approach to do a small scale experiment, tested their prototype of a help interface on simulated iPads and evaluated the result by error rate. Overall, I found myself to be more comfortable working within a given range rather than in a free-thinking style. I will book an appointment with my professor to get more concrete ideas.

 

Wen


Kristin Luker. Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences, 2008.
Hassenzahl, M., & Tractinsky, N. (2006). User experience - a research agenda. Behaviour & Information Technology, 25(2), 91–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290500330331
Conte, Sho. (2019). Design and evaluation of an interactive tactile aid to support older adults adoption of technology (MI thesis). University of Toronto.

Comments

  1. AdenOctober 1, 2020 at 10:49 AM

    Hi Wen,

    I know that maybe this is not the most helpful comment but I agree with you that the way the information has been presented is overwhelming (and it is not an ESL issue). I have a lot of research experience but I do not have experience designing studies. As a result, the way the iformation is being presented as long lists of types of research with brief definitions is difficult to comprehend and narrow down to fit the type of research that we want to do. I think that maybe it would be helpful to see full papers that use eeach type of research and to skim them. I think going forward I will search for specific papers that engage each type of research and maybe this will be helpful. I would be glad to share if I find these usefule.

    ReplyDelete
  2. ErinaOctober 4, 2020 at 2:31 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. ErinaOctober 4, 2020 at 2:33 AM

    I found the readings and the lecture content hard to digest as well. Watching Youtube videos was pretty helpful for me. The videos provided visual examples of these philosophical terms which helped me understand the concepts a little better.

    Also, you mention you are interested in conducting interviews for your research. I think you will find (if you haven't already) chapter three from Woodrow's book from this week's reading, outlining the ethical procedures one must undertake when conducting surveys on humans to be an important topic to consider when you begin formulating the specifics of your research methodology.

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