The fourth week of TMMT studies

Practical skills

During this week seminar I've learned more about the sampling for qualitative research. I think suspension point of qualitative study is generalisation of the results. The size of sample for qualitative study is usually not that large to be sure that it actually represents the parameters of the general population. We discussed this matter in our group and figured out that researchers don't always do an "averaging" of the sample in a good way. For instance, we discussed the study of gamers' attitudes based on the interviews only with "veteran" gamers and ignoring casual gamers.

Also it was interesting to hear about the papers with some "non-standart" designes like this one comparing the efficiency of communication though instant messaging or email by giving tasks for some 200 people! It would be really interesting to create own big scenario for experiments, but I also find that it is beyond the strength of a single student. 

Theoretical issues

The lecture of this week was rather confusing. The lecturer asked us some questions about her and her colleague’s paper [1] without giving any clear answers in the end. I'll try to answer just two of these questions now.

1. What empirical data was used for the paper?

First of all, what is empirical data? Empirical data is evidence based on observation or experimentation [2]. Since any experiment wasn't conducted for the study of actDressing there is no empirical data. For me it means that this paper presents a theoretical research.

2. What method was used?

I think the theoretical method used in the paper is induction which I understand as logical progression from the consideration of a specific object (single unit, experience, fact) to the more abstract concepts. It seems to be pretty obvious but sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between induction and deduction. One reason is that usual structure of the paper looks like deduction (theoretical framework => concrete examples). In this case standpoint was the observed habit of customization of robots which was discussed from certain theoretical perspective (concrete Pleo-in-pajama => semiotics theory => theory of actDressing). I’ve learned about this contradiction of abstract and concrete in the theory from my previous studies [3].

I still don’t know if I am right about this or not, but the question which I cannot really answer is what we were supposed to learn from the example of this study?

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1. Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM. 

2. Definition on "Empirical" from Oxford Dictionary

3. Yilenkow E. Dialectics of abstract and concrete in theoretical thinking, Moscow, 1997. – Ebook [Sorry, the book is only available in Russian so far]