For
the next theme we were asked to read the article “Turn Your Mobile Into the
Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration“ by “Réhman, S., Sun, J.,
Liu, L., & Li, H.
First
of all, I’ve found idea of using vibration for rendering the football games
into mobile phones to be rather amusing. I believe that researchers also used the
right the way to conduct the research and present their results combining the
description of prototypes architecture and conceptual schemes with findings of
the user study. Comparison of tests in the two code types has provided
sufficiently objective result as well as the opportunity to improve the
developed technology.
From
this paper I’ve learned about the 3 aspects of usability assessment:
“effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specified users can
achieve specified goals in particular environments” [1]. I also appreciate the
way how researchers have compared the influence of training and different
coding to usability.
In
general I find the method of prototyping to be very beneficial for design
research due to interactivity and possibility to improve technology by testing
it. Limitation of the method is that the prototype doesn’t represent every
characteristic of the simulated technology. Therefore, some of the parameters
of future technology can be evaluated only approximately. In this study,
researchers notice that they couldn’t estimate the willingness to buy
“vibro-football” application for mobile phones only using the prototype.
---
This
time it was really hard to find a paper which I can critically analyze because
I never studied engineering science and it’s difficult to assess the MT’ design
papers. Anyway I’ve picked up the “technical” paper and spent some time
translating new terms such as T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia
Broadcasting) or DIFS (Binary Format for Scenes).
So I
will talk about the article “Provisioning of Adaptive Rich Media Services in
Consideration of Terminal Capabilities in IPTV Environments” by Byoung-Dai Lee.
1.
How is theory being used to guide the design process?
I
think the general framework for this study is the theory of media convergence.
The paper is focused on analyzing the Internet protocol TV (IPTV) as “a new
platform for enabling the converged rich media services” [2], but anyway the
precondition for this research is the justified concept of such technology that
efficiently combines different media – like concept of “converged media”
presented by Jenkins [3].
2.
Which research method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits
and limitations of using these methods?
Method:
modeling (based on the prototype testing)
Benefits:
the prototype provides the opportunity to test the solution on variety of
mobile devices considering the parameters of quality of service (QoS) and
quality of experience (QoE) in IPTV services
Limitations:
in this case the user study wasn’t conducted
3.
What did you learn about conducting design research from reading the paper?
Working
with experimental models you don’t have to conduct the user study in every case.
Sometimes the evaluation of design can be based on industrial standards or
metrics developed in other researchers’ user studies.
1.
Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your
Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE
Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6) – p. 1026
2.
Byoung-Dai Lee. “Provisioning of Adaptive Rich Media Services in Consideration
of Terminal Capabilities in IPTV Environments” // IEEE Transactions on Consumer
Electronics, Vol. 57, No. 3, August 2011. Pp. 1120-1127
2.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, NYU
Press, 2006.
Very interesting post, Diana! What do you think - what other methods could the researcher apply for proving and checking his design research?
ОтветитьУдалитьMary, you question is adressed to the paper of my choice, right? :) I think the research could be complemented by other methods only on the following stages of this technology development.
УдалитьFirst of all, I thin it's funny how all Media Technology courses blend into each other! I remember that the term Media Convergence has been introduced in a number of other courses before this one :) Jenkins just pops up everywhere!
ОтветитьУдалитьSecondly, you mention that the approach/method of the paper was "modeling based on prototype testing". Interesting! Can modeling be considered a general methodological framework applicable in research in general or is it maybe just a smaller part of a prototype development process? :-)
Emma, I guess that it is more like the theoretical framework is designed to cover the broad field of studies, not like Jenkins is just a genius =)
УдалитьI believe that modeling is a broad concept which may include such methods as:
1) Theoretical modeling: here you just invent smth in your mind, some concept of the technology that might be developed someday like the "space gun" in the novells of Wern. Today we have the science of futurology to invent such crazy ideas =) some theoretical models are also common in theoretical physics. The theorist Ukio Misima duscusses the opportunity to use the 4th dimension to travell across the galaxy and this is quite a theoretical *model* nowadays, not just a fantasy! I'm just fascinated by this type of models =)
2) Design modeling: here you develop a scheme on paper or electronic model on computer
3) Prototyping: here you develop a real device or working technology with core functionalities of the future product
Actually in case of IT and sometimes media technology the "design model" can be something quite similar to prototype. The significant difference may occur in construction/engineering and natural sciences.
This is just my thoughts after reading some books and papers and there should be more scientific typologies on this topic of course. But I think the theoretical models and real prototypes should be distinguished in the most of sources.
"First of all, I’ve found idea of using vibration for rendering the football games into mobile phones to be rather amusing."
ОтветитьУдалитьIs this something that you would use if you hade the opportunity? I personally believe that this seems just like a gimmick, a little bit like the video-conversations on mobile phones. The point is that for another purpose this could surley be used efficient but as a substitute for a live text blog on the football game or just some regular updates about the score, i don't quite see the point. I get that it would bring some more interaction but do you really want interaction on a mobilephone?
Bobby, I wouldn't use it by myself because I'm not a socker fan in a slightest. But friend of mine (the biggest fan ever!) already wants to purchase the app. He found it's going to solve some problems for him: now he is sad that he can't secretly follow the important games when he is at the meeting or date. =)
УдалитьI can't see why you don't believe in video-conversations? I think it is a useful technology and people going to love it in future. I guess now our opportunities to use it is limited due to the high costs of mobile video streaming.
You talked about that a prototype doesn’t represent every characteristics of the simulated technology. I think that creating a prototype for a product with more advanced technique makes it easier to se how the final product is going to look like. If you’re designing a building, you first making a model out of chopsticks and therefore you can’t be sure how the real building is going to look like. But when the researchers are creating this prototype with vibration, they test it in an environment that is more similar to the environment for the final product. So the prototype are in some sense ”real” compared to the chopstick building. So I think that more advanced technical prototypes are more like its final product than many other examples.
ОтветитьУдалить