Final Post

From these six themes, I learned a lot about knowledge and research. The themes are well progressive, each theme has a very clear purpose and the lectures are really good. It’s unfortunate that some theme’s lecture or seminar missed, but not influence too much for me to learn more from this course. The structure of the course is special, we don’t have an exam, but we have to post our pre-reading of articles and reflection every week, as well we have to comment for other student’s posting, this push me a lot, for catching the deadline, I wouldn’t be lazy, I would say it’s actually the most efficient method for me to gain knowledge ever. At the same time, this method also improves my reading and summarise skills.

The course starts from the very abstract topic in the first theme, which is Plato's Theaetetus and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, I think reading and reflect in these two articles is really good for the philosophy beginners like me. I don’t know what is philosophy before, and I’m very realistic I think, this makes see and think in a very narrow way. This theme’s task leads me to an extended view, and I get more knowing on knowledge, things we know via eyes and ears can not be defined as knowledge, it’s just we get to know. The transcendental condition of knowledge is Forms of intuition: Space and Time. And I learned “perception without conception is blind, conception without perception is empty” from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

For the second theme, is Critical media studies, I think it’s a nice step forward since the theme let me consider the philosophy staff combining with history and culture environment, and the things concept of philosophy is much clearer in my mind. From this theme I know the difference between nominalism and realism, nominalism is more specific, realism is more general. And substructure vs superstructure is also the kernel topic in this theme. The hottest topic in the theme is “Auro”, and I got to know, print the "Auro" art will destroy the "Auro" of the original work of art. But via the media way, for example, we can print it, then everybody can have their own "Auro" work of art, we can spread the work of art. In this way, Media maybe the good thing.

From the third theme, we start to jump to research, and I start to realise this may be a preparation for the final thesis. These last four themes are talked about what is research, how to start a research, what should we do before doing research and how to design research, of course, the difference between quantitative research and qualitative research could be one of the kernel topics in these themes. It’s also a very progressive way. Start from knowing what is theory and what theory is not. Try to understand the categories of the theory that the article gives, and by finding the related research paper, get more deeply understand these categories. Then went to Quantitative research, we read an very interesting article, which contains a fun drums experiment, this article helps me conclude what is quantitative research, and by the way, this theme raises up the question about difference between quantitative and qualitative research, which bring me to understand choosing a type of research depends on what’s your research purpose, and my browsing for the qualitative research also lay a solid foundation for the further theme. As I learnt from the themes, Hypnosis could be one of the differences between quantitative and qualitative research. Qualitative data includes information about user behaviours, needs, desires, routines, use cases, and a variety of other information that is essential in designing a product that will actually fit into a user’s life. While Quantitative research includes, hypotheses, predictions, observation, experiment, test of predictions, conclude etc. A questionnaire usually used in Quantitative research, and it’s good to know the questionnaire should be tested before post, to test if the question understandable, if the answer is short enough so that people willing to answer and so on. It is important in a quantitative research which I don’t know before, I think it’s very good to know this since it can prevent some error, or save us from some trouble, also maybe saved some time. And in the seminar we conclude the quantitive research is more scientific than qualitative research during group talk, and actually qualitative research is more close to our life, quantitive research is used when we want to explore some unknown part or prove some hypotheses, but qualitative research are more often used in developing.

In the design research theme, the most important part I learnt is an approach to design research with six different steps, how to come up with an idea, how to solve a problem, how to filter ideas, how to validate an idea, how to evaluate an idea, how to communicate your idea. And also know the important of prototype design, empirical data often used in a prototype designed research paper.

Case study and qualitative research are kernel topics in the last theme, and this previously mentioned in the fourth theme, and in this theme we don’t have lecture, only attend the seminar, so the topic is  mostly focused on case study, this is the first time to start the seminar without any pre-knowledge, this is also a way that push us into unknown area to learn to discovery by ourselves. From the group discussion, we released that case study is commonly used in qualitative research. And in the seminar conclusion, a case study formulates the whole thing into science, fight against the things you think or you know. It is more about investigating new knowledge, explore the staff you don't know before. And the case is individual, organisation, event, or action, existing in a specific time and place. And I surprisedly know case study make the observed information into science, and a case study could link to another one, and make a firmly link circle to support the concept in the research.

As a conclude, I have to say, I improved a lot and gain a lot from this course, I think the philosophy way will be well used both in my study and life in the future.

Comments List

Theme1

1. 

I like your examples, it's easier to recognize your opinion. But I have a question about "different people can perceive different message for color", here do you mean this color definition is their apriori knowledge or they create this "creamy white", "pink white" as aposterior knowledge?

http://cloudsong223.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1_9.html?showComment=1441898881683

2. 

Hello, after read you pre-read reflection, I think we have the same opinion with these two questions, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" stands experience can not independently support a view, it should combine reason and sense and in space and time. For Plato's Theaetetus dialogue, it stands we see and hear "through" the eye and ear not "with", which I also think he means they are tools not a thing to generate knowledge.

http://blog4course99.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory.html?showComment=1442240189078

3. 

Your pre-read reflection is very clear, I think you are good at concluding the concept of articles. The Kant's kernel concept is clear pointed in the reflection. And in Plato's Theaetetus, I have the same opinion with you, which consider eye and ear as tools to know.

http://mediatechnologybycorinna.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory.html

4. 

Hi, I really like your post very much, you can always find a suitable word to describe what do you mean, and it makes your report easy to understand. Thank you for sharing the example about "all man sleep", I don't know if we are in same group, since we also got an example from the teacher, which is if we say there is an ET come to us, and point a rabbit, and say something, we don't know what he means actually, it may describe as "rabbit", or "white", or "alive", every possible word. We can't say which is true, which is not. I think this is the charm point of philosophy.

http://gamlagreker.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-reflection.html?showComment=1443013194299

5.

Hi, nice reflection. I think it's really nice to see you are improving yourself from the lecture and seminar, I have the same problem as you at the beginning, I agree the articles in this theme are hard to read, and it's actually abstract, but obviously you got more understand of this theme after lecture and seminar, nice to see that. Anyhow, good job!

http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-1-reflections.html?showComment=1446168672581#c599231964973585027

Theme2

1.

You organized your word very well in this post, and I like the structure of your reflection. After I read your post, I feel like review the lecture again, and you actually point all the important keywords, it's really nice. Except reviewing, you also write down a lot of your own undertand, and I like the example you post about the neighborhood, which related to the discussion about substructure and superstructure, it's a vivid metaphor. Thank you for sharing the understand of them.

http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-after.html?showComment=1443616624354

2.

I agree with you, the lecture is really well organized, and it's nice to know the history at that time, it really help us to understand and think about their articles. And it's nice that you post the example of mass media. Thank you for sharing the reflection.

http://tamfmtol.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-post-critical-media-studies.html?showComment=1443618298513#c8343008702486851335

3.

Hi, very nice reflection, it's more structured than the first one, and I have the same feeling about this theme was a combination of philosophy and historical facts. It's nice to see you wrote how to browse and contribute for this theme, I think it's a good structure of reflection.

http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-reflection.html?showComment=1446170638649#c7485264098257588613

4. 

Hi, your reflection is very good, you wrote how and what you discuss in the seminar, which is focusing on categories. We also did it, and I think those categories is hard to follow since they are still too general, and in the seminar when we discussed it, and we confused if everything can be included in these several categories. Anyhow, thank you for sharing, good job!

http://denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-22.html?showComment=1446206309251#c6230690220293309977

5.

Hi, nice reflection. You sum up the nominalism and realism very well, it's great that you wrote down the lecture notes and summarize them into your reflection, it's very organized. We are in the same seminar group talk, and I think it will be better if you wrote more. Anyhow, good job!

http://blog4course99.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-on-theme-2.html?showComment=1446207815612

Theme3

1. 

It's nice to see you sharing some examples that talked in lecture and seminar, you summarized and explained them very well, and the examples you post is very accurate. Those keywords you marked make the reflection more easy to read, and it seems you have your own understand on what research is, and I think your concept of "expand old research by new research and thereby continue to the old research in your new study" is very interesting, It actually maybe like that, great conclusion.

http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-after.html?showComment=1443617725883

2. 

Thank you for post about this week's work, it seems you understand well and get a lot of useful knowledge about theory, and I saw you said your group talk is about difference between hypothesis and theory, it's nice topic, a lot can be discussed. Hope to see you write more about this if you like. keep this good work!

http://tamfmtol.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1443618702056#c5490625836447617134

3. 

Hi, your reflection is always short but incisive, enjoy reading your post. You wrote a very interesting opinion, which is to understand theory as a whole. I never think about it before, and didn't conclude this in my reflection. I feel your description of this is very reasonable. Good job!

http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflections.html?showComment=1446171151289#c8977248172940373791

4. 

Hi, thank you for sharing your lecture notes and your thought in the reflection, it'a nice structured, and you highlight the kernel topic of this theme, the purpose of this theme is clear, which is talked about what is theory and what theory is not, and the difference is between theory and hypothesis. Through your reflection, I can see to summarize and conclude it very well, good job!

http://denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-22.html?showComment=1446206786480#c8560704174675034577

5. 

Hi, for this theme's reflection, I can see you are more focus on raise up examples for different definitions, which make them more understandable. However, I think you can as well wrote more about your conclusion or thought about what theory is and what theory is not. I think for this theme, we are more focus on sum up the categories to classify the theory. Still nice reflection, good job!

http://blog4course99.blogspot.se/2015/09/reflection-on-theme3.html?showComment=1446208299005

Theme4

1. 

Hi, thank you for your reflection on this theme, it's a very personal conclusion post. I think I'm in the same situation with you in the seminar group talk, since most of us have already had the prior knowledge about what is quantitative research, and we all keep our perception on quantitative research, of course, the lecture is still good to listen. I also think the paper is interesting and worthy to read. Keep on good work.

http://gamlagreker.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1445450903529

2. 

Thank you for sharing, it's a good reflection. I think you summarized this theme very well in a scientific way. It's nice that you mentioned what you talked about in the seminar and which is also the pre-reading questions, and I like your conclusion that "we might not need a clear answer to indicate the certain expectations from us", it's very philosophic.

http://happyblogger7.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1445802496827#c3974604075979159759

3.

Hi, your reflection of this theme is a little bit different from previous ones, I agree this theme is a little bit hard to conclude since the lecture and seminar may not bring too many new things. But you catch the kernel topic of this theme, which is about the difference between quantitative and qualitative research. Nice reflection.

http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-reflections.html?showComment=1446171666011#c7137339851653845468

4.

Hi, nice reflection. I saw you have very well organized text, and it's nice to see you wrote about your reading research paper, and we also talked about the kernel topic as you did in the seminar group talk on differences between quantitative and qualitative methods, your conclusion is very Insightful. And I saw you also talked about an interesting topic objectivity and subjectivity, which we didn't do it. And nice to see that you summed up your discussion of objectivity in an eloquent way was “objectivity is elusive”. Great job!

http://denise-theoryandmethod.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-22.html?showComment=1446207338630#c8546815022971738560

5.

Hi, I can see your improvement from this theme's reflection, your text is well organized, and nice to see that you have a clearer recognition on the methods after lecture and seminar. Your thoughts about "dealing with data, including gathering data from experiment and survey or some other research fields , and later process data in a way that is easy to analysis." I think is correct, it seems you really understand and get an insightful conclusion. And your examples makes your thoughts more understandable. Thank you for sharing.

http://blog4course99.blogspot.se/2015/10/reflection-on-theme-4.html?showComment=1446208690310

Theme5

1. 

Hi, thank you for sharing your reflection for this seminar, I like your way of reflection, I think you summarized the lectures very well, which is I missed in my post. You right down these six steps, and a short explanation for each step, it's very clear to understand what you get from this theme. And I agree with you, without the seminar, it's not possible to use the same way to summarize as before, and not able to change each others perception to improved more. It's a really good reflection, it include everything I wanna say as well, keep on good work.

http://mediatechnologybycorinna.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-design-research-reflection.html?showComment=1445450001662#c4103623190391188348 

2. 

Hello, Thank you for sharing your reflection about this theme, same as you, I also missed the seminar talk, and I agree the second lecture is unstructured, but still worth to listen. I like that you write down your understand and what you gain from the first lecture, it seems you really understand those examples and summarized a lot from them. You mentioned a lot about the solving problem examples in Haibo's lecture, which is what I missed in my post. Keep on the good work.

http://butlikewhyisit.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-reflection.html?showComment=1445456086665#c1742237916253676247

3.

Thank you for sharing, your reflection post is very interesting, it's quite different from my post, you summarized "two forms of ideas" about how to construct idea, which is I didn't mention in my blog post. And I like the way you construct your reflection with two sections, for each your have your own acquisition. Good job!

http://happyblogger7.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5reflection.html?showComment=1445801050124#c495733299320186821

4.

Hi, Nice reflection. It's nice to see you right down the 5 steps and explain a little bit for each, which makes your reflection very structured and clear, this is what I missed in my post, and I like that your divided your reflection into two sections, and for the second section, you summarized the unstructured lecture very well, which also point a lot of important concepts in the lecture, thank you very much for sharing.

http://literaturestuffm.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-reflections-after-lectures.html?showComment=1445803571306#c4716377413470443449

5.

Hi, it's a really nice reflection, thank you for sharing. Your wrote the things that I didn't notice from the lecture, and they are very useful. And it's really nice you considered as an entrepreneur, I think this is a very special way, but obvious a good way for you to express your opinion and feeling, I would say good job!

http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-5-reflections.html?showComment=1446172215285#c1017884345393671215

Theme6

1. 

Hello,

Thank you for sharing. I understand how difficult to write a reflection without a lecture or without a seminar, both of them can lead us to a good reflection. I'm in the same situation with you, in my seminar group talk, we also focus on our reading references, and hope to conclude something from them. I like your example in the end about internet addiction in the year 2000, and you said both survey and interview are used, I'm curious about your reflection about this paper, hope if you can write more. Keep on this good work!

http://mediatechnologybycorinna.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_19.html?showComment=1445451539634#c25850294106601533

2. 

Hello, good reflection. For this theme, I think everybody will find it's hard to write the reflect post, since we only have seminar, but it's good to see you summarized a lot from the seminar, and take a lot of examples, I agree with what you say about case study, "It’s also about finding out new things, and not about proving old theories". I think after the seminar talk, Ilias also mentioned about this in his perception. And he also mentioned a link of case study example, which is the previous case study always link to a new one, which is same as what you said, "case study is a good way to begin a research and establish a theory which you can further investigate using quantitative and qualitative measures". Keep on good work!

http://butlikewhyisit.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1445455572422#c4466296473926534441

3. 

Hi,

Thank you for sharing, nice reflection. I agree with you that it's unfortunate, the lecture was canceled. In the seminar, the group talk, we did the same thing as you, which is focusing on the paper we chose, and I like your example of a case study about "a man that has hit his head in a way that no one did before". I think you are good at summarizing, and you summarised most of your group talked case study, and write down your won acquisition in this reflection. Good job!

http://literaturestuffm.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-reflections-after-lecture-and.html?showComment=1445803162383#c8169521302275615243

4.

Hi, thank for sharing, nice reflection. I enjoy reading your post since you contain both teacher's thoughts and your own thoughts, and I agree with that case studies don't have hypothesises, instead you will learn more about the topic during the time and later see how it will end up. We also talked about it in the group discussion. And you said in your reading paper they weren't able to draw general conclusions, I agree, since mine is also. Good luck to the final post.

http://oscarlimback.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_19.html?showComment=1445876871951

5. 

Hi, it's very short but incisive reflection, this theme's kernel topic is case study, so we focused on the same topic as you in the seminar group talk, and I like your definition of case study, " a case study is about looking into quite rare, and different cases of either occurrences or perhaps people/groups that are different to the masses". It seems you understand very well in this theme, good job!

http://mawnzblog.blogspot.se/2015/10/reflections-post-theme-6.html?showComment=1446168260234#c6867385626960914282

6.

Hi, I agree with your that it was more difficult to find a qualitative research paper than a quantitative research paper. For this last theme, I think most of us focus on the research paper since the lack of lecture. And it's nice to see you wrote the progress of how you find the paper, it is also a key for understanding qualitative research. And your conclusion is clearer than before. Good luck to the final post!

http://fromplatotocasestudies.blogspot.se/2015/10/theme-6-reflections.html?showComment=1446172725120#c5123341970135450312

Reflection of Theme6

About this theme, we don’t have the lecture, only seminar, so the seminar become very important, and it is quite difficult to distinguish if we get correct information or conclusion in the seminar.

It’s nice we start with presentation of our pre-reflection in the group talk, and we all find none of us have a hypnosis before the chosen topic. and we find all of our chosen qualitative research papers are case study. In the paper, the authors use different ways to collect data, analysis data, and make conclusion. Before that, they all have very specific purpose, but they totally can not say what may be the result. Most of these case study research are using questionnaires and interview to collect data, I think it because they want to research about the human behave, people’s respond. 

As mentioned in the seminar conclusion, a case study formulates the whole thing into science, fight against the things you think or you know. It is more about investigating new knowledge, explore the staff you don't know before. And the case is individual, organisation, event, or action, existing in a specific time and place. 

The most important information I got from the seminar is about the case study is very good to use when you want to use a evidence to fight against with a theory, case study make the observed information into science, and a case study could link to another one, and make a firmly link circle to support the concept in the research.

This is the final theme till now, I can’t say I got all the right information from the seminar, since the seminar conclusion is always short, and the information I got from group talk always make me confused, I don't know if they are really correct? And I always feel I didn’t get enough from the seminar conclusion. I hope I can have more to write here, but what I conclude from the theme is this much.

Reflection of Theme5

For this theme, I got a little bit hard time to understand the questions. In this theme design research, we have to read three artless totally and it actually separate to two part of questions. The hardest part is we don’t have a seminar, I was thinking how to write the reflection before I read it. After I attempt to start the first block of questions, there is only an article about a game design, some questions are good to answer if we can analysis and summarise the articles. Most questions are about prototypes, and which make me release prototype design in a research is very important. But for the second part is really hard to understand the question and summarise it. We have to read two good articles and answer the questions, which is none about article, but most is about the design research method or related staff, I believe all the answers should be summarised in these two articles, but it’s not really easy to summarise it in short time, so I have to Wikipedia on the Internet, and I did find some good answer.

After lectures, I learnt what is a prototype, it the process of test idea, proof of concept, and evaluation. The purpose of using prototype is to gain knowledge. And I learnt, use prototype is to use design to shape prototype which is for something you are interested at beginning(Research Question), then prototype can lead to any result. For the article about tangible programming space, the process is the empirical data. About the research method, I learnt, Interviews is not the method, it doesn't make it into research.(It is just a method to generate the empirical data we have, for looking into the interview to analysis). The design is empirical data, and design prototype as well. The analysis is important in design research.

The most important thing I know from the lecture is there is not always use an experiment in the design driven research, it maybe the design of a prototype. Which is the whole research is focused on design, but not experiment or getting a result.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Part1:

I choose the article is called: Application of Multi-media Technology on the E-commerce Website in China: A Case Study on Jumei Youpin

Journal: Information Technology Journal

Artists: Yang Hongtao, Ge Tingjun, Li Baizhou and Liu Hongzhen

Published Year: 2013

Volume: 12 

Issue: 17 

Page No.: 4298-4302

DOI: 10.3923/itj.2013.4298.4302

This article is a case study of a famous E-commerce website in China, which is the biggest cosmetic group purchase website in the Chinese market. This case study is to investigate how this website uses the application of multi-media technology on the e-commerce website.

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

Qualitative research is for investigating the reason of people’s behave, and the reason or method when people made decisions. It is more focus on small specific group or case study, to gain information or knowledge of this specific case study. The method of this article is a case study, the benefit of the case study is more focus on a specific case, which may make the research result more fits requirements. but the limitation is case selection and structure should be accurate, it is not always easy to find the correct case object. An average, or typical case, is often not the richest in information.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

The qualitative method here is a case study, it involves an up-close, in-depth, and detailed examination of a subject (the case), as well as its related contextual conditions. The case is individual, organisation, event, or action, existing in a specific time and place. 

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

The main method used in the study is data analysis, these data are empirical data, which is too abstract. I think they can combine case study and fieldwork method together, or add some interviews, which may make the result more persuasive.

Part2:

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

Case-study research can mean single and multiple case studies, can include quantitative evidence, relies on multiple sources of evidence, and benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions. The case study is not qualitative research, but qualitative research has a research method called “case study” since case studies can be based on any mix of quantitative and qualitative data. Three types of cases may thus be distinguished: Key cases, Outlier cases, Local knowledge cases. The process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data.

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

Based the table 1), the strengths can be analysed as:

The well-designed prototype, and highly tightly interactive linked data, and clear purpose of research, it also shows the reasonable selection.

I actually didn’t find very obvious weaknesses from this process of building theory table, I think the research approach is good and accurate. This way well suits the new research area, if I have to say at leat one weakness is this maybe add more examples of the case study or give a category to these examples.

Reflection of Theme4

After lecture and Seminar, the theme become clearer, we read two papers which are both about quantitative research, one is given and another is our research. However, the question is about the benefits and limitations of quantitative and qualitative research. All the seminar group talk is about that, I’m just wondering how can we know that when the whole lecture is talking about what is quantitative research, how to design and write a quantitative paper, and so on. It’s actually a hard task if we only read the quantitative research paper, but no qualitative one. I don’t know about others, for me, I maybe did the qualitative research during my bachelor study, but at that time I don’t know it is called qualitative research. Because of the given task, I have to browse the Internet, and Wikipedia what is qualitative research, and try to conclude it’s characteristics, actually, I also google what quantitative research before writing the pre-reading reflection. And through the characteristics of qualitative research “Qualitative data includes information about user behaviours, needs, desires, routines, use cases, and a variety of other information that is essential in designing a product that will actually fit into a user’s life.” I know I did once before, and it’s not so scientific, so we conclude the quantitive research is more scientific than qualitative research during group talk, and actually qualitative research is more close to our life, quantitive research are used when we want to explore some unknown part or prove some hypotheses, but qualitative research are more often used in developing. 

There is one more important thing I learnt in lecture is about the questionnaire, the questionnaire should be tested before post, to test if the question understandable, if the answer is short enough so that people willing to answer and so on. It is important in a quantitative research which I don’t know before, I think it’s very good to know this since it can prevent some error, or save us from some trouble, also maybe saved some time.

Theme 5: Design research

PART1:
How can media technologies be evaluated?

We can evaluate the usability of the media technologies, it can be categories into three sections, effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. Users should be able to achieve specific goals in a particular environment. Effectiveness is about whether or not a task could be accomplished with the specified system. Efficiency is how much effort is required in order to accomplish the task. Satisfaction refers to the comfort and acceptability of the system to its users and other people affected by its use.

What role will prototypes play in research?

Prototypes play a very important role in research, it can help exploring and expressing designs for interactive computer artefacts, it can represent different states of an evolving design, and to explore options. It communicating its limited purposes to its various audiences is a critical aspect of its use. Prototypes provide the means for examining design problems and evaluating solutions. Selecting the focus of a prototype is the art of identifying the most important open design questions. If the artefact is to provide new functionality for users—and thus play a new role in their lives—the most important questions may concern exactly what that role should be and what features are needed to support it. In this case, user participant helps increase the quality of the product, since user refers more problem than team's researchers.

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

Sometimes in some cases, we may use a finished-looking prototype to evaluate, and it is thought near completion.We interpret resolution to mean “amount of detail”, and fidelity to mean “closeness to the eventual design”. It is important to recognise that the degree of visual and

behavioural refinement of a prototype does not necessarily correspond to the solidity of the design, or to a particular stage in the process.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

Characteristics:

It can reduce time and costs, it improve the quality of requirements and specifications provided to developers. 

It can improve and increase user involvement, prototyping requires user involvement and allows them to see and interact with a prototype allowing them to provide better and more complete feedback and specifications. Users know the problem domain better than anyone on the development team does.

Limitations:

It’s an insufficient analysis, the focus on a limited prototype can distract developers from properly analysing the complete project.

User confusion of prototype and finished system, users can begin to think that a prototype, intended to be thrown away, is actually a final system that merely needs to be finished or polished.

Developers may misunderstand of user objectives.

Developer attachment to prototype, developers can also become attached to prototypes they have spent a lot of efforts producing; this can lead to problems like attempting to convert a limited prototype into a final system when it does not have an appropriate underlying architecture.

Excessive development time of the prototype. A key property to prototyping is the fact that it is supposed to be done quickly. If the developers lose sight of this fact, they very well may try to develop a prototype that is too complex.

The expense of implementing prototyping, the start-up costs for building a development team focused on prototyping may be high.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

I assume this communicated is means been understood by un-technic users, in this case, maybe the UI design, figures and explanation of the product. Prototypes also can be the presentation way.

PART2:

What is the 'empirical data' in these two papers?

empirical data is usually based on some experience, not the real collective data, but this empirical data can nearly become the real data, not so much difference with experimental data, some can be used in some research. It may use a lot of empirical theories and so on. In philosophy can be contrasted to a priori knowledge, which is to gain a posteriori knowledge.

Can practical design work in itself be considered a 'knowledge contribution'?

In my opinion, it can not really be a knowledge contribution, the practical design work can be a great contribution to gain knowledge, but itself is not actually contribution on knowledge. Because the practical design work can be a priori knowledge, not knowledge gain from the research, so I think it’s not “knowledge contribution”.

Are there any differences in design intentions within a research project, compared to a design in general?

Design intention in a research project is a framework to guide a project. Different methods may use in design a research project. In general design, there are different purposes. Usually, this kind of design is to highlight the main idea or for a good-looking staff.

Is research in tech domains such as these ever replicable? How may we account for aspects such as time/historical setting, skills of the designers, available tools, etc? 

Yes, in some way it is possible to replicable, the prototype design can be replicated. In time/historical setting, It’s better not replicate. But skills of the designers and available tools can be replicated.

Are there any important differences with design-driven research compared to other research practices?

After reading these two articles, I would say the design-driven research is more focus on prototype design, and the process of design. While some other researches are more focus on the experimental part, or the result of the research.