Making Sense - How to validate assumptions?

For todays class we read essays about qualitative and quantitative research. For me it was particularly interesting, that also qualitative research "is a thing" and is a respected form of research. Often in discussion with friends, most of them studying something related to science, argumentations with qualitative research are often not respected or not really valued.

I see the point that qualitative has the danger of being biased, but in design projects I do not understand the requirements and needs of users out of quantitative research. Quantitative research is nice to confirm a hypothesis ans test your assumptions but, not to find out what you actually want to know. One lecturer once said: "If you do quantitative research, you already know what you want to know".

Therefore, I want to further read into the topic of mixing those two research forms together.

Developing a research questions

We also quickly discussed on how to develop a research question. As I already knew, a research questions should be narrow and specific. What was new to me, is the questionare that helps to further narrow it down:

My starting question was "how to improve a patients situation in hospitals?". Then you have to answer the following questions and redifine the starting question:

After the last question my end result was: "How to bring a patients desires into the evaluation of medical treatment?"

Nevertheless, it could be more specific. "Patients" and "desires" are still two very open terms.

I also got another recommendation called the "scientific rule of three":

Thema
Ich untersuche / arbeite an / forsche über …
Erkenntnisinteresse
weil ich herausfinden möchte, wer / was / wann / wo / welche / warum / wie / ob …
Absicht
um zu zeigen, wie / warum / ob …

Readings

Be familiar with some research terminology:
- Mackenzie, N.,Knipe, S. 2006. "Research Dilemmas: Paradigms, methods and methodology". Issues in Education Research, 16 (2), 193 – 205.

In brief, qualitative research:
- 'An Introduction to Qualitative Research' prepared by Christina Hughes, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick.

Look at examples of research & design in HCI:
- Zimmermann J., Forlizzi J. 2014. "Research Through Design in HCI" in J.S. Olson and W.A. Kellogg (eds.), Ways of Knowing in HCI, Springer Science+Business Media, New York.

Learning by doing:
- Tin, Mikkel B. 2013. "Manifesto: Making and the Sense it makes". In Studies in Material Thinking. Vol.9 Inside Making.

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