Monthly Archives: May 2012
Gopsill, J.A, McAlpine, H.C., Hicks, B.J. (2012) PartBook – A Social Media Approach for Capturing Informal Product Knowledge, Design2012
I found this to be a very interesting paper. It tackels the challenges in design communication from the same point-of-view than my latest research. The authors have created PartBook that is based on uploading a screenshot of relevant product information … Continue reading
Russo, J.E., Johnson, E.J. and Stephens, D.L. (1989) The validity of verbal protocols. Memory & Cognition. Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 759-769.
Russo et al. listed several factors that could damage the validity of verbal protocols, and made experimental studies to show possible conflicts in Ericsson and Simon’s thinking-aloud model. They name two forms of protocol invalidity: reactivity and nonveridicality. Reactivity means … Continue reading
Antaki, M., Schiffauerova, A., Thomson, V. (2010) The Performance of Technical Information Transfer in New Product Development, Concurrent Engineering, 18, pp. 291-301
The introduction part of this paper gives a good overall picture of work done on communication. Paper itself looks at communication in new product development.I found a couple of interesting points: The nature of communication in the three companies was … Continue reading
Cooke, L. (2010) Assessing Concurrent Think-Aloud Protocol as a Usability Test Method: A Technical Communication Approach. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Vol.53, No.3, pp. 202-215.
DOI=10.1109/TPC.2010.2052859 Lynne Cooke made studies on concurrent think-aloud protocol and assessed how well verbal reports correlate with eye movements in usability testing. She used eye-tracking equipment to compare the contents of verbalization and eye movement during task performance, and to … Continue reading
Brereton, M. and McGarry, B. (2000) An observational Study of How Objects Support Engineering Design Thinking and Communication: Implications for the design of tangible media, CHI2000
The paper looks at different roles of physical objects in supporting design thinking and communication, i.e. object as starting point, as communication medium, episodic memory trigger, etc. Still, what I found to be the most interesting part of the paper … Continue reading
Boren, T., Ramey, J. (2000) Thinking aloud: reconciling theory and practice. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 261-278.
DOI=10.1109/47.867942 Boren and Ramey have their backgrounds on technical communication and are actively involved in usability testing. As technical communicators they criticise the way thinking aloud is applied in usability testing. Ted Boren observed over 20 usability specialists in 2 … Continue reading
Davis, J.H., Carey, M.H., Foxman, P.N. and Tarr, D.B. (1968) Verbalization, experimenter presence, and problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 299-302.
James Davis et al. continued Gagne and Smith’s studies and divided the variable of thinking aloud into two variables: thinking aloud and moderator presence. The other variable of searching for a general strategy was left as it was. With the … Continue reading
Spinuzzi, C. 2002. A Scandinavian challenge, a US response: methodological assumptions in Scandinavian and US prototyping approaches. In Proceedings of the 20th annual international conference on Computer documentation SIGDOC’02, ACM, October 20-23, 2002, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Spinuzzi introduces a philosophical question about the goal for the design. The question is based on historical events starting from Ehn’s UTOPIA project, leading to CARD and PICTIVE projects, and finally ending to Beyer and Holtzblatt’s contextual design. In short, … Continue reading
Kleinsmann, M. et al. (2010), Understanding the complexity of knowledge integration in collaborative new product development teams: a case study
Paper looks at factors influencing the cretion of shared understanding in different interfaces. Design communication is in the core of product development teams, and it is needed to gain shared understanding within the teams. Hence, it is not a surprise … Continue reading
Grieb, J. and Lindemann, U. (2005) Design communication in industry: a survey analysis, ICED05
Paper looks at different communication media used in design communication in German companies. The topic is interesting but the number of participants makes the results rather potential than proven. There are representatives from 19 different companies, which gives a good … Continue reading
Grieb, J. and Lindemann, U. (2005) Providing communication media for distibuted design, ICED05
The most interesting content of this paper were the two tables that describe communication media characteristics and design situation characteristics. Matching these two will help in finding suitable communication media for each situation. In our research we have also looked … Continue reading
Wright, P. & Monk, A.F. (1991) A cost-effective evaluation method for use by designers. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies. Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 891-912.
DOI= 10.1016/S0020-7373(05)80167-1 Cooperative evaluation is a method presented by Peter Wright and Andrew Monk. This method combines elements from thinking aloud and question-asking protocol, since the users are asked to think aloud and also to ask questions from the tutor … Continue reading
Kennedy, S. (1989) Using video in the BNR usability lab. SIGCHI Bulletin. Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 92-95.
DOI=10.1145/70609.70624 Sue Kennedy presents in her article a method called Co-Discovery Learning that she and her colleagues had used in evaluating various communication systems. In Co-Discovery Learning two users cooperate and try to discover how to use a new system … Continue reading
Kato, T. (1986) What “question-asking protocols” can say about the user interface. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, Vol. 25, No. 6, pp. 659-673.
DOI= 10.1016/S0020-7373(86)80080-3 Takashi Kato presents in his article (1986) a question-asking protocol which he considers as a more natural way of behaviour than thinking aloud. In question-asking protocol, the test users are encouraged to ask questions from a tutor that … Continue reading
Paavola, S. and Hakkarainen, K. (2005) The knowledge creation metaphor – an emergent epistemological approach to learning, Science and Education, 14, pp. 535-557
I read this article because in the abstract in mentioned two things that I recently have read about: boundary objects and knowledge creation theory. However, since the focus was on teaching students the entire paper was not of my interest. … Continue reading
MARTI, P. AND BANNON, L.J. 2009. Exploring User-Centred Design in Practice: Some Caveats. Knowledge, Technology & Policy 22, 1, 7
Marti and Bannon [Marti and Bannon 2009] re-iterate UCD from its now well-established definitions and foundation (see [Norman and Draper 1986] [Gould and Lewis 1985; Gould et al. 1991] and ISO 13407) via the key principles by Gulliksen et al. … Continue reading