Student papers

I'll add feedback here on Thursday 9 Oct. (during the day, mostly in late afternoon).

General observation regarding missing inference. Only one of the papers ("shops") explained inference, i.e. what happened after you came back from the town to the university and went from data to your resultsThis is exactly the reason why inference is crucial in research and business alike: readers and listeners have to be able to understand why you focus changes before they believe you. In our class, I give you a grade; two years from now on, you'll be bidding for money for your proposals, and face a decision that affecs your life. Therefore, check the logic again and in methods section, explain not only data gathering, but also what I called inference.

Group 1: Parking and information design (4MB)

This paper has the virtue of going straight to the topic. It is also short and concise. It explains data gathering well, and its internal loic works: it answers the question it sets. The main problems, as expected, in inference: the paper changes question in the middle. It stars from parking but ends up to dealing with traffic signs without explaining why this a change of focus takes place. Building the paper around your main observation of bad information design in the neighborhood would have opened far more interesting insights than knowing that the parking lot is not successful.

Group 2: People in the park (added 13 Oct 10:30. - I'll fix the pictures when I get new images)

This paper looks at why people stay in the park, and what role tram stops make for the park, with no apparent emphasis on technology. The paper makes interesting observations also from a design standpoint: first, people stay in the park longer in the dark than during the daytime. Is there a design opportunity, or does it suggest that the park has failed somehow? As far as I know, there is no drug trafficking in the park, but creating a no-man's land in the middle of an urban neighborhood with some shady corners nearby, with good trafiic connections is kind of surprising. And it goes certainly in contrast to the beautification plan of the park. Thus, if your observation holds, it may suggest bad future to the place, unless the City puts good lighting there. Second, the fences: the paper notes that fences in the park tend to isolate the place. Again, a design fault: the City does not want people to go to grass, and want to guide in best Nordic tradition people to behave in just certain ways. The result is a park that is stiff. Compare this to Old Church Park just around the corner, with no fences or other signs suggesting where to go. It is hugely popular in good weather. What's wrong with Diana Park?

Analysis is good, based on images. Taking photos, printing them, and classifying them into piles is a good method. You could have used the matrix logic to pose additional questions, for example, by taking your piles of images and decomposing them into a matrix by not only place, but also gender, or even the time of the day. Still, it is good that you wrote a paragraph of your analysis, and showed how it happaned with a photo. This is the way to go.

Finally, the main problem of the paper was that you did write hypotheses... If you're doing qualitative studies, hypotheses are always risky. Thus, even though the template I gave you has the magic word, you could have listened to my lectures instead, and either dropped the word hypothesis altogether, or rewritten it into something like "the research question".

Group 3: Rhythm (NOTE: >13MB)

This paper is far less focused than the paper by Group 1, but is equally rich in its observations. The paper is longes partly because it deals with several topics without clearly wrapping them around with one theme. Still, the paper raises an interesting issue about the identity of the place, which is clearly something that is missing and not quite up to the promise of the Design District. It also substantiates this claim well by showing that the park has many types of uses at different times of the day. In a real design or research process, I'd say that the paper would be greatly improved by focusing on the dilemma of identity: clearly, Design District if one possible identity, but reality is more complex. Is Design District built on sand, or could the park and its surroundings really become a Design District? How? Searching cues from people in the area would be crucial in answering this question.

Groups 4-5: Shops

This paper explored technological needs of shopkeepers. The group was pretty large, and broke in two, one focusing on user stuff sellers, another on brand name shops. The hypothesis was that shopkeepers are happy with technology they have, and the paper's main conclusions says that data supports the hypothesis. The paper is logical, and is reflective at the end, when it poses the question of whether the hypothesis needs to be rewritten. Unlike other papers, this paper explains the logic used in analysis, matrixes, and even though space limitations make it impossible to get into details of analysis, I believe this description. The paper also pays attention to "deviant cases," i.e. a shopkeeper who has cam-phone readable barcoded business cards.

As far as I see, the main problem is that the paper misses two important resources. First, there were data from two different types of shops. However, this is nowhere to be seen. The paper didn't compare these two sets of data, and did not even raise the question of whether they might be different somehow - that is, if something might explain possible differences or non-differences. And, if not shops, shopkeepers? Second, there is the deviant case of a modern antique shop with the phone barcode system. His existence raises the question: if you look closer, what else shows up? This piece of evidence makes it difficult to fully accept the conclusion that no ned technology is needed. Perhaps it is just laziness from shopkeepers' part?

(In addition: it is not a good design attitude to think that people do just fine with their existing devics. Designers are there to improve things, but improving things must be preceded by an analysis of existing things. However, this is not a design class, so I won't dwell on this.)

Group 6: Technology providers

This paper describes networks in the park and its vicinity, from WLAN hotspots to open entworks and Hesinki Transit Authority's bus timetable systems. Data for the paper was gathered from the Web, and also by walking around the park while listening to networks with laptops, if I got it correctly. The description is good and I trust it.

However, the paper remains descriptive, not posing the obvious questions such as are people in the park area served or not, and what explains the current situation, which is not good, given the fact that the neighborhood has a working population disposed to use net in its work. There is nothing wrong in description as such, but in the end, data gahering is easy; the true difficulty in research and design alike is coming up with somthing interesting and intelligent with data. This is why I stressed inference rather than data gathering. Could you propose a design with your current analysis? Probably not, even though there is clearly an opportunity for improving the park,