What have I learned after this week about Design Research ???
During this week we examined the “Design
Research”. In the beginning of the week we attended a lecture by Professor
Haibo Lee on the topic “Media Technology from Engineering Perspective”. I have
to say that, even if the lecture was quite interesting I don’t really see the
connection with the week’s theme. However, I would like to present some of
Professors states that I found interesting. As Prof. Lee underscored, the
Golden Rule of being an engineer is how to solve a problem. First you define
the problem and second you try to solve it; and if you want to become great,
you have to spend most of your time in the defining.
Furthermore, he presented us some guide lines
on how to manage our ideas. The first step is to have an idea then you have to
make this idea come true. Often we have too many ideas, so which one should we
choose? We need a formula for been able to judge without making a mistake. So,
in order to filter our ideas for finding the really good one, we need a check
list, the so called “Business Plan Check-List”.
It is important to commercialize technology and
to be able to see if an idea is a “Great” one when you see it. But what does
“Great” means? “Great” idea means that you can generate billion dollars for the
business that implements the idea. An idea can also be “Big” which is about
million dollars or “Innovative” that is a really new idea. Here I would like to
highlight that a good idea does not need to have a technological innovation.
For example Facebook is based on already known technology while its idea/concept
was a Great one. In conclusion, to validate an idea, get some sort of proof of
concept, and even potentially get some costumers, this will help you to raise
some money.
“Want to
start a business? Forget the MBA. Just do it!”
Samara Mitra [1]
Additionally, in this week’s seminar we
examined many different types of design research methods. With my group we
focused on the design research article “Prototyping for Tiny Fingers” written
in 1994 by Marc Rettig; this is one of first studies to argue for the use of
Lo-Fi prototypes. Rettig is based on the old methods for creating a new prototype
through which he conducts a new method. Thereafter, he compares the methods,
old and new, and after his evaluation the new standard is set [2].
Reference:
Hey Katerina,
SvaraRaderaI think that you actually build the connection between Haibo’s lecture and this weeks’ topic without noticing: Design research can be done for example by using prototypes. And if you want to use them, you also have to face problems, which are sometimes not easy to define and to solve. Haibo pointed out very well how to handle such tasks: 10 % on defining and 90 % on solving the problem, if you want to be fast. On the other hand, you can spend 90 % on defining and 10 % on solving the problem, if you seek to fame and greatness in your field. Hope this helped to get the connection.