Working with text

Yesterday we spent most of the day working with the texts in preparation for the seminar in the afternoon. I like how we have focused more on the texts this year. There seem to be a lot more discussion in the class this year, maybe because everyone is always working in the studio, but it may also be the seminars that force people to read the texts. Anyway, the fact that more people read the text I think has a kind of synergy, where everyone gets more out of the texts as we can discuss it more. Or it's just me reading better.

The seminar

As we in our group already had been discussing the questions for the seminar for a couple of hours, we had already answered most of the questions, but discussing it in class gave us some new perspectives. Having David there deepened my understanding a bit more and opened new discussions.

We talked about how much data you need for your research and some people, me included, felt that there was not enough data to draw some conclusions. While I understand, and agree with, that qualitative research has different restrictions than quantitative studies, I just don't think some of the conclusions where justified in some cases. It's nitpicking but I still think some conclusions in the field study are weird. When 50% of group A says something, it's not ok to group them with group B that was testing a totally different prototype and conclude that prototype A had this quality just because group B thought prototype B had the same quality. You should just be honest and say that the interviews are inconsistent. I think that the way these people work may have more to say about it than the visual queues.

Group work

We have yet to pick a situation to work with. I had some ideas i will present to the group today.

• A glanceable todo list. It could be something like making a second display view for Github where you see the issues you have taken for the day.
• A time tracking app that lets you see if you are tracking billable hours and for what project
• Notifications for your computer on a phone. Moving them from the main screen would also mean that you can easily turn them off by flipping the phone.
• Some kind of running "coach"
• A dystopian gig economy situation where you see how little you make and maybe also how you should act.

My ideas seem to be rooted in my real world problems and not that exciting. We should do something crazier.