Design Research Methodology - Final Compilation & Reflection

on

31/08/2023  - 30/11/2023 / Week 1 - Week 14
Joey Lok Wai San / 0350857
Design Research Methodology / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media 
Final Compilation & Reflection 


TABLE OF CONTENTS


INSTRUCTIONS

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ppU_LaSg-fL1WvFsaL_57W0bJvyqN0Ke/preview


FINAL COMPILATION


Fig. 1.1 Full Canva Slides - PDF, Week 14 (30/11/2023)


Fig. 1.2 Recorded Presentation - MP4, Week 14 (30/11/2023)
Fig. 1.3 Simplified Presentation Slides - PDF, Week 14 (30/11/2023)


ASSIGNMENT 1 & 2: Research Proposal & Critical Review


Fig. 1.1 Final Research Proposal & Critical Review - PDF, Week 7 (12/10/2023)


ASSIGNMENT 3: Primary Data


Fig. 1.3 Final Primary Data - PDF, Week 12 (19/11/2023)

FEEDBACK
Specific Feedback
Research Topic
- Beware when researching about machine learning or AI as the research may end up about the phenomena instead of the design work.
- *Will change the topic to 'dark patterns in UI' - suggested choosing an app to study, how the dark patterns are applied, or a key study to look at.

Problem Statement
- Must be doable or measurable

Research Question
- Should not be about the working environment or the job opportunities or how designers work; the research is about the output. of a design (design quality and design process)
- Do not start the questions with "does" or "do", because it gives a  "yes or no" answer and does not generate more discussion. By adding a "how" in front, you can research about how something happens.

Research Objectives
- The question will sound similar because you want to find out how to be able to meet the objective.

WEEK 4
General Feedback
- Do not quote too much, paraphrase the sentence to show your understanding 
- Do not write in first person POV, use words such as “the researcher.”

WEEK 5
No feedback provided (Public Holiday)

WEEK 6
Specific Feedback
Research Proposal
Problem Statement:
- Choose e-commerce interfaces carefully
- When you refer to dark patterns you're also talking about strategies and design aspects of it (e.g. icons, call to action, visual representation involved in dark patterns that lead to a certain behaviour)

Research Objectives and Research Questions: 
- Maximum three ROs
- Define the dark patterns. From your 'problem statement', the dark patterns are mainly strategies - be more specific about the dark patterns such as what makes them click subscribe - is it something they see visually?
- Make the dark patterns clear so that it is talking about a specific aspect of UI (such as the UI designs)
- Change RO1 to "investigate how visual design, micro-interactions) are incorporated into dark patterns that affect user behaviour" 
- Remove RO3 
- Overall the objectives are: how it makes them want to take action/ how it impacts user behaviour TO what are the good practises and how the dark patterns can be ethically used 

Critical Review 
- Introduction and conclusion (site the article in your text) 
- Can duplicate research method used in the articles for Project 3 
- Finish the rest of the review 

WEEK 7
General Feedback
- Include the target audience and age range. Justify how your methodology is related to your research

Specific Feedback
- Consider the participants who are able to answer the survey and who purchase from e-commerce websites. Find the specific group and use them as the participants to send the survey to. 
- In the problem statement, generally state the type of e-commerce platform (e.g. high traffic, selection of products) 
- Add references to the general advantages and disadvantages section

WEEK 8
No feedback provided (Independent Learning Week)

WEEK 9
General Feedback
- Don't include personal details such as phone number, best to use your school email

Specific Feedback
Primary Data
Content and layout are well organized and planned, with proper justification and support from literature. The introduction is good to go. 

Section 1: Demographic Questions
- Nationality: Not needed, unless taking the e-commerce's language feature into consideration

Section 2: Definition of dark patterns
- Good, necessary question

Section 3: Understanding dark patterns
- Questions are good to go well-designed and related to your research problem. Change Question 11 "Have you changed your behaviour" to "Are you more well informed now  (more self-awareness)?" If questions are related to each other, you just need one justification

Research Objective
- Remove research objectives number 2, two research objectives are sufficient and RO2 is similar to/ can be answered by RO1

WEEK 10
Specific Feedback
- The survey is ready to be sent out, and the questions are fine. Some people will give longer answers, and some will give shorter answers there is no way to control that unless a word count is set.

WEEK 11
Specific Feedback
- Minimum respondents met, you can keep the survey open until the end of the week - may be possible to collect 100 responses

WEEK 12
Specific Feedback
- Very well organized, systematically placed and easy to refer to.
- Good to words like "it is possible" to show you are attempting to understand how this data is related to your research

For long answer responses: 
1) Partial answers: show a screenshot as evidence that you have that data
2) Place the link of the survey
3)  Use headings for answers - look out for the most, top two or three, common answers and then the analysis of those answers
4) Quote one or two of the answers the qualitative answers

WEEK 13
General Feedback
- Leave space to place your video in the slides
- Can create a simplified version of the slides, around 23-25 slides

WEEK 14
Specific Feedback
- Simplified presentation slides are concise and consistent
- Add in a conclusion to sum up the data analysis at the end


REFLECTION
Reflection can be found at the end of the full set of slides (Assignment 4)

Experience
Assignment 1: Research Proposal
I struggled a lot at the beginning of this research project, mainly because my initial idea about “Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine: The effects of applying AI-enhanced design tools to UI/UX” was rejected. Being an indecisive person, I spent a considerable amount of time struggling to choose a suitable topic and research problem. I went back and forth between "Emotional Design in UI" and "Dark Patterns in UI/UX," ultimately deciding to concentrate on the latter because of how important it is to our everyday lives and how frequently it is disregarded as something that isn't manipulative - and also because there were more studies conducted around deceptive design. Everything about it screamed "dark and mysterious," which drew me in and made it a topic worth researching.  

Despite the challenging start, I believe it was well worth my time to contemplate and select a topic that would facilitate the following assignments. This was a valuable opportunity to conduct research in my field of study, especially because I am more interested in writing and research over art and design. While I was pretty familiar with research essays, this was my first big research project and I am determined to learn and improve my research skills. I am grateful for Dr JinChi’s guidance throughout the assignment, suggesting improvements in the proposal which would benefit later down the line in the other assignments as well. 

Assignment 2: Critical Review
I was initially slightly intimidated by this assignment because of the substantial amount of reading we would have to do. Once I got over that, I realized it was similar to writing another research essay and the process went by surprisingly quickly: read the study, analyse the text, and find references to support your points. I am glad for all the research essays I did during my Foundation year, as well as my English Literature subject in IGCSE, they really prepared me for this research assignment. To be completely honest, I did not fully understand why we were focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of a research paper rather than the content. While I understand it benefits us to understand what to do and not do when writing our own research paper, I felt like the content was also important to take note of as it could provide insights into our research problem, objectives and questions. Despite the ups and downs throughout the process, it was very enjoyable to finally write a research report after a long time of not doing so. 

Assignment 3: Primary Data
I enjoy this module and the research, but survey distribution and primary data collection scare me. I felt pretty awkward asking a bunch of my contacts, especially people I haven't spoken to in a while, to respond to my survey. Sharing and forcing people to do something? Uh, no thank you. I felt relieved when the primary data collection was finished, and I was able to wrap up the research project and summarise it. In hindsight, it was a good opportunity to get over my fear of communicating with random people. While analysing the data, I discovered mistakes in the survey questions - they were slightly repetitive and did not ask for further explanations in some cases, which was a real whack to the head. Unfortunately, I had to deal with it as there was nothing I could do about it. I appreciate the participants' insightful survey responses as they provided a solid framework for my research. Additionally, I am thankful for Dr. Jinchi’s advice and criticism, for being very thorough with her feedback and suggestions and for reading through everything.

Observation
Assignment 1: Research Proposal
I observed that I learn better when I receive feedback every week. By doing my best to stay on progress every week, I am able to get full guidance and the necessary feedback to improve my work. Watching the lecture videos has helped me to learn more about the theoretical aspects of research and by rewatching the lecture videos multiple times I am able to retain the information more effectively when writing my research problem, research objectives, research questions and problem statement. I noticed that going through the reading materials improved my understanding of the structure of each component and the requirements. All this has helped me to expand my knowledge in writing a research proposal, which is important as it acts as a structure for the following assignments going forward. 

Assignment 2: Critical Review
My observation from this assignment was that my research structure got better the more I planned out and organised the contents. I realize that by going through the lecture materials, I am able to learn from the basic structure provided and adjust it according to my own on top of what I just learned. I also observed that it's critical to review more recent research papers, meaning those that have been published in the last five years, and to give authors proper, up-to-date citations. Research papers that are more recent benefit from the advancement of technology and learning from past research papers, therefore tend to contain updated data than those that were published more than five years ago.

Assignment 3: Primary Data
Throughout this research assignment, I realised that conducting primary research is not a simple task and is, in fact, very challenging. The process of organising and conducting primary research, and analysing the data gathered takes a significant amount of time and effort. I observed that time management was extremely crucial, especially with the timeframe we were given. If collecting responses took too much time, there would not be enough time to analyse the data thoroughly. As I was analysing the survey data, it was eye-opening to observe different viewpoints on the topic of dark patterns and deceptive designs that they were previously unaware of. It was also helpful that participants gave some insightful responses as well. 

Findings
Assignment 1: Research Proposal
I found that writing a research proposal is quite similar to drafting a research essay, but in this case, you need to have supporting data as evidence. While writing my problem statement, I discovered that many people were unaware of dark patterns, which prompted me to research this topic in the hopes of informing people of its influence. I also found that there are a lot of factors to consider when drafting a research proposal - since you will be devoting a significant amount of time to it, it is crucial to be sure this is the topic you want to pursue. It is important to understand how to write each section of the proposal as well as the qualities of a strong research problem, objectives, questions, etc.

Assignment 2: Critical Review
I found that reading through the research articles takes a lot of patience and observation, especially with concepts you’ve never come across before and takes time to understand. I also found the limitations of using Google Scholar and just searching for keywords like “dark patterns”, “e-commerce” and “UI/UX” limited the number of research papers on my specific topic. Dark patterns is not a very well-known topic by the general public, and while there are plenty of research papers they may be categorised under different topic names such as “manipulative/deceptive design”. I also observed that asking questions before writing a critical review helps me understand the point I’m trying to make. For example, what are the main issues raised by the author, whether the study is biased and where the data and evidence comes from. These little details are important because they help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. 

Assignment 3: Primary Data
This research assignment taught me a lot and I found that certain research methods were beneficial for certain topics and what each topic aims to discover. In my case, I found that the survey method was the most suitable method to conduct my research. I also discovered some errors in my survey, as previously mentioned in my "Experience" section. My mistakes when creating a survey helped me understand how important it is to develop a plan before the responses are gathered, as it is not possible to change the survey questions midway through data collection. If I get the chance to do this again in the future, I will make sure my survey or any primary data collection method is more planned out. There is definitely room for improvement in my primary data collection skills. 

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