Theme 5: Design research

The paper by Jacobsson et al. [1] talks about designing or developing physical languages to program robotic consumer products in a way that the behaviours can be controlled and predicted. The physical languages could be clothes or accessories as they may represent different things or have different functions. Jacobsson et al. argue that since many products are physical and lack display, it's relevant to consider alternate ways of controlling the products. They are thus exploring ways to physically control the products by various means. They develop a design concept called actDresses where they have drawn inspiration from fashion and the sign languages from comics.

It would be interesting if there was an example where the design concept was applied on a human robot. Realistic-looking human or pet robots could feel personal as they'd advance technically and people could feel attachment as they'd be like new friends while interacting. Could development of such robots be dangerous to the social development of society, where people today are becoming more and more dependent on technology for social interaction?

The paper by Li et al. [2] was discussing the possibility of a new method to use the vibration technology in mobile phones for live football games. The idea was to synchronize the movements of the ball with the vibrations of the phone in a way that users are able to recognize for example attacking directions and location of the ball in the field. Different vibration signals would be interpreted and understood for the corresponding information.

The Swedish Academy's dictionary describes a prototype as the term for something that is in its first kind, an original or a model for creation of something, among others [3]. The Swedish National Encyclopedia [4] defines a prototype as an original model that the following will be based upon and that is true to function, construction and appearance. The purpose of a prototype is thus to show some kind of model of the intended finished product. It could be illustrations or photographs for example that could present various factors of the product such as functionality, appearance, etc.

In the case of the paper by Li et al., one of the prototypes shown was an illustration of how the system was intended to work, from the video showing the football game and the video being interpreted to vibration signals to the vibrator motor reacting. There's also an illustration of the mobile phone with a vibrator, which is shown in a photograph where they had done a mock-up of it together with a printed circuit board.

The prototype could play different roles, e.g. testing the functionality of a product with a mock-up, structuring an idea with illustrations, verifying a design or clarifying other types of information requirements of a product [5]. The prototypes are part of the development process to a finalized product, so for research they are important in order to find any possible faults, parts that could be enhanced or need to be studied further. I think they are also important to show in research papers for higher credibility and visually proving knowledge, as they show the functionality, the way the testing was run, etc. It also gives better understanding to the reader of what has been done.

The main characteristics of a prototype is that they are like drafts of an intended final product. Prototypes go through an iterative process – drafts that are continuously changed. The prototypes are discussed, tested, evaluated, etc. before advancing to the next stage of prototyping where the new suggestions for improvement are applied. Using prototypes before building the final product is the best way to go as mistakes and wrong decisions ought to be discovered. Correcting these mistakes afterward is expensive as the product has already been produced or the finished developed software needs to change the information structure [6]. One of the reasons working with prototypes is that all these details are not known yet.

The limitations of a prototype on the other hand would be the fact that it's not a finished product and therefore tests that are run on the prototype might turn out false or confusing depending on the quality of the prototype [6]. This could be due to the difficulty of imagining the intended final product from a prototype, as some details and certain functionality are not included.

Another limitation is that the iteration process of prototyping may be very time-consuming. For each testing of a prototype, oftentimes new suggestions are discovered and therefore new testings will be required to see if the new adjustments are satisfying. To do that, new prototypes will have to be created with the new adjustments. If the testing is done with human test subjects, then new people will have to be found each time and that could become expensive.

Sources:

[1]: Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM. 
[2]: Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6), 1022-1033.
[3]: 'prototyp'. Svenska Akademiens ordbok (Swedish Academy's dictionary). 
[4]: 'prototyp'. Nationalencyklopedin (Swedish National Encyclopedia).
[5]: Definition of prototyping. Pcmag. 
[6]: Advantage & Disadvantage of Prototyping process model. iotap.com.