Research Methods 101By Elliott HedmanPart of Festival of Learning

Findings before research methods

Findings After Research Methods

Outline Am I doing Human Research? Getting Started Conducting Evaluation Practicals Questions/Case Studies

Warnings I am not Traditional, I am Media Lab I care a lot about inspiring design. I work a lot with companies. You will not learn the things I am about

to tell you in any class. In fact, many, many people will disagree with me.

There is not one right way. The wrong way would be not caring.

Am I doing research?Art Research

Am I doing ResearchMechanical/Engineering Research

Am I doing Research?Product Design

Am I doing Research?Human Research

Mixing Them Up

Getting StartedGrounded TheoryCommunityA Way To Observe

Grounded TheoryRead the literature

Talk to Major Players

Expand the Wheel

CommunityLive with them

Get outside the lab

Copy previously done research

Ways to ObserveHow will I learn?

How to do AWESOME ResearchThe Right QuestionStart EarlyPrototypeParticipatory DesignThe Lots of Data Problem

Choosing the Right QuestionWhat’s the big vision?

What do you love doing?

Play.

Start EarlySpace Allows Creativity

Technology Overload Problem

PrototypeFail Early, Fail Often

Make a New Prototype Every Day

Myth of Rigor

Participatory DesignThe final judge is the people who care

Communities will inspire you

Too Much DataLots of Data is not a band-aid

Different than learning as you go.

EvaluationThe Dangers of Machine LearningThe Dangers of Quantitative MethodsThe Dangers of Qualitative Methods

Machine LearningMachine Learning shows whether you can separate two parts of data.

You need to know a lot of statistics to appropriately use this in research.

Quantitative Methods Sampling

http://onlinestatbook.com/2/introduction/sampling_demo.html

Quantitative Methods Variability

http://onlinestatbook.com/2/summarizing_distributions/spread_sim.html

Quantitative Methods Correlations

http://onlinestatbook.com/2/describing_bivariate_data/pearson_demo.html

Quantitative Methods T-Test

Do the Means Differ?

Are people more self-aware working with a robot?

Quantitative Methods Regression Analysis or ANOVA

Do the Means Differ taking into account X, Y, and Z.

Are people more self-aware working with a robot taking into account gender, personality type, and financial income?

Quantitative Methods Correlations

When X changes, does Y change as well Does the larger the robot correlate to

the more self-aware a person is?

Quantitative Methods Warning! P<0.05 - the means may be different

Does not equate to the differences are large or interesting

Most people already have an answer before they ask their question

Does not allow for discovery.

Quantitative Methods Warning! Part 2 Normal Distribution Hidden Variables Independent Samples Proper Sample Size Number of Tests Transformations Within or Across

Qualitative Methods Tell People What you Really Learned Open Ended – Let the world come in Descriptive Flexible

Qualitative Methods Short Interviews / Surveys

Did you feel more self-aware after working with the robots?

Create biases Acceptable in journal?

Long-Interviews 1 to 1.5 hours

Open-Ended

Interpretation Difficult and Long

Observational Methods

Fly on the Wall

See what people naturally do

Grounded TheoryQualitative Methods require strong grounded theory

WarningsTraditional Ethnography is near impossible to do in the Media Lab

Interviews are more difficult to conduct correctly and take a longer time than statistics

Cannot answer questions about how frequent an event occurs.

Will it get accepted?

Warnings Part 2Grounded Theory1. Transcribe all the

important interviews2. Write field-notes about

each of your interviews.3. Go through all the

transcriptions and highlight every time a theme occurs.

4. Relate findings to previous established theory about that theme.

5. Go back through all the notes again.

It’s Great to Fail!You are here to learn and try! But make sure you try!

Resources to Check Out

Quantitative Books Cohen & Lea (2004). Essentials of Statistics

for the Social and Behavioral Sciences. New Jersey:

Wiley & Kline (2009). Becoming a Behavioral Science Researcher: A Guide to Producing Research That Matters. New York: Guilford Press.

Lane, D., Lu, J., Peres, C &. Zitek, E (2008). Online Statistics: An Interactive Multimedia Course ofStudy. http://onlinestatbook.com/

Qualitative Books Luker, Kristin. (2008). Salsa Dancing into

the Social Sciences: Research in an age of info-glut

Emerson, Robert (1995). Writing Ethnographic Field Notes.

People Statistics: Benj. Mako Hill Qualitative: Karen Brennan, Tiffany

Tseng Industrial/Design Research: Elliott

Hedman

Quantitative Classes ANOVA statistics with M.L. Cummings

Engineering Systems, MIT Empirical Methods 1 and II (API-202A)

Make sure to do the A class Kenedy School of Government, Harvard

Harvard School of Education Lots of Good APPLIED classes Do PhD Level

Qualitative Classes 21A.760J Qualitative Research Methods

Difficult to get into Must have strong Grounded Theory

Harvard School of Education MIT School of Architecture

Methods Class 21A.861 Methods for Graduate Research

in the Social Sciences Psychology 1901a - Methods of

Behavioral Research Harvard Psychology

Questions and Case Studies Feel Free to Reach Out With Questions:

hedman@media.mit.edu