Daily log
From ThesisWiki
November
November 21
Transcribed results of sticky note session into a digital form. Read part of Design Noir.
November 18
Six hour worksession to do affinity mapping of sticky notes. Clustered, reflected upon, and wrote key design implications for each cluster.
November 17
Finished transfer of research to sticky notes. Picked up photos.
November 16
Started transferring key points from research on to sticky notes. Dropped off film to be developed.
November 15
- Finished reading all the data from the website research.
- Re-read portions of two key papers from my literature review.
- Started to devise a way of analyzing the data.
- Tried to take the cameras in but the store's photo equipment is still broken.
- Did lots of random web searches to find more related articles before deciding that I really need to stop doing literature review and start using my own data.
November 8-14
Collecting cameras and doing an initial reading of the answer to the web-based research study.
November 7
A final question is emailed to all participants along with thank-you messages. Hopefully I can get some funding to compensate them in the future.
November 1-6
Web-based study continues daily. Every day a reminder email is sent to all the participants.
October
October 30
Web-based study begins. Every day for the next week I will send out an email reminding participants to visit the site. They will log-in and answer some questions every day.
October 29
E-mail participants about the study explaining that I will email them every day and how the website works.
October 28
Finish website for research study (database and PHP work)
October 27
Interview with someone who is in an international long-distance relationship. Also did a joint interview with a couple who will be participating in my web-based research study. He was in town for the weekend so I was able to talk to them both at once.
October 26
Begin working on website for research study.
October 25
Gave camera to one participant. Met with two other students at a restaurant to discuss our thesis topics.
October 24
Interviewed a research participant who will be involved in a second wave of my web-based research. Their situation necessitates that it happen in mid-November instead of next week.
October 23
Interviewed a research participant who responded to my Craiglist posting. Gave her a camera and IRB form.
October 22
Transcribed all interviews done last week into a digital format. Planned website research and wrote questions that will be asked of the participants each day. Finalized structure of the web-based research.
October 19
Did two interviews.
October 18
Did one interview.
October 17
I had two more interviews this morning, one from a person will be participating with his partner in the longer study. These both went really well and while I haven't analyzed them yet I can feel some themes emerging that haven't started to solidify until now.
October 16
Had two interviews where I tried to probe on some of the dominant themes that are emerging. This only sort work worked but they were fruitful regardless. I'm beginning to wonder if I should just specialize on students in LDRs since they're the easiest to find and the most common type anyway. I guess I'm worried about it being too "studenty" but then again it's still a real issue.
Transcribed and reflected on the notes from the interviews. Two more interviews tomorrow, three more after that this week. I really need to focus on getting the web prototype going since I want to have this research session start on the 30th. I also need to find more participants.
I also started flipping through the LDR advice books I checked out of the library. Pretty good stuff from a different perspective. They seem to be the result of many interviews so the insights should be valid despite not being academic.
October 15
Typed up and organized the notes I took from my interviews. I'm looking for patterns and themes that I can use to focus my upcoming interviews this week. I've begun looking through Long-Distance relationship books as well to see if similar themes come up.
October 12
Rescheduled all interview for this week until next week.
October 11
This morning I heard back from one person and confirmed my first couple who will participate in the web-based study. Four more to go.
I did one early morning interview before my thesis meeting with my adviser. She suggested that I take time to analyze and reflect on the data I'm getting before doing any more interviews. I'm trying to reschedule the 4 meetings I had set up yet this week so I can use the weekend to reflect. We set up a list of things to work on before next week:
- Look at data from interviews.
- Continue literature review from non-design sources.
- Begin prototyping/ideation for web-based study.
She also suggested getting photos somehow to augment the study. I decided to use disposable cameras, distributed only to the Pittsburgh person in the couples.
October 10
Updated back log of the daily log. Had one interview and set up a new one for Thursday. Emailed a potential research participant and made a post to Craigslist.
October 9
Interviewed 5 people about their long distance relationships. Each interview was roughly an hour long and recorded via note taking. All of the people were respondents of my earlier email.
October 6-8
In Chicago at About, With, and For conference. Good stimulation related to design research.
October 6
IRB has been approved. I haven't been keeping this log up to date but will start doing better.
October 5
Sent an email to colleagues asking for participation help in my research study. They were given three different ways they would help me out.
October 3-4
Switching modes to finding and reading about papers from communication theory and sociology instead of just design projects. This is a much needed prospective shift. Found an awesome paper summarizing studies done about long-distance relationships and requested it from the library. Also checked out two books designed for couples to "make their long distance relationship work" to see what kind of advice they give and references they make.
October 1-2
Out of town. Surprisingly I can't read very well in a car; I thought that I could.
September
September 30
Out of town.
September 29
My birthday!
September 26-28
Reading, thinking about research methods.
September 25
Changed wiki license to Creative Commons instead of default GFDL -- this one makes more sense for the work I'm putting up here. Made tons of changes to the wiki and wrote up thoughts on papers and other projects.
September 24
I turns out I wasn't finished with the model after all. I refined it today and went through each project mapped on to the 2x2 to check it's position relative to other projects. Along with this tweaking I added in existing presence in absence techniques such as letter writing and email.
September 23
Finalized the model of other projects, which is now oriented on the axises of explicit/implicit interaction and synchronous/asynchronous communication. The result of the placements show a lack of projects dealing with asynchronous communication, particularly with implicit interaction. Because of this I may want to focus on something that would be placed on the right-hand side of the model around the middle or the bottom.
September 22
I had lunch with EA to talk about our thesis work. It was good to discuss with someone else who is going through the process of trying to figure out the scope and plan for this. We also got into a discussion of her LDR as it relates to my thesis topic. Some good things to think about came out of that.
I also worked on the model of other projects, trying to make sense of them with different 2x2 layouts. Mapping explicit/implicit was obvious and easy, the other axis is what gave me a lot of trouble. I need to get this done in the next couple of days.
