Theme 5: Design Research pre-reflection

Comics, Robot, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDress

The article is concerned with physical programming and how inspiration for such physical programming languages can be collected from comics and fashion. Reading the article, I was faced with confusion about the meaning of physical programming and did not find any definitions through searching the Internet. The word "physical" indicates that is can either be programming physical factors (such as movement) or programming by physical means in terms of clothing etc. After reading the article I understand in which sense they use the term, but I am still a little confused because of the ambiguations. A short definition in the introduction could have been helpful in getting a deeper understanding of the problem domain.
The key points of the article however concerns physical programming in terms of how symbols and clothing could improve the usage of robots, i.e. so that the purposes of the robots can be understood and easily perceived but also changed for example according to changed clothing. From observations from fashion and comics, the authors suggest a physical programming language called actDressed and explore its application it in three different scenarios.
Since the authors seek to make a system for physical programming and to maximise usability, I find that the article totally lacks evaluation methods. How can we ultimately know (as in creating theory) that this is a good system if nothing but "common semiotics" are used and not evaluated?

Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration

The article is about trying to get users to perceive a football game through tactile feedback (vibration). The authors have designed a device that gives users feedback on information in a football game, such as goals, team ball possession and shots.
The hypothesis that the authors are trying to investigate is how vibration can be used to communicate information that can be recognised by users only through tactile feedback. So as in a user oriented research or media technology research that is concerned with ensuring that information is communicated, users somehow have to bee included to ensure that it actually works. The research in question includes users by developing a functioning prototype that is then evaluated on actual users. Without the prototype, how could one evaluate if the hypothesis is good or bad?
But of course, as the word suggests, a prototype is a prototype and not a ready-made application. I.e. prototypes are used to test the fundamental function of a device but do not resemble a ready-made product. So the step from prototype to product might produce much better results or much worse. To ensure that a prototype is not far fetched and actually focuses on the factors that one is trying to measure, some kind of theory or proof that the prototype is based on is preferable. In the research in question, the basic functioning of the prototype is based on other research and theory, in form of restrictions of the vibration-parameters and guidelines for application of these.
What I find really well performed in the paper, is the identification of the important factors of a well working interactive product: Efficiency and user satisfaction. After identifying these factors the authors also concentrate on trying to measure how these factors are furfilled in the users experience. These measures are then communicated through diagrams and other correlation measures etc. and really give you a good overview of how the prototype is performing.
All in all, a really interesting and well-made article!