How to get a PhD with virtual balls and a crème brulee
• The context • The story • The ‘new’ bit • The observations
How to get a PhD with virtual balls and a crème brulee
• It’s personal • It’s subjective• It’s emotional • It’s old stuff
A model
Context
Goal/objectiveUser
Device
A different model
• User(s)• Task / Goal• Device• Environment
or context (social and physical)
The problem
• New emerging technologies
• HCI tools not good enough
• Guidelines to design tools
• Support design as well as evaluation
The problem
‘I have seen well-respected usability professionals blandly take pot shots (at design solutions)…when their rigorous, scientific method uncovered a problem area, they would lapse into the most amateurish babbling about solutions: “well, I guess we could move this control over to this dialog box”… it was very time consuming but not solving the problems’Cooper 1999 pp 210-211
The solution
• ‘Situated’ design tools
• Successful approach
Outputs from tools
Outputs from tools
Outputs from tools
The new knowledge
• Given ‘certain’ conditions the design tools work
• Quietly radical
The new knowledge
• Organisational factions
• Guarded use of innovation
• Institutionalised product development
Some thoughts
• New knowledge can be very small
• Human science-based research is hard
• Real applied research is a nightmare!
• Rigour vs results• Watch your
epistemology• Crisis of confidence is
normal
Some more thoughts
• Sloppy thinking is your enemy
• It’s only a PhD not nobel research
• Pick an examiner who’s been round the block
• You will get sick of it• Writing-up is the hard
part
Finally
• Nobody ever calls you ‘Dr’
• It sounds patronising when they do
