Studio 11 - Methods Reading

Harry Brignull’s Dynamo Paper

The introduction of a shared interactive surface into a communal space

- Harry Brignull, Shahram Izadi, Geraldine Fitzpatrick,

Yvonne Rogers and Tom Rodden

What is the main points of this paper about?

1. Students - Studying how they socialize, mix and interact and if they share/exchange variety of digital media.
2. Interactive displays - how they are introduced into established communal areas.
3. Integration - understanding how technologies can be implemented into a communal area.
4. Usability Study - Using dynamo (multi-user interaction device that shares/exchanges digital media).
5. Development - Introducting the dynamo system to students taking part in the ethnographic usability study.
6. Deployment - How the system was first introduced to students via leaflets for the up-coming deployment of the dynamo system.

This paper covers the Dynamo interactive multi-user system which allows users (students in this case) to interact with the system and to share/exchange digital media between themselves using the dynamo system. The overall goal of this usability study is to initially find out how students interact with each other, how and if they share/exchange digital media between each other. In the later stages of this paper the overall goal becomes clear that Harry Brignull et al wish to discover how novel technologies and, in particular interactive displays can be integrated into an established communal area.

Fig 1. Layout of the common room used in the study

Qualitative data

In Harry Brignull's Dynamo paper Pg. 3, sub-section 4.1 The Setting, you come across the first example of qualitative data from the ethnographic user study, where two video cameras had been set up to capture the interactions around the system with one camera set up focused on the interface and the other camera, capturing the room view. Although these cameras were used, the use of hand-held video records were used by the researchers.

In this section they mention about the video recorders which will capture a record of events which is unstructed because the researchers are capturing the students in a natural environment which can later be played back multiple times to allow the researchers to discover how the dynamo system is used by 17-19 students in the way they normally would approach such a system.

The second example of qualitative data comes almost straight after the bullet points discussing the video recorders. Once again on Pg. 3, sub-section 4.1 The Setting, the last bullent point mentions the use of a questionnaire. The researchers decided to submit a questionnaire to the students to allow them to provide their views and other details about the experience, dynamo system etc. Now because this questionnaire was open (allowing the students to express their views) is becomes qualitative data as the researchers can not predict what the students views will be on the dynamo system until they have collected all of the questionnaires back.

Quantitative data

Pg. 5, Fig 5, Aggregate usage through the study - This is the first example of quantitative data as it is a statistical graph showing the usage/direct interactions throughout the day starting from 8:30am through til after hours 5:50pm. Basically this graph is used to show how many interactions the dynamo system had in the common area with students - although the numbers do not refer to individual users, they focus on the number of 'hits'.

Pg. 5, Fig 6, Media displayed on the dynamo surface - This graph is the second example of quantitative data used within this study and because the graph is using statistical details of how the number of times certain digital media was displayed on different days. This type of information can help tell the researchers what content is being used the most by the 17-19 year old student using the dynamo systems.

Qualitative data represented Quantitatively

Pg. 5, Fig 7, Media downloaded from the dynamo surface - this graph shows how the different types of digital media was downloaded each day and how many times that they were downloaded. The dyanmo surface (Fig 2) would often be used for sole purpose to exchange data with one another. A lot of the content that was sent between students were often content that was created by the students themselves which could be the reason for such a vast amount of downloads with the short period of time that the students were using the dynamo system. This graph displays data about what content has been downloaded, which is considered qualitative because the research team have no control over what content the users will download via the dynamo system. Although this graph displays qualitative data it is represented quantitatively because it is showing the different number of days that the dynamo system is deployed whilst it has the exact number of times an audio clip, image etc is downloaded which is quantitative.

Fig 2. Dynamo Surface