Category: Forschung

Abstract for the Junior Research Symposium 2012

It is time to publish my abstract I wrote for the Junior Research Symposium 2012 that will take place in November in Geneva. Their website hasn’t been updated yet, but you can already find information about past symposia. http://www.junior-research.ch/index.php/2011/database

 

Abstract:

The internet is weaving itself into our daily lives and will do so even more in the future. As gateway between the analog and the digital world, search engines hold a crucial position, and therefore it is important for us to understand and use search engines adequately.

This project enquires from the user’s point of view how graphic design can improve orientation and transparency in the process in online searching. Through quantitative studies, a target group was defined, which then determined the specific field of application. By shadowing user search habits both on- and offline, this method highlighted which setting the result should be placed into. A participatory lab-situation generated the concept on which the result is based and confirmed the hypothesis stated in the initial research question.

These methodologies led to the creation of an online-tool enabling users to be in better control of their search queries and to have greater clarity about the origin of the found information. For example, users conclude that being more aware of personalised search issues like the filter bubble allows them to take appropriate action.

10-second drawings

This was a quick experiment where I asked people to draw (within 10 seconds) their first association about the term ‘internet’.

It quickly showed that an empty A4-sheet can be quite stressful, which led me to my more extended qualitative enquiry;

https://blog.zhdk.ch/aliceschwab/2012/05/13/comparative-enquiry-what-is-the-internet-for-you/

Here a few 10-second drawings:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rob van Kranenburg

At the beginning of May I had the pleasure to meet with Rob van Kranenburg during his visit to Switzerland. He is a busy man, so it was an honour to be able to ask him questions, to talk about the Internet of Things, The Council and also more in general how he views the world now and in the future. Apart from being very interesting and inspiring, Rob pointed me toward a concrete direction for my master thesis, which might have taken me a lot longer to see by myself.

http://www.theinternetofthings.eu/

He spoke about different kinds of intelligence and what a nice challenge it would be to create a platform which is catered towards all of them. Within the frame of my project, I understand this statement the following way (hoping not to translate it wrongly): There is different ways of searching, some people search online, some offline, some ask people directly, some go straight to the library, some search only on Google, some on other search engines, and maybe, in the future, some people won’t remember analogue encyclopedias. It is not about cataloging those kinds into right or wrong, or old and new. It is about making the path of online research more transparent.

Rob wondered wether it would be interesting to look into children and make them my target audience. Which is interesting to me because one of the options I am thinking about is to design for a self-given future scenario in the world of online searching.

This leads me to the conclusions I could draw from this conversation with the creator of The Internet of Things. There is three enquiries I will be doing over the summer:

1.HOW DO YOU SEE THE INTERNET? A large enquiry where I ask as many people as possible to send me an image/images of how they see the internet. I am trying to get instinctive (imagery) associations back which show the relationship the user has to the medium internet.

2. SEARCH BEHAVIOUR (OFF- AND ONLINE) A focused enquiry with 5-6 people where they search the answer to a given question; I will observe how and where they search. What is their instincts? What is their pattern? What do they avoid?

3. COMPARATIVE ONLINE SEARCH ENQUIRY  A large enquiry where I ask one specific question to people from different countries. How are their findings different? A simple search result from the same search engine can differ depending on .ch, .nl, .fr, .it ect.

These enquiries will help me to define

– what it is I would like to make visible in the online search process

– what my target group is

– what is it concretely I will be designing

 

 

Aktualisierter Projekttitel

Im Plenum heute habe ich einige meiner Fortschritte präsentiert. Der aktualisierte Projekttitel ist nun “Orientation und Transparenz im Umgang mit digitalen Suchmaschinen”.

Wir diskutierten, wie weit ich mich in die “Processing”-Sprache hineinarbeiten sollte (und ob überhaupt Processing im Vergleich zu HTML5); bestätigt hat sich für mich, dass ich in meiner Arbeit den Blickwinkel des Users annehmen werde und nicht die Technologie als meinen Standpunkt festlege. Projektpartner waren auch ein Thema, wobei einige sehr vielversprechende Namen und Projekte genannt wurden. So zum Beispiel Jürgen Späth und das Projekt über instinktives Suchverhalten im Gebiet der medizinischen Information, Jürg Lehni, Viola Zimmermann und sogar zwei Bekannte zweier Mitstudentinnen.

Dieses Video ist empfohlen worden:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

(Eli Pariser auf TED-talks)

Und dann noch eine interessante Information: anscheinend wird im asiatischen Raum eher Yahoo als Google benützt für online-Suchaktionen. Es wird interessant sein herauszufinden weshalb.