Theme 4

For this theme I selected the paper ”Resolving Ambiguity of Scope in Remote Collaboration: A study in Film Scoring” (Phalip, Jean & Edmonds, 2008) published the Proceedings of the 20th Australasian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Designing for Habitus and Habitat. This paper is about the problems that can arise when composers of film scores and directors/film-makers tries to communicate with each other remotely. This communication can result in a lot of problems. For one, simple misunderstandings of words might happen (words like “Spacey” “Erie” etc.), there can be a mismatch of scope or something else. The examples of such things happening are many. So the authors of this article undertakes the task of creating a collective workspace that composers and film-makers can use together to get a better understanding of the other parts ideas.

The paper selected is the second of three: here they have come up with a simple design plan for the workspace. This design plan they then decide to evaluate using a qualitative method. This qualitative method consists of the authors meeting three different persons: two composers and one director. They meet them alone, so that the test subjects don’t affect each other with their views. These subjects are shown the design plan, and for two to three hours, the subjects and two observers discuss their opinions and whether the design is good or not. This discussion can consist of everything from design issues, to anecdotes, to suggestions for improvement or incorporation of other elements. When all three subjects have been interviewed, the result is discussed by the authors and steps are taken to improve the design.

The benefits of this qualitative study are of course the abundant material and insights collected. Things like that are almost impossible to come across when performing quantitative studies. More so, with the large amount of time for each interview, the authors really has time to go deep in the design with the test subject, and really get into what is good and not. The weakness of their choice of method is of course that with only three test subjects, some parts (and probable flaws) are probably overlooked. It’s probably safe to assume that not all film-makers and composers work in the same way. Considering that, it could be a source of error and misinformation to just interview three persons.  

I didn’t learn that much new things from this paper, as we already have discussed some of the basics of qualitative methods in this and other courses. But still it was refreshing and intriguing to see these methods being used “professionally”.

I can’t really point out some main methodological problems in this paper. The choice of method seems quite clear and well accounted for. It generated a lot of material that the authors sought after, and also provided additional input and information that was not even asked for. With all this said there is still the slight problem with the low number of test subjects, but the results are still valid, and larger studies with more subjects will surely be carried out later (or by this time, probably has).

That is all for me this time, hope some of it is worth reading. The first of these three papers can be found here in case of interest:

http://dl.acm.org.focus.lib.kth.se/citation.cfm?id=1517744.1517817&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=142077322&CFTOKEN=87353866