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The International Journal of Design is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields. It aims to provide an international forum for the exchange of ideas and findings from researchers across different cultures and encourages research on the impact of cultural factors on design theory and practice. It also seeks to promote the transfer of knowledge between professionals in academia and industry by emphasizing research in which results are of interest or applicable to design practices.

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Journal of Design Research

JDR is an interdisciplinary journal, emphasising human aspects as a central issue of design through integrative studies of social sciences and design disciplines. Originally published as an electronic journal publishing articles including multimedia applications and hence allowing visual knowledge transfer, it is now also available in print.

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5 academic research papers every designer should read

Canvs Editorial

UX Collective

P roduct design is now a mainstay in the working vocabularies of companies worldwide. We’d go so far as saying that it (product designs) may now be entering the portion of its lifespan where strategic maturity and academic thought are now taking up the centre stage as the cheap tricks and skin deep strategies cant hold up to the lofty tasks at hand that product designers will have to solve in this coming decade.

With that in mind, we have compiled a set of research papers which have a sometimes obvious and sometimes not-so-obvious link into product design. All in all, the idea is to create a list of resources that help back up your cognitive process when thinking out the broad strokes of how you can approach your product.

These research papers encapsulate academic concepts and heuristics which could be employed to deliver meaningful experiences.

1. Personality of Interaction: Expressing Brand Personalities Through Interaction Aesthetics

This research paper relates attributes of interactive experience to ‘brand personality’, a common way of quantifying how a brand should be perceived. It shows that particular characteristics of interactivity, are related to particular brand traits and reflect the brand personality.

Read the research paper here .

2. Investigating a multi-faceted view of user experience

This study explores the influence website design and brand has on its users’ experience. Content, usability, aesthetics, pleasurable interaction, service quality, and overall judgement by the participants of the study was assessed through questionnaires and interviews. Read on to find out what were users prime preferences.

3. Simple Beauty: The impact of visual complexity, prototypicality and color typicality on aesthetic perception in initial impression of websites

An attractive design is a crucial criterion for users while deciding whether to stay on a website or leave it. Beauty appraisals are affected within 17 milliseconds by visual complexity, prototypicality and color.

The “first impression’ is what counts the most. Based on cognitive psychology, social psychology, and human-computer interaction studies, the research demonstrates that the first impression is considered a base for developing general opinions regarding an object and its subsequent behaviour.

Also read: Aesthetic Usability Effect

4. Cross-cultural applicability of user evaluation methods

This research is a case study amongst Japanese, North-American, English and Dutch users. It investigates the cultural applicability of user evaluation methods. It sheds light on how some user evaluation methods are less applicable than others are for a culturally diverse user base.

5. Culture-based User Interface Design

The culture-based user interface design is a new field in interface design, crucial for designers of all disciplines. Companies are no longer satisfied with websites that merely look good, they must also serve users’ cultural needs. Only with good culture-based user interface design will there be the perception of value among its customers.

User Experience is primarily about delivering a sense of authentic joy to a human, without a firm understanding of contexts, culture, human nature, and persuasive argument, you will be unable in delivering what we as product designers all sought after.

Use these resources in the coming year (and decade) and see if they provide you with a new dimension at looking into your product and the emotions it generates with your users.

The Canvs Editorial team comprises of: Editorial Writer and Researcher- Paridhi Agrawal , the Editor’s Desk- Aalhad Joshi and Debprotim Roy, and Content Operations- Abin Rajan Follow Canvs on Instagram and LinkedIn . Don’t forget to follow us here on Medium as well for more design-related content.

Written by Canvs Editorial

Meaningful stories and insightful analyses on design | Check out our work: www.canvs.in | Our newsletter: www.designtechweekly.com

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Pulse UX Blog

Theory, Analysis and Reviews on UX User Experience Research and Design

Home Mission About Charles L. Mauro CHFP

« Updates From Mauro Usability Science - Critical Analysis of Maeda Design in Tech Report 2017 »

User Interface Design and UX Design: 80+ Important Research Papers Covering Peer-Reviewed and Informal Studies

Charles Mauro CHFP

Important peer-reviewed and informally published recent research on user interface design and user experience (UX) design.

For the benefit of clients and colleagues we have culled a list of approximately 70 curated recent research publications dealing with user interface design, UX design and e-commerce optimization.

In our opinion these publications represent some of the best formal research thinking on UI and UX design. These papers are also among the most widely downloaded and cited formal research on UI / UX design. We have referenced many of these studies in our work at MauroNewMedia.

Pay walls: As you will note in reviewing the following links and abstracts, most of the serious research on UI / UX design and optimization is located behind pay walls controlled by major publishers. However, in the end, good data is well worth the investment. Many links and other cited references are, of course, free.

Important disclaimer: We do not receive any form of compensation for citing any of the following content. Either Charles L Mauro CHFP or Paul Thurman MBA has personally reviewed all papers and links in this list. Some of these references were utilized in the recent NYTECH UX talk given by Paul Thurman MBA titled: Critical New UX Design Optimization Research

In addition to historical research papers, we frequently receive requests from colleagues, clients and journalists for recommended reading lists on topics covering our expertise in UX design, usability research and human factors engineering. These requests prompted us to pull from our research library (yes, we still have real books) 30+ books which our professional staff felt should be considered primary conceptual literature for anyone well-read in the theory and practice of UX design and research. Please follow the for PulseUX’s compilation of the 30+ Best UX Design and Research Books of All Time

Title: The influence of hedonic and utilitarian motivations on user engagement: The case of online shopping experiences

Abstract User experience seeks to promote rich, engaging interactions between users and systems. In order for this experience to unfold, the user must be motivated to initiate an interaction with the technology. This study explored hedonic and utilitarian motivations in the context of user engagement with online shopping. Factor analysis was performed to identify a parsimonious set of factors from the Hedonic and Utilitarian Shopping Motivation Scale and the User Engagement Scale based on responses from 802 shoppers. Multiple linear regression was used to test hypotheses with hedonic and utilitarian motivations (Idea, Social, Adventure/Gratification, Value and Achievement Shopping) and attributes of user engagement (Aesthetics, Focused Attention, Perceived Usability, and Endurability). Results demonstrate the salience of Adventure/Gratification Shopping and Achievement Shopping Motivations to specific variables of user engagement in the e-commerce environment and provide considerations for the inclusion of different types of motivation into models of engaging user experiences. Abstract Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: New Support for Marketing Analytics

Abstract Consumer surveys and myriad other forms of research have long been the grist for marketing decisions at large companies. But many firms have been reluctant to embrace the high-tech approach to data gathering and number crunching that falls under the rubric of marketing analytics, which uses advanced techniques to transform the tracking of promotional efforts, customer preferences, and industry developments into sophisticated branding and advertising campaigns. Fueled in part by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s seminal 1982 book In Search of Excellence , which coined the phrase “paralysis through analysis,” skepticism about the approach remains widespread, even in the face of a number of positive research results over the years. This new study, involving Fortune 1000 companies, offers yet more ammunition for supporters of marketing analytics. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Booz & Company Inc. All rights reserved.

Title: Video game values: Human-computer interaction and games

Abstract Current human–computer interaction (HCI) research into video games rarely considers how they are different from other forms of software. This leads to research that, while useful concerning standard issues of interface design, does not address the nature of video games as games specifically. Unlike most software, video games are not made to support external, user-defined tasks, but instead define their own activities for players to engage in. We argue that video games contain systems of values which players perceive and adopt, and which shape the play of the game. A focus on video game values promotes a holistic view of video games as software, media, and as games specifically, which leads to a genuine video game HCI. Abstract Copyright © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: When fingers do the talking: a study of text messaging

Abstract SMS or text messaging is an area of growth in the communications field. The studies described below consisted of a questionnaire and a diary study. The questionnaire was designed to examine texting activities in 565 users of the mobile phone. The diary study was carried out by 24 subjects over a period of 2 weeks. The findings suggest that text messaging is being used by a wide range of people for all kinds of activities and that for some people it is the preferred means of communication. These studies should prove interesting for those examining the use and impact of SMS. Abstract Copyright © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Understanding factors affecting trust in and satisfaction with mobile banking in Korea: A modified DeLone and McLean’s model perspective

Abstract As mobile technology has developed, mobile banking has become accepted as part of daily life. Although many studies have been conducted to assess users’ satisfaction with mobile applications, none has focused on the ways in which the three quality factors associated with mobile banking – system quality, information quality and interface design quality – affect consumers’ trust and satisfaction. Our proposed research model, based on DeLone and McLean’s model, assesses how these three external quality factors can impact satisfaction and trust. We collected 276 valid questionnaires from mobile banking customers, then analyzed them using structural equation modeling. Our results show that system quality and information quality significantly influence customers’ trust and satisfaction, and that interface design quality does not. We present herein implications and suggestions for further research. Abstract Copyright © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: What is beautiful is usable

Abstract An experiment was conducted to test the relationships between users’ perceptions of a computerized system’s beauty and usability. The experiment used a computerized application as a surrogate for an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Perceptions were elicited before and after the participants used the system. Pre-experimental measures indicate strong correlations between system’s perceived aesthetics and perceived usability. Post-experimental measures indicated that the strong correlation remained intact. A multivariate analysis of covariance revealed that the degree of system’s aesthetics affected the post-use perceptions of both aesthetics and usability, whereas the degree of actual usability had no such effect. The results resemble those found by social psychologists regarding the effect of physical attractiveness on the valuation of other personality attributes. The findings stress the importance of studying the aesthetic aspect of human–computer interaction (HCI) design and its relationships to other design dimensions. Abstract Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: UX Curve: A method for evaluating long-term user experience

Abstract The goal of user experience design in industry is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product. So far, user experience studies have mostly focused on short-term evaluations and consequently on aspects relating to the initial adoption of new product designs. Nevertheless, the relationship between the user and the product evolves over long periods of time and the relevance of prolonged use for market success has been recently highlighted. In this paper, we argue for the cost-effective elicitation of longitudinal user experience data. We propose a method called the “UX Curve” which aims at assisting users in retrospectively reporting how and why their experience with a product has changed over time. The usefulness of the UX Curve method was assessed in a qualitative study with 20 mobile phone users. In particular, we investigated how users’ specific memories of their experiences with their mobile phones guide their behavior and their willingness to recommend the product to others. The results suggest that the UX Curve method enables users and researchers to determine the quality of long-term user experience and the influences that improve user experience over time or cause it to deteriorate. The method provided rich qualitative data and we found that an improving trend of perceived attractiveness of mobile phones was related to user satisfaction and willingness to recommend their phone to friends. This highlights that sustaining perceived attractiveness can be a differentiating factor in the user acceptance of personal interactive products such as mobile phones. The study suggests that the proposed method can be used as a straightforward tool for understanding the reasons why user experience improves or worsens in long-term product use and how these reasons relate to customer loyalty. Abstract Copyright 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Heuristic evaluation: Comparing ways of finding and reporting usability problems

Abstract Research on heuristic evaluation in recent years has focused on improving its effectiveness and efficiency with respect to user testing. The aim of this paper is to refine a research agenda for comparing and contrasting evaluation methods. To reach this goal, a framework is presented to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of support for structured usability problem reporting. This paper reports on an empirical study of this framework that compares two sets of heuristics, Nielsen’s heuristics and the cognitive principles of Gerhardt-Powals, and two media of reporting a usability problem, i.e. either using a web tool or paper. The study found that there were no significant differences between any of the four groups in effectiveness, efficiency and inter-evaluator reliability. A more significant contribution of this research is that the framework used for the experiments proved successful and should be reusable by other researchers because of its thorough structure. Abstract Copyright © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that adopting a socio-technical approach to system development leads to systems that are more acceptable to end users and deliver better value to stakeholders. Despite this, such approaches are not widely practised. We analyse the reasons for this, highlighting some of the problems with the better known socio-technical design methods. Based on this analysis we propose a new pragmatic framework for socio-technical systems engineering (STSE) which builds on the (largely independent) research of groups investigating work design, information systems, computer-supported cooperative work, and cognitive systems engineering. STSE bridges the traditional gap between organisational change and system development using two main types of activity: sensitisation and awareness; and constructive engagement. From the framework, we identify an initial set of interdisciplinary research problems that address how to apply socio-technical approaches in a cost-effective way, and how to facilitate the integration of STSE with existing systems and software engineering approaches. Abstract Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Five reasons for scenario-based design

Abstract Scenarios of human–computer interaction help us to understand and to create computer systems and applications as artifacts of human activity—as things to learn from, as tools to use in one’s work, as media for interacting with other people. Scenario-based design of information technology addresses five technical challenges: scenarios evoke reflection in the content of design work, helping developers coordinate design action and reflection. Scenarios are at once concrete and flexible, helping developers manage the fluidity of design situations. Scenarios afford multiple views of an interaction, diverse kinds and amounts of detailing, helping developers manage the many consequences entailed by any given design move. Scenarios can also be abstracted and categorized, helping designers to recognize, capture and reuse generalizations and to address the challenge that technical knowledge often lags the needs of technical design. Finally, scenarios promote work-oriented communication among stakeholders, helping to make design activities more accessible to the great variety of expertise that can contribute to design, and addressing the challenge that external constraints designers and clients face often distract attention from the needs and concerns of the people who will use the technology. Abstract Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Needs, affect, and interactive products – Facets of user experience

Abstract Subsumed under the umbrella of User Experience (UX), practitioners and academics of Human–Computer Interaction look for ways to broaden their understanding of what constitutes “pleasurable experiences” with technology. The present study considered the fulfilment of universal psychological needs, such as competence, relatedness, popularity, stimulation, meaning, security, or autonomy, to be the major source of positive experience with interactive technologies. To explore this, we collected over 500 positive experiences with interactive products (e.g., mobile phones, computers). As expected, we found a clear relationship between need fulfilment and positive affect, with stimulation, relatedness, competence and popularity being especially salient needs. Experiences could be further categorized by the primary need they fulfil, with apparent qualitative differences among some of the categories in terms of the emotions involved. Need fulfilment was clearly linked to hedonic quality perceptions, but not as strongly to pragmatic quality (i.e., perceived usability), which supports the notion of hedonic quality as “motivator” and pragmatic quality as “hygiene factor.” Whether hedonic quality ratings reflected need fulfilment depended on the belief that the product was responsible for the experience (i.e., attribution). Abstract Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: The role of social presence in establishing loyalty in e-Service environments

Abstract Compared to offline shopping, the online shopping experience may be viewed as lacking human warmth and sociability as it is more impersonal, anonymous, automated and generally devoid of face-to-face interactions. Thus, understanding how to create customer loyalty in online environments (e-Loyalty) is a complex process. In this paper a model for e-Loyalty is proposed and used to examine how varied conditions of social presence in a B2C e-Services context influence e-Loyalty and its antecedents of perceived usefulness, trust and enjoyment. This model is examined through an empirical study involving 185 subjects using structural equation modeling techniques. Further analysis is conducted to reveal gender differences concerning hedonic elements in the model on e-Loyalty. Abstract Copyright © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: A framework for evaluating the usability of mobile phones based on multi-level, hierarchical model of usability factors

Abstract As a mobile phone has various advanced functionalities or features, usability issues are increasingly challenging. Due to the particular characteristics of a mobile phone, typical usability evaluation methods and heuristics, most of which are relevant to a software system, might not effectively be applied to a mobile phone. Another point to consider is that usability evaluation activities should help designers find usability problems easily and produce better design solutions. To support usability practitioners of the mobile phone industry, we propose a framework for evaluating the usability of a mobile phone, based on a multi-level, hierarchical model of usability factors, in an analytic way. The model was developed on the basis of a set of collected usability problems and our previous study on a conceptual framework for identifying usability impact factors. It has multi-abstraction levels, each of which considers the usability of a mobile phone from a particular perspective. As there are goal-means relationships between adjacent levels, a range of usability issues can be interpreted in a holistic as well as diagnostic way. Another advantage is that it supports two different types of evaluation approaches: task-based and interface-based. To support both evaluation approaches, we developed four sets of checklists, each of which is concerned, respectively, with task-based evaluation and three different interface types: Logical User Interface (LUI), Physical User Interface (PUI) and Graphical User Interface (GUI). The proposed framework specifies an approach to quantifying usability so that several usability aspects are collectively measured to give a single score with the use of the checklists. A small case study was conducted in order to examine the applicability of the framework and to identify the aspects of the framework to be improved. It showed that it could be a useful tool for evaluating the usability of a mobile phone. Based on the case study, we improved the framework in order that usability practitioners can use it more easily and consistently. Abstract Copyright © 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Understanding the most satisfying and unsatisfying user experiences: Emotions, psychological needs, and context

Abstract The aim of this research was to study the structure of the most satisfying and unsatisfying user experiences in terms of experienced emotions, psychological needs, and contextual factors. 45 university students wrote descriptions of their most satisfying and unsatisfying recent user experiences and analyzed those experiences using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) method for experienced emotions, a questionnaire probing the salience of 10 psychological needs, and a self-made set of rating scales for analyzing context. The results suggested that it was possible to capture variations in user experiences in terms of experienced emotions, fulfillment of psychological needs, and context effectively by using psychometric rating scales. The results for emotional experiences showed significant differences in 16 out of 20 PANAS emotions between the most satisfying and unsatisfying experiences. The results for psychological needs indicated that feelings of autonomy and competence emerged as highly salient in the most satisfying experiences and missing in the unsatisfying experiences. High self-esteem was also notably salient in the most satisfying experiences. The qualitative results indicated that most of the participants’ free-form qualitative descriptions, especially for the most unsatisfying user experiences, gave important information about the pragmatic aspects of the interaction, but often omitted information about hedonic and social aspects of user experience. Abstract Copyright © 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: The Usability Metric for User Experience

Abstract The Usability Metric for User Experience (UMUX) is a four-item Likert scale used for the subjective assessment of an application’s perceived usability. It is designed to provide results similar to those obtained with the 10-item System Usability Scale, and is organized around the ISO 9241-11 definition of usability. A pilot version was assembled from candidate items, which was then tested alongside the System Usability Scale during usability testing. It was shown that the two scales correlate well, are reliable, and both align on one underlying usability factor. In addition, the Usability Metric for User Experience is compact enough to serve as a usability module in a broader user experience metric. Abstract Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: User acceptance of mobile Internet: Implication for convergence technologies

Abstract Using the Technology Acceptance Model as a conceptual framework and a method of structural equation modeling, this study analyzes the consumer attitude toward Wi-Bro drawing data from 515 consumers. Individuals’ responses to questions about whether they use/accept Wi-Bro were collected and combined with various factors modified from the Technology Acceptance Model.

The result of this study show that users’ perceptions are significantly associated with their motivation to use Wi-Bro. Specifically, perceived quality and perceived availability are found to have significant effect on users’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. These new factors are found to be Wi-Bro-specific factors, playing as enhancing factors to attitudes and intention. Abstract Copyright © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Understanding purchasing behaviors in a virtual economy: Consumer behavior involving virtual currency in Web 2.0 communities

Abstract This study analyzes consumer purchasing behavior in Web 2.0, expanding the technology acceptance model (TAM), focusing on which variables influence the intention to transact with virtual currency. Individuals’ responses to questions about attitude and intention to transact in Web 2.0 were collected and analyzed with various factors modified from the TAM. The results of the proposed model show that subjective norm is a key behavioral antecedent to using virtual currency. In the extended model, the moderating effects of subjective norm on the relations among the variables were found to be significant. The new set of variables is virtual environment-specific, acting as factors enhancing attitudes and behavioral intentions in Web 2.0 transactions. Abstract Copyright © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Fundamentals of physiological computing

Abstract This review paper is concerned with the development of physiological computing systems that employ real-time measures of psychophysiology to communicate the psychological state of the user to an adaptive system. It is argued that physiological computing has enormous potential to innovate human–computer interaction by extending the communication bandwidth to enable the development of ‘smart’ technology. This paper focuses on six fundamental issues for physiological computing systems through a review and synthesis of existing literature, these are (1) the complexity of the psychophysiological inference, (2) validating the psychophysiological inference, (3) representing the psychological state of the user, (4) designing explicit and implicit system interventions, (5) defining the biocybernetic loop that controls system adaptation, and (6) ethical implications. The paper concludes that physiological computing provides opportunities to innovate HCI but complex methodological/conceptual issues must be fully tackled during the research and development phase if this nascent technology is to achieve its potential. Abstract Copyright © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Modelling user experience with web sites: Usability, hedonic value, beauty and goodness

Abstract Recent research into user experience has identified the need for a theoretical model to build cumulative knowledge in research addressing how the overall quality or ‘goodness’ of an interactive product is formed. An experiment tested and extended Hassenzahl’s model of aesthetic experience. The study used a 2 × 2 × (2) experimental design with three factors: principles of screen design, principles for organizing information on a web page and experience of using a web site. Dependent variables included hedonic perceptions and evaluations of a web site as well as measures of task performance, navigation behaviour and mental effort. Measures, except Beauty, were sensitive to manipulation of web design. Beauty was influenced by hedonic attributes (identification and stimulation), but Goodness by both hedonic and pragmatic (user-perceived usability) attributes as well as task performance and mental effort. Hedonic quality was more stable with experience of web-site use than pragmatic quality and Beauty was more stable than Goodness. Abstract Copyright © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Sample Size In Usability Studies

Abstract Usability studies are a cornerstone activity for developing usable products. Their effectiveness depends on sample size, and determining sample sizehas been a research issue in usability engineering for the past 30 years. In 2010, Hwang and Salvendy reported a meta study on the effectiveness of usability evaluation, concluding that a sample size of 10±2 is sufficient for discovering 80% of usability problems (not five, as suggested earlier by Nielsen in 2000). Here, I show the Hwang and Salvendy study ignored fundamental mathematical properties of the problem, severely limiting the validity of the 10±2 rule, then look to reframe the issue of effectiveness and sample-size estimation to the practices and requirements commonly encountered in industrial-scale usability studies. Abstract Copyright © 2013 ACM, Inc. Title: An experimental study of learner perceptions of the interactivity of web-based instruction

Abstract An effectively designed interaction mechanism creates a shortcut for human–computer interaction. Most studies in this area have concluded that the higher the level of interactivity, the better, especially regarding interactive websites applied in the fields of business and education. Previous studies have also suggested that designs with a higher level of interactivity result in higher learner evaluations of websites. However, little research has examined learner perceptions as they interact with web-based instruction (WBI) systems in a situation with limited time. To assist learners in acquiring knowledge quickly, the interactivity design must make the web learning environment easier to use by reducing the complexity of the interface. The aim of the present study is to explore learner perceptions of three WBI systems with different interaction levels under time limitations. This study was therefore designed to provide a new framework to design systems with different degrees of interactivity, and to examine learners’ perceptions of these interaction elements. Three WBI systems were developed with different degrees of interactivity from high to low, and a between-subject experiment was conducted with 45 subjects. The results of the experiment indicate that a higher level of interactivity does not necessarily guarantee a higher perception of interactivity in a short-term learning situation. Therefore, the instructors must pay attention to modifying or selecting appropriate interactive elements that are more suitable for various learning stages. The findings provide insights for designers to adopt different degrees of interactivity in their designs that will best fulfill various learners’ needs. Abstract Copyright © 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Age differences in the perception of social presence in the use of 3D virtual world for social interaction

Abstract 3D virtual worlds are becoming increasingly popular as tool for social interaction, with the potential of augmenting the user’s perception of physical and social presence. Thus, this technology could be of great benefit to older people, providing home-bound older users with access to social, educational and recreational resources. However, so far there have been few studies looking into how older people engage with virtual worlds, as most research in this area focuses on younger users. In this study, an online experiment was conducted with 30 older and 30 younger users to investigate age differences in the perception of presence in the use of virtual worlds for social interaction. Overall, we found that factors such as navigation and prior experience with text messaging tools played a key role in older people’s perception of presence. Both physical and social presence was found to be linked to the quality of social interaction for users of both age groups. In addition, older people displayed proxemic behavior which was more similar to proxemic behavior in the physical world when compared to younger users. Abstract Copyright © 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Human error and information systems failure: the case of the London ambulance service computer-aided despatch system project

Abstract Human error and systems failure have been two constructs that have become linked in many contexts. In this paper we particularly focus on the issue of failure in relation to that group of software systems known as information systems. We first review the extant theoretical and empirical work on this topic. Then we discuss one particular well-known case — that of the London ambulance service computer-aided despatch system (Lascad) project — and use it as a particularly cogent example of the features of information systems failure. We maintain that the tendency to analyse information systems failure solely from a technological standpoint is limiting, that the nature of information systems failure is multi-faceted, and hence cannot be adequately understood purely in terms of the immediate problems of systems construction. Our purpose is also to use the generic material on IS failure and the specific details of this particular case study to critique the issues of safety, criticality, human error and risk in relation to systems not currently well considered in relation to these areas. Abstract Copyright © 1999 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Feminist HCI meets facebook: Performativity and social networking sites

Abstract In this paper, I reflect on a specific product of interaction design, social networking sites. The goals of this paper are twofold. One is to bring a feminist reflexivity, to HCI, drawing on the work of Judith Butler and her concepts of peformativity, citationality, and interpellation. Her approach is, I argue, highly relevant to issues of identity and self-representation on social networking sites; and to the co-constitution of the subject and technology. A critical, feminist HCI must ask how social media and other HCI institutions, practices, and discourses are part of the processes by which sociotechnical configurations are constructed. My second goal is to examine the implications of such an approach by applying it to social networking sites (SNSs) drawing the empirical research literature on SNSs, to show how SNS structures and policies help shape the subject and hide the contingency of subject categories. Abstract Copyright © 2011 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: A survey of methods for data fusion and system adaptation using autonomic nervous system responses in physiological computing

Abstract Physiological computing represents a mode of human–computer interaction where the computer monitors, analyzes and responds to the user’s psychophysiological activity in real-time. Within the field, autonomic nervous system responses have been studied extensively since they can be measured quickly and unobtrusively. However, despite a vast body of literature available on the subject, there is still no universally accepted set of rules that would translate physiological data to psychological states. This paper surveys the work performed on data fusion and system adaptation using autonomic nervous system responses in psychophysiology and physiological computing during the last ten years. First, five prerequisites for data fusion are examined: psychological model selection, training set preparation, feature extraction, normalization and dimension reduction. Then, different methods for either classification or estimation of psychological states from the extracted features are presented and compared. Finally, implementations of system adaptation are reviewed: changing the system that the user is interacting with in response to cognitive or affective information inferred from autonomic nervous system responses. The paper is aimed primarily at psychologists and computer scientists who have already recorded autonomic nervous system responses and now need to create algorithms to determine the subject’s psychological state. Abstract Copyright © 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Positive mood induction procedures for virtual environments designed for elderly people

Abstract Positive emotions have a significant influence on mental and physical health. Their role in the elderly’s wellbeing has been established in numerous studies. It is therefore worthwhile to explore ways in which elderly people can increase the number of positive experiences in their daily lives. This paper describes two Virtual Environments (VEs) that were used as mood induction procedures (MIPs) for this population. In addition, the VEs’ efficacy at increasing joy and relaxation in elderly users is analyzed. The VEs contain exercises for generating positive-autobiographic memories, mindfulness and slow breathing rhythms. The total sample comprised 18 participants over 55 years old who used the VEs on two occasions. Twelve of them used the joy environment, while 16 used the relaxation environment. Moods before and after each session were assessed using Visual Analogical Scales. After using both VEs, results indicated significant increases in joy and relaxation and significant decreases in sadness and anxiety. The participants also indicated low levels of difficulty of use and high levels of satisfaction and sense of presence. Hence, the VEs demonstrate their usefulness at promoting positive affects and enhancing the wellbeing of elderly people. Abstract Copyright © 2012 British Informatics Society Limited. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: The effects of trust, security and privacy in social networking: A security-based approach to understand the pattern of adoption

Abstract Social network services (SNS) focus on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. This study examines security, trust, and privacy concerns with regard to social networking Websites among consumers using both reliable scales and measures. It proposes an SNS acceptance model by integrating cognitive as well as affective attitudes as primary influencing factors, which are driven by underlying beliefs, perceived security, perceived privacy, trust, attitude, and intention. Results from a survey of SNS users validate that the proposed theoretical model explains and predicts user acceptance of SNS substantially well. The model shows excellent measurement properties and establishes perceived privacy and perceived security of SNS as distinct constructs. The finding also reveals that perceived security moderates the effect of perceived privacy on trust. Based on the results of this study, practical implications for marketing strategies in SNS markets and theoretical implications are recommended accordingly. Abstract Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Usability testing: what have we overlooked?

Abstract For more than a decade, the number of usability test participants has been a major theme of debate among usability practitioners and researchers keen to improve usability test performance. This paper provides evidence suggesting that the focus be shifted to task coverage instead. Our data analysis of nine commercial usability test teams participating in the CUE-4 study revealed no significant correlation between the percentage of problems found or of new problems and number of test users, but correlations of both variables and number of user tasks used by each usability team were significant. The role of participant recruitment on usability test performance and future research directions are discussed. Abstract Copyright © 2013 ACM, Inc.

Title: Predicting online grocery buying intention: a comparison of the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior

Abstract This paper tests the ability of two consumer theories—the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior—in predicting consumer online grocery buying intention. In addition, a comparison of the two theories is conducted. Data were collected from two web-based surveys of Danish ( n =1222) and Swedish ( n =1038) consumers using self-administered questionnaires. These results suggest that the theory of planned behavior (with the inclusion of a path from subjective norm to attitude) provides the best fit to the data and explains the highest proportion of variation in online grocery buying intention. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Decomposition and crossover effects in the theory of planned behavior: A study of consumer adoption intentions

Abstract The Theory of Planned Behavior, an extension of the well-known Theory of Reasoned Action, is proposed as a model to predict consumer adoption intention. Three variations of the Theory of Planned Behavior are examined and compared to the Theory of Reasoned Action. The appropriateness of each model is assessed with data from a consumer setting. Structural equation modelling using maximum likelihood estimation for the four models revealed that the traditional forms of the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Theory of Planned Behavior fit the data adequately. Decomposing the belief structures and allowing for crossover effects in the Theory of Planned Behavior resulted in improvements in model prediction. The application of each model to theory development and management intervention is explored. Abstract Copyright © 1995 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Title: Knowledge and the Prediction of Behavior: The Role of Information Accuracy in the Theory of Planned Behavior

Abstract The results of the present research question the common assumption that being well informed is a prerequisite for effective action to produce desired outcomes. In Study 1 ( N = 79), environmental knowledge had no effect on energy conservation, and in Study 2 ( N = 79), alcohol knowledge was unrelated to drinking behavior. Such disappointing correlations may result from an inappropriate focus on accuracy of information at the expense of its relevance to and support for the behavior. Study 3 ( N = 85) obtained a positive correlation between knowledge and pro-Muslim behavior, but Study 4 ( N = 89) confirmed the proposition that this correlation arose because responses on the knowledge test reflected underlying attitudes. Study 4 also showed that the correlation could become positive or negative by appropriate selection of questions for the knowledge test. The theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991 ), with its focus on specific actions, predicted intentions and behavior in all four studies. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Informa plc

Link: h ttp://www.businessinsider.com/ron-johnson-apple-store-j-c-penney-2011-11

People come to the Apple Store for the experience — and they’re willing to pay a premium for that. There are lots of components to that experience, but maybe the most important — and this is something that can translate to any retailer — is that the staff isn’t focused on selling stuff, it’s focused on building relationships and trying to make people’s lives better. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Business Insider, Inc. All rights reserved.

Title : Naturalizing aesthetics: Brain areas for aesthetic appraisal across sensory modalities

Abstract We present here the most comprehensive analysis to date of neuroaesthetic processing by reporting the results of voxel-based meta-analyses of 93 neuroimaging studies of positive-valence aesthetic appraisal across four sensory modalities. The results demonstrate that the most concordant area of activation across all four modalities is the right anterior insula, an area typically associated with visceral perception, especially of negative valence (disgust, pain, etc.). We argue that aesthetic processing is, at its core, the appraisal of the valence of perceived objects. This appraisal is in no way limited to artworks but is instead applicable to all types of perceived objects. Therefore, one way to naturalize aesthetics is to argue that such a system evolved first for the appraisal of objects of survival advantage, such as food sources, and was later co-opted in humans for the experience of artworks for the satisfaction of social needs. Abstract Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neuroscience-of-beauty

Studies from neuroscience and evolutionary biology challenge this separation of art from non-art. Human neuroimaging studies have convincingly shown that the brain areas involved in aesthetic responses to artworks overlap with those that mediate the appraisal of objects of evolutionary importance, such as the desirability of foods or the attractiveness of potential mates. Hence, it is unlikely that there are brain systems specific to the appreciation of artworks; instead there are general aesthetic systems that determine how appealing an object is, be that a piece of cake or a piece of music. Abstract © 2013 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

Link: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/2011/10/03/need-proof-that-were-visual-beings/

This video offers proof that humans are visual beings. Abstract © 2013 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

Link: http://hbr.org/web/slideshows/five-charts-that-changed-business/1-slide

Once in a while, a chart so deftly captures an important strategic insight that it becomes an iconic part of management thinking and a tool that shows up in MBA classrooms and corporate boardrooms for years to come. As HBR prepares for its 90th anniversary, in 2012, their editors have combed the magazine archives and other sources to select five charts that changed the shape of strategy. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved.

Link: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/04412

It is a widely accepted and rarely challenged tenet of marketing that companies can sustain competitive advantage only through “new and improved” product differentiation based on unique features and benefits. What a mistake. By paying attention to what consumers really want, companies can attract new customers and create a distinctive brand. Abstract © 2013 Booz & Company Inc. All rights reserved.

Link: http://www.economist.com/node/17723028

If you can have everything in 57 varieties, making decisions becomes hard work. Many of these options have improved life immeasurably in the rich world, and to a lesser extent in poorer parts. They are testimony to human ingenuity and innovation. Free choice is the basis on which markets work, driving competition and generating economic growth. It is the cornerstone of liberal democracy. The 20th century bears the scars of too many failed experiments in which people had no choice. But amid all the dizzying possibilities, a nagging question lurks: is so much extra choice unambiguously a good thing? Abstract Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013. All rights reserved.

Link: http://e.businessinsider.com/public/1099804

Mobile apps are becoming more important to people, not less important, according to this chart plucked from a big presentation on the internet. It’s an interesting trend because it shows how mobile behavior is different than traditional desktop computing behavior when it comes to the web. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Business Insider, Inc. All rights reserved.

Link: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/2012/07/30/you-want-that-well-i-want-it-too-the-neuroscience-of-mimetic-desire/

Mimetic desire is more than jealously wanting something because someone else has it. Rather, it’s about valuing something because someone else values it . And it’s pretty easy to transmit the value. Just writing about Person A’s activities and habits and showing it to Person B will make Person B start to think Person A must have seen something good about the Toyota Camry…maybe his next car…

But what is behind this contagion of desires? Abstract © 2013 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

Link: http://www.united-academics.org/magazine/27212/visual-memory-blindness/

A well-known pheonomenon in psychology has been the ‘inattentional blindness’ principle. In fact, you might know it from experience: it means that people tend to fail seeing things in their visible fields when they have to focus on a task. Until now, it was thought that in order to cause the effect, a cluttered visual field is required. Recent research shows that the effect is present though in many more situations. Abstract Copyright United Academics 2012 Coypright – All rights Reserved

Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/18-24-texting-2011-9

Chart of the Day: According to the Pew Internet project , people in the 18-24 year-old range are sending and receiving 110 texts per day on average. The median number of texts sent/received by that group is 50 per day. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Business Insider, Inc. All rights reserved.

Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-facebook-time-2011-9

Chart of the Day: A new report on social media from Nielsen shows U.S. users spent 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in May, which is more time than was spent on the next four biggest sites. Abstract Copyright © 2013 Business Insider, Inc. All rights reserved.

Link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=your-brain-on-facebook

A recent study showed that certain brain areas expand in people who have greater numbers of friends on Facebook . There was a problem, though. The study, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B , was unable to resolve the question of whether “friending” plumps up the brain areas or whether people with a type of robustness in brain physiology are just natural social butterflies. But with the help of a few monkeys in England, teenagers everywhere may now have more ammunition to use against parents. Abstract © 2013 Scientific American, a Division of Nature America, Inc.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/196.abstract.html?etoc

Although advances in technology now enable people to communicate ‘anytime, anyplace’, it is not clear how citizens can be motivated to actually do so. This paper evaluates the impact of three principles of psychological empowerment, namely perceived self-efficacy, sense of community and causal importance, on public transport passengers’ motivation to report issues and complaints while on the move. A week-long study with 65 participants revealed that self-efficacy and causal importance increased participation in short bursts and increased perceptions of service quality over longer periods. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for citizen participation projects and reflect on design opportunities for mobile technologies that motivate citizen participation. Abstract 2013 Oxford University Press.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/208.abstract.html?etoc

This review paper argues that users of personal information management systems have three particularly pressing requirements, for which current systems do not fully cater: (i) To combat information overload, as the volume of information increases. (ii) To ease context switching, in particular, for users who face frequent interrupts in their work. (iii) To be supported in information integration, across a variety of applications. To meet these requirements, four broad technological approaches should be adopted in an incremental fashion: (i) The deployment of a unified file system to manage all information objects, including files, emails and webpage URLs. (ii) The use of tags to categorize information; implemented in a way which is backward-compatible with existing hierarchical file systems. (iii) The use of context to aid information retrieval; built upon existing file and tagging systems rather than creating a parallel context management system. (iv) The deployment of semantic technologies, coupled with the harvesting of all useful metadata. Abstract 2013 Oxford University Press.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/238.abstract.html?etoc

Projective techniques are used in psychology and consumer research to provide information about individuals’ motivations, thoughts and feelings. This paper reviews the use of projective techniques in marketing research and user experience (UX) research and discusses their potential role in understanding users, their needs and values, and evaluating UX in practical product development contexts. A projective technique called sentence completion is evaluated through three case studies. Sentence completion produces qualitative data about users’ views in a structured form. The results are less time-consuming to analyze than interview results. Compared with quantitative methods such as AttrakDiff, the results are more time consuming to analyze, but more information is retrieved on negative feelings. The results show that sentence completion is useful in understanding users’ perceptions and that the technique can be used to complement other methods. Sentence completion can also be used online to reach wider user groups. Abstract 2013 Oxford University Press.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/256.abstract.html?etoc

Cognitive load (CL) is experienced during critical tasks and also while engaged emotional states are induced either by the task itself or by extraneous experiences. Emotions irrelevant to the working memory representation may interfere with the processing of relevant tasks and can influence task performance and behavior, making the accurate detection of CL from nonverbal information challenging. This paper investigates automatic CL detection from facial features, physiology and task performance under affective interference. Data were collected from participants (n=20) solving mental arithmetic tasks with emotional stimuli in the background, and a combined classifier was used for detecting CL levels. Results indicate that the face modality for CL detection was more accurate under affective interference, whereas physiology and task performance were more accurate without the affective interference. Multimodal fusion improved detection accuracies, but it was less accurate under affective interferences. More specifically, the accuracy decreased with an increasing intensity of emotional arousal. Abstract 2013 Oxford University Press.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/269.abstract.html?etoc

In the field of virtual reality (VR), many efforts have been made to analyze presence, the sense of being in the virtual world. However, it is only recently that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to study presence during an automatic navigation through a virtual environment. In the present work, our aim was to use fMRI to study the sense of presence during a VR-free navigation task, in comparison with visualization of photographs and videos (automatic navigations through the same environment). The main goal was to analyze the usefulness of fMRI for this purpose, evaluating whether, in this context, the interaction between the subject and the environment is performed naturally, hiding the role of technology in the experience. We monitored 14 right-handed healthy females aged between 19 and 25 years. Frontal, parietal and occipital regions showed their involvement during free virtual navigation. Moreover, activation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was also shown to be negatively correlated to sense of presence and the postcentral parietal cortex and insula showed a parametric increased activation according to the condition-related sense of presence, which suggests that stimulus attention and self-awareness processes related to the insula may be linked to the sense of presence. Abstract 2013 Oxford University Press.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/285.abstract.html?etoc

Unlike visual stimuli, little attention has been paid to auditory stimuli in terms of emotion prediction with physiological signals. This paper aimed to investigate whether auditory stimuli can be used as an effective elicitor as visual stimuli for emotion prediction using physiological channels. For this purpose, a well-controlled experiment was designed, in which standardized visual and auditory stimuli were systematically selected and presented to participants to induce various emotions spontaneously in a laboratory setting. Numerous physiological signals, including facial electromyogram, electroencephalography, skin conductivity and respiration data, were recorded when participants were exposed to the stimulus presentation. Two data mining methods, namely decision rules and k-nearest neighbor based on the rough set technique, were applied to construct emotion prediction models based on the features extracted from the physiological data. Experimental results demonstrated that auditory stimuli were as effective as visual stimuli in eliciting emotions in terms of systematic physiological reactivity. This was evidenced by the best prediction accuracy quantified by the F1 measure (visual: 76.2% vs. auditory: 76.1%) among six emotion categories (excited, happy, neutral, sad, fearful and disgusted). Furthermore, we also constructed culture-specific (Chinese vs. Indian) prediction models. The results showed that model prediction accuracy was not significantly different between culture-specific models. Finally, the implications of affective auditory stimuli in human–computer interaction, limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are discussed. Abstract 2013 Oxford University Press.

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289614000087

The deliberate practice view has generated a great deal of scientific and popular interest in expert performance. At the same time, empirical evidence now indicates that deliberate practice, while certainly important, is not as important as Ericsson and colleagues have argued it is. In particular, we (Hambrick, Oswald, Altmann, Meinz, Gobet, & Campitelli, 2014) found that individual differences in accumulated amount of deliberate practice accounted for about one-third of the reliable variance in performance in chess and music, leaving the majority of the reliable variance unexplained and potentially explainable by other factors. Ericsson’s (2014) defense of the deliberate practice view, though vigorous, is undercut by contradictions, oversights, and errors in his arguments and criticisms, several of which we describe here. We reiterate that the task now is to develop and rigorously test falsifiable theories of expert performance that take into account as many potentially relevant constructs as possible. Abstract © 2014 Elsevier Inc.

Link: http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/amazon-to-launch-virtual-currency-amazon-coins-in-its-appstore-in-may/

Amazon has just announced a new virtual currency for Kindle Fire owners to use on in-app purchases, app purchases, etc. in the Amazon Appstore. Abstract © 2013 AOL Inc. All rights reserved.

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.2284/abstract

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/09/iwc.iwu016.abstract.html?papetoc

Wizard of Oz (WOZ) is a well-established method for simulating the functionality and user experience of future systems. Using a human wizard to mimic certain operations of a potential system is particularly useful in situations where extensive engineering effort would otherwise be needed to explore the design possibilities offered by such operations. The WOZ method has been widely used in connection with speech and language technologies, but advances in sensor technology and pattern recognition as well as new application areas such as human–robot interaction have made it increasingly relevant to the design of a wider range of interactive systems. In such cases, achieving acceptable performance at the user interface level often hinges on resource-intensive improvements such as domain tuning, which are better done once the overall design is relatively stable. Although WOZ is recognized as a valuable prototyping technique, surprisingly little effort has been put into exploring it from a methodological point of view. Starting from a survey of the literature, this paper presents a systematic investigation and analysis of the design space for WOZ for language technology applications, and proposes a generic architecture for tool support that supports the integration of components for speech recognition and synthesis as well as for machine translation. This architecture is instantiated in WebWOZ—a new web-based open-source WOZ prototyping platform. The viability of generic support is explored empirically through a series of evaluations. Researchers from a variety of backgrounds were able to create experiments, independent of their previous experience with WOZ. The approach was further validated through a number of real experiments, which also helped to identify a number of possibilities for additional support, and flagged potential issues relating to consistency in wizard performance. Abstract 2014 Oxford University Press

Link: http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/library/studies/the-new-multi-screen-world-study/

This paper studies how business models can be designed to tap effectively into open innovation labor markets with heterogeneously motivated workers. Using data on open source software, we show that motivations are diverse, and demonstrate how managers can strategically influence the flow of code contributions and their impact on project performance. Unlike previous literature using survey data, we exploit the observed pattern of project membership and code contributions—the “revealed preference” of developers—to infer the motivations driving their decision to contribute. Developers strongly sort along key dimensions of the business model chosen by project managers, especially the degree of openness of the project license. The results indicate an important role for intrinsic motivation, reputation, and labor market signaling, and a more limited role for reciprocity. Abstract 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

updated on 5/13

Title: Developing elements of user experience for mobile phones and services: survey, interview, and observation approaches

Abstract The term user experience (UX) encompasses the concepts of usability and affective engineering. However, UX has not been defined clearly. In this study, a literature survey, user interview and indirect observation were conducted to develop definitions of UX and its elements. A literature survey investigated 127 articles that were considered to be helpful to define the concept of UX. An in-depth interview targeted 14 hands-on workers in the Korean mobile phone industry. An indirect observation captured daily experiences of eight end-users with mobile phones. This study collected various views on UX from academia, industry, and end-users using these three approaches. As a result, this article proposes definitions of UX and its elements: usability, affect, and user value. These results are expected to help design products or services with greater levels of UX. Abstract Copyright 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Title: Why different people prefer different systems for different tasks: An activity perspective on technology adoption in a dynamic user environment

Abstract In a contemporary user environment, there are often multiple information systems available for a certain type of task. Based on the premises of Activity Theory, this study examines how user characteristics, system experiences, and task situations influence an individual’s preferences among different systems in terms of user readiness to interact with each. It hypothesizes that system experiences directly shape specific user readiness at the within-subject level, user characteristics and task situations make differences in general user readiness at the between-subject level, and task situations also affect specific user readiness through the mediation of system experiences. An empirical study was conducted, and the results supported the hypothesized relationships. The findings provide insights on how to enhance technology adoption by tailoring system development and management to various task contexts and different user groups. Abstract Copyright 2011 ASIS&T

Title: A review of factors influencing user satisfaction in information retrieval

Abstract The authors investigate factors influencing user satisfaction in information retrieval. It is evident from this study that user satisfaction is a subjective variable, which can be influenced by several factors such as system effectiveness, user effectiveness, user effort, and user characteristics and expectations. Therefore, information retrieval evaluators should consider all these factors in obtaining user satisfaction and in using it as a criterion of system effectiveness. Previous studies have conflicting conclusions on the relationship between user satisfaction and system effectiveness; this study has substantiated these findings and supports using user satisfaction as a criterion of system effectiveness. Abstract Copyright 2010 ASIS&T

Title: The development and evaluation of a survey to measure user engagement

Abstract Facilitating engaging user experiences is essential in the design of interactive systems. To accomplish this, it is necessary to understand the composition of this construct and how to evaluate it. Building on previous work that posited a theory of engagement and identified a core set of attributes that operationalized this construct, we constructed and evaluated a multidimensional scale to measure user engagement. In this paper we describe the development of the scale, as well as two large-scale studies (N=440 and N=802) that were undertaken to assess its reliability and validity in online shopping environments. In the first we used Reliability Analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis to identify six attributes of engagement: Perceived Usability, Aesthetics, Focused Attention, Felt Involvement, Novelty, and Endurability. In the second we tested the validity of and relationships among those attributes using Structural Equation Modeling. The result of this research is a multidimensional scale that may be used to test the engagement of software applications. In addition, findings indicate that attributes of engagement are highly intertwined, a complex interplay of user-system interaction variables. Notably, Perceived Usability played a mediating role in the relationship between Endurability and Novelty, Aesthetics, Felt Involvement, and Focused Attention. Abstract Copyright 2009 ASIS&T

Title: Exploring user engagement in online news interactions

Abstract This paper describes a qualitative study of online news reading and browsing. Thirty people participated in a quasi-experimental study in which they were asked to browse a news website and select three stories to discuss at a social gathering. Semi-structured interviews were conducted post-task to understand participants’ perceptions of what makes online news reading and browsing engaging or non-engaging. Findings as presented within the experience-based framework of user engagement and demonstrate the complexity of users’ interactions with information content and systems in online news environments. This study extends the model of user engagement and contributes new insights into user’s experience in casual-leisure settings, such as online news, which has implications for other information domains. Abstract Copyright 2011 by American Society for Information Science and Technology

Abstract This chapter of The Fabric of Mobile Services: Software Paradigms and Business Demands contains sections titled: New Services and User Experience, User-Centered Simplicity and Experience, Methodologies for Simplicity and User Experience, and Case Studies: Simplifying Paradigms Abstract Copyright 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Title: The Right Angle: Visual Portrayal of Products Affects Observers’ Impressions of Owners

Abstract Consumer products have long been known to influence observers’ impressions of product owners. The angle at which products are visually portrayed in advertisements, however, may be an overlooked factor in these effects. We hypothesize and find that portrayals of the same product from different viewpoints can prime different associations that color impressions of product and owner in parallel ways. In Study 1, automobiles were rated higher on status- and power-related traits (e.g., dominant , powerful ) when portrayed head-on versus in side profile, an effect found for sport utility vehicles (SUVs)—a category with a reputation for dominance—but not sedans. In Study 2, these portrayal-based associations influenced the impressions formed about the product’s owner: a target person was rated higher on status- and power-related traits when his SUV was portrayed head-on versus in side profile. These results suggest that the influence of visual portrayal extends beyond general evaluations of products to affect more specific impressions of products and owners alike, and highlight that primed traits are likely to influence impressions when compatible with other knowledge about the target. Abstract Copyright 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Title: The Counterfeit Self: The Deceptive Costs of Faking It

Abstract Although people buy counterfeit products to signal positive traits, we show that wearing counterfeit products makes individuals feel less authentic and increases their likelihood of both behaving dishonestly and judging others as unethical. In four experiments, participants wore purportedly fake or authentically branded sunglasses. Those wearing fake sunglasses cheated more across multiple tasks than did participants wearing authentic sunglasses, both when they believed they had a preference for counterfeits (Experiment 1a) and when they were randomly assigned to wear them (Experiment 1b). Experiment 2 shows that the effects of wearing counterfeit sunglasses extend beyond the self, influencing judgments of other people’s unethical behavior. Experiment 3 demonstrates that the feelings of inauthenticity that wearing fake products engenders—what we term the counterfeit selfmediate the impact of counterfeits on unethical behavior. Finally, we show that people do not predict the impact of counterfeits on ethicality; thus, the costs of counterfeits are deceptive. Abstract Copyright 2010 Francesca Gino, Michael I. Norton, and Dan Ariely3

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/5/389.full.html?etoc

Menus are a key mechanism for organizing different commands in graphical user interfaces. Nowadays low-cost devices that allow using different interaction techniques in remote interfaces have become widespread. Nevertheless, their corresponding menus are direct adaptations from traditional ones. As a consequence, they are inaccurate and slow, and also produce tiredness. In this paper, we design, implement and evaluate a menu selection technique for remote interfaces, the Body Menu. This technique permits whole-body interaction and is specifically designed to take advantage of the proprioception sense. The Body Menu attaches virtual menu items to different parts of the body and selects them when the users reach these zones with their hands. We use the Microsoft Kinect to implement this system. Additionally, we compared it with the most representative menus, studied the best number of body parts to be used and analyzed how children interact with it. Abstract © 2013 Oxford University Publishing.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/5/403.full.html?etoc

We present the evaluation of an interactive audio map system that enables blind and partially sighted users to explore and navigate city maps from the safety of their home using simulated 3D audio and synthetic speech alone. We begin with a review of existing literature in the areas of spatial knowledge and wayfinding, auditory displays and auditory map systems, before describing how this research builds on and differentiates itself from this body of work. One key requirement was the ability to quantify the effectiveness of the audio map, so we describe the design and implementation of the evaluation, which took the form of a game downloaded by participants to their own computers. The results demonstrate that participants (blind, partially sighted and sighted) have acquired detailed spatial knowledge and also that the availability of positional audio cues significantly improves wayfinding performance. Abstract © 2013 Oxford University Publishing.

Link: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/5/417.full.html?etoc

Delegation is the practice of sharing authority with another individual to enable them to complete a specific task as a proxy. Practices to permit delegation can range from formal to informal arrangements and can involve spontaneous yet finely balanced notions of trust between people. This paper argues that delegation is a ubiquitous yet an unsupported feature of socio-technical computer systems and that this lack of support illustrates a particular neglect to the everyday financial practices of the more vulnerable people in society. Our contribution is to provide a first exploration of the domain of person-to-person delegation in digital payments, a particularly pressing context. We first report qualitative data collected across several studies concerning banking practices of individuals over 80 years of age. We then use analytical techniques centred upon identification of stakeholders, their concerns and interactions, to characterize the delegation practices we observed. We propose a Concerns Matrix as a suitable representation to capture conflicts in the needs of individuals in such complex socio-technical systems, and finally propose a putative design response in the form of a Helper Card. Abstract © 2013 Oxford University Publishing..

Link: Why We Love Beautiful Things

Great design, the management expert Gary Hamel once said, is like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous definition of pornography — you know it when you see it. You want it, too: brain scan studies reveal that the sight of an attractive product can trigger the part of the motor cerebellum that governs hand movement. Instinctively, we reach out for attractive things; beauty literally moves us. © 2013 New York Times

Link: http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2013/9478.html

A new study has analysed tens of thousands of articles available to readers of online news and created a model to find out ‘what makes people click’. The aim of the study was to model the reading preferences for the audiences of 14 online news outlets using machine learning techniques. The models, describing the appeal of an article to each audience, were developed by linear functions of word frequencies. The models compared articles that became “most popular” on a given day in a given outlet with articles that did not. The research dentified the most attractive keywords, as well as the least attractive ones, and explained the choices readers made. Abstract © 2013 University of Bristol.

Title: Pointing and Selecting with Facial Activity

Abstract The aim of this paper was to evaluate the use of three facial actions (i.e. frowning, raising the eyebrows, and smiling) in selecting objects on a computer screen when gaze was used for pointing. Dwell time is the most commonly used selection technique in gaze-based interaction, and thus, a dwell time of 400 ms was used as a reference selection technique. A wireless, head-mounted prototype device that carried out eye tracking and contactless, capacitive measurement of facial actions was used for the interaction task. Participants (N=16) performed point-and-select tasks with three pointing distances (i.e. 60, 120 and 240 mm) and three target sizes (i.e. 25, 30 and 40 mm). Task completion times, pointing errors and throughput values based on Fitts’ law were used to compare the selection techniques. The participants also rated the techniques with subjective ratings scales. The results showed that the different techniques performed equally well in many respects. However, throughput values varied from 8.38 bits/s (raising the eyebrows) to 15.33 bits/s (smiling) and were comparable to or, in the case of smiling, better than in earlier research with similar interaction techniques. The dwell time was found to be the least accurate selection technique in terms of the magnitudes of point-and-select errors. Smiling technique was rated as more accurate to use than the frowning or the raising techniques. The results give further support for methods that combine facial behavior to eye tracking when interacting with technology.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Outi Tuisku1, Ville Rantanen, Oleg Špakov, Veikko Surakka and Jukka Lekkala

Title: Modeling Traditional Literacy, Internet Skills and Internet Usage: An Empirical Study

Abstract This paper focuses on the relationships among traditional literacy (reading, writing and understanding text), medium-related Internet skills (consisting of operational and formal skills), content-related Internet skills (consisting of information and strategic skills) and Internet usage types (information- and career-directed Internet use and entertainment use). We conducted a large-scale survey that resulted in a dataset of 1008 respondents. The results reveal the following: (i) traditional literacy has a direct effect on formal and information Internet skills and an indirect effect on strategic Internet skills and (ii) differences in types of Internet usage are indirectly determined by traditional literacy and directly affected by Internet skills, such that higher levels of strategic Internet skills result in more information- and career-directed Internet use. Traditional literacy is a pre-condition for the employment of Internet skills, and Internet skills should not be considered an easy means of disrupting historically grounded inequalities caused by differences in traditional literacy.

Abstract Copyright 2014 A.J.A.M. van Deursen and J.A.G.M. van Dijk

Title: Life Is Too Short to RTFM: How Users Relate to Documentation and Excess Features in Consumer Products

Abstract This paper addresses two common problems that users of various products and interfaces encounter—over-featured interfaces and product documentation. Over-featured interfaces are seen as a problem as they can confuse and over-complicate everyday interactions. Researchers also often claim that users do not read product documentation, although they are often exhorted to ‘RTFM’ (read the field manual). We conducted two sets of studies with users which looked at the issues of both manuals and excess features with common domestic and personal products. The quantitative set was a series of questionnaires administered to 170 people over 7 years. The qualitative set consisted of two 6-month longitudinal studies based on diaries and interviews with a total of 15 participants. We found that manuals are not read by the majority of people, and most do not use all the features of the products that they own and use regularly. Men are more likely to do both than women, and younger people are less likely to use manuals than middle-aged and older ones. More educated people are also less likely to read manuals. Over-featuring and being forced to consult manuals also appears to cause negative emotional experiences. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Alethea L. Blackler, Rafael Gomez, Vesna Popovic and M. Helen Thompson

Title: Effect of Age on Human–Computer Interface Control Via Neck Electromyography

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of age on visuomotor tracking using submental and anterior neck surface electromyography (sEMG) to assess feasibility of computer control via neck musculature, which allows people with little remaining motor function to interact with computers. Thirty-two healthy adults participated: 16 younger adults aged 18–29 years and 16 older adults aged 69–85 years. Participants modulated sEMG to achieve targets presented at different amplitudes using real-time visual feedback. Root mean squared (RMS) error was used to quantify tracking performance. RMS error was increased for older adults relative to younger adults. Older adults demonstrated more RMS error than younger adults as a function of increasing target amplitude. The differential effects of age found on static tracking performance in anterior neck musculature suggest more difficult translation of human–computer interfaces controlled using anterior neck musculature for static tasks to older populations.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Gabrielle L. Hands and Cara E. Stepp

Title: Should I Stay or Should I Go? Improving Event Recommendation in the Social Web

Abstract This paper focuses on the recommendation of events in the Social Web, and addresses the problem of finding if, and to which extent, certain features, which are peculiar to events, are relevant in predicting the users’ interests and should thereby be taken into account in recommendation. We consider, in particular, three ‘additional’ features that are usually shown to users within social networking environments: reachability from the user location, the reputation of the event in the community and the participation of the user’s friends. Our study is aimed at evaluating whether adding this information to the description of the event type and topic, and including in the user profile the information on the relevance of these factors, can improve our capability to predict the user’s interest. We approached the problem by carrying out two surveys with users, who were asked to express their interest in a number of events. We then trained, by means of linear regression, a scoring function defined as a linear combination of the different factors, whose goal was to predict the user scores. We repeated this experiment under different hypotheses on the additional factors, in order to assess their relevance by comparing the predictive capabilities of the resulting functions. The compared results of our experiments show that additional factors, if properly weighted, can improve the prediction accuracy with an error reduction of 4.1%. The best results were obtained by combining content-based factors and additional factors in a proportion of ∼10:4.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Federica Cena, Silvia Likavec, Ilaria Lombardi and Claudia Picardi

Title: “I Need to Be Explicit: You’re Wrong”: Impact of Face Threats on Social Evaluations in Online Instructional Communication

Abstract Online instructional communication, as found in ask-an-expert forums, e-learning discussion boards or online help desks, creates situations that threaten the recipient’s face. This study analyzed the evaluation of face-threatening acts with a 1×3 design. An online forum thread confronted a layperson with an expert who either (a) addressed the layperson’s misconceptions directly and frankly, (b) mitigated face threats through explicit hints about the need to be direct or (c) communicated politely and indirectly. College students read these dialogues and assessed the expert communicator’s facework, recipient orientation, credibility and likability. Results showed that polite experts were evaluated most positively; explicit hints did not improve perceptions of face-threatening acts. This implies that users of instructional forums prefer communicators to be polite even when face threats are necessary. We discuss practical implications for different online instruction contexts and make suggestions for further research.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Regina Jucks, Lena Päuler and Benjamin Brummernhenrich

Title: The Potential of a Text-Based Interface as a Design Medium: An Experiment in a Computer Animation Environment

Abstract Since the birth of the concept of direct manipulation, the graphical user interface has been the dominant means of controlling digital objects. In this research, we hypothesize that the benefits of a text-based interface involve multiple tradeoffs, and we explore the potential of text as a medium of design from three perspectives: (i) the perceived level of control of the designed object, (ii) a tool for realizing creative ideas and (iii) an effective form for a highly learnable user interface. Our experiment in a computer animation environment shows that (i) participants did feel a high level of control of characters, (ii) creativity was both restricted and facilitated depending on the task and (iii) natural language expedited the learning of a new interface language. Our research provides experimental proof of the effect of a text-based interface and offers guidelines for the design of future computer-aided design applications.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Sangwon Lee and Jin Yan

Title: Framing a Set: Understanding the Curatorial Character of Personal Digital Bibliographies

Abstract We articulate a model of curatorship that emphasizes framing the character of the curated set as the focus of curatorial activity. This curatorial character is structured through the articulation, via mechanisms of selection, description and arrangement, of coherent classificatory principles. We describe the latest stage of a continuing project to examine the curatorial character of personal digital bibliographies, such as Pinterest boards, Flickr galleries and GoodReads shelves, and to support the design of such curatorially expressive personal collections. In the study reported here, 24 participants created personal bibliographies using either a structured design process, with explicit tasks for selecting, describing and arranging collection items, or an unstructured process that did not separate these activities. Our findings lead to a more complex understanding of personal collections as curatorial, expressive artifacts. We explore the role of cohesion as a quality that facilitates expression of the curatorial frame, and we find that when designers read source materials as a part of a set, they are more likely to write cohesive collections. Our findings also suggest that the curatorial act involves both the definition of abstract classificatory principles and their instantiation in a specific material environment. We describe various framing devices that facilitate these reading and writing activities, and we suggest design directions for supporting curatorial reading and writing tasks.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Melanie Feinberg, Ramona Broussard and Eryn Whitworth

Title: Identifying Problems Associated with Focus and Context Awareness in 3D Modelling Tasks

Abstract Creating complex 3D models is a challenging process. One of the main reasons for this is that 3D models are usually created using software developed for conventional 2D displays which lack true depth perspective, and therefore do not support correct perception of spatial placement and depth-ordering of displayed content. As a result, modellers often have to deal with many overlapping components of 3D models (e.g. vertices, edges, faces, etc.) on a 2D display surface. This in turn causes them to have difficulties in distinguishing distances, maintaining position and orientation awareness, etc. To better understand the nature of these problems, which can collectively be defined as ‘focus and context awareness’ problems, we have conducted a pilot study with a group of novice 3D modellers, and a series of interviews with a group of professional 3D modellers. This article presents these two studies, and their findings, which have resulted in identifying a set of focus and context awareness problems that modellers face in creating 3D models using conventional modelling software. The article also provides a review of potential solutions to these problems in the related literature.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Masood Masoodian, Azmi bin Mohd Yusof and Bill Rogers

Abstract The goal of user experience design in industry is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product. So far, user experience studies have mostly focused on short-term evaluations and consequently on aspects relating to the initial adoption of new product designs. Nevertheless, the relationship between the user and the product evolves over long periods of time and the relevance of prolonged use for market success has been recently highlighted. In this paper, we argue for the cost-effective elicitation of longitudinal user experience data. We propose a method called the “UX Curve” which aims at assisting users in retrospectively reporting how and why their experience with a product has changed over time. The usefulness of the UX Curve method was assessed in a qualitative study with 20 mobile phone users. In particular, we investigated how users’ specific memories of their experiences with their mobile phones guide their behavior and their willingness to recommend the product to others. The results suggest that the UX Curve method enables users and researchers to determine the quality of long-term user experience and the influences that improve user experience over time or cause it to deteriorate. The method provided rich qualitative data and we found that an improving trend of perceived attractiveness of mobile phones was related to user satisfaction and willingness to recommend their phone to friends. This highlights that sustaining perceived attractiveness can be a differentiating factor in the user acceptance of personal interactive products such as mobile phones. The study suggests that the proposed method can be used as a straightforward tool for understanding the reasons why user experience improves or worsens in long-term product use and how these reasons relate to customer loyalty.

Abstract Copyright 2011 Sari Kujalaa, Virpi Rotob, Kaisa Väänänen-Vainio-Mattilaa, Evangelos Karapanosc and Arto Sinneläa

Title: Researching Young Children’s Everyday Uses of Technology in the Family Home

Abstract Studies of the everyday uses of technology in family homes have tended to overlook the role of children and, in particular, young children. A study that was framed by an ecocultural approach focusing on children’s play and learning with toys and technologies is used to illustrate some of the methodological challenges of conducting research with young children in the home. This theoretical framework enabled us to identify and develop a range of methods that illuminated the home’s unique mix of inhabitants, learning opportunities and resources and to investigate parents’ ethnotheories, or cultural beliefs, that gave rise to the complex of practices, values and attitudes and their intersections with technology and support for learning in the home. This resulted in a better understanding of the role of technology in the lives of these 3- and 4-year-old children.

Abstract Copyright 2014 Lydia Plowman

Title: Measuring web usability using item response theory: Principles, features and opportunities

Abstract Usability is considered a critical issue on the web that determines either the success or the failure of a company. Thus, the evaluation of usability has gained substantial attention. However, most current tools for usability evaluation have some limitations, such as excessive generality and a lack of reliability and validity. The present work proposes the construction of a tool to measure usability in e-commerce websites using item response theory (IRT). While usability issues have only been considered in theoretical or empirical contexts, in this study, we discuss them from a mathematical point of view using IRT. In particular, we develop a standardised scale to measure usability in e-commerce websites. This study opens a new field of research in the ergonomics of interfaces with respect to the development of scales using IRT.

Abstract Copyright 2011 Rafael Tezzaa, Antonio Cezar Borniaa and Dalton Francisco de Andrade

Title: Everything Science Knows Right Now About Standing Desks

Abstract If it wasn’t already clear through common sense, it’s become painfully clear through science that sitting all day is terrible for your health. What’s especially alarming about this evidence is that extra physical activity doesn’t seem to offset the costs of what researchers call “prolonged sedentary time.” Just as jogging and tomato juice don’t make up for a night of smoking and drinking, a little evening exercise doesn’t erase the physical damage done by a full work day at your desk.

In response some people have turned to active desks—be it a standing workspace or even a treadmill desk—but the research on this recent trend has been too scattered to draw clear conclusions on its benefits (and potential drawbacks). At least until now. A trio of Canada-based researchers has analyzed the strongest 23 active desk studies to draw some conclusions on how standing and treadmill desks impact both physiological health and psychological performance. Abstract Copyright 2015 Eric Jaffe

Send Us Your Research References: If you have interesting and relevant research references post, post content as comment below for possible inclusion in next year’s updated list.

Other Content from PulseUX: Here are 2 other references from widely read and quoted long-form posts you may find interesting.

Angry Birds UX: Why Angry Birds is so successful and popular: a cognitive teardown of the user experience (1.5 million page views). https://live-mauro-usability-science.pantheonsite.io/blog/why-angry-birds-is-so-successful-a-cognitive-teardown-of-the-user-experience/

Apple v. Samsung: Impact and Implications for Product Design, User Interface Design (UX), Software Development and the Future of High-Technology Consumer Products https://live-mauro-usability-science.pantheonsite.io/blog/apple-v-samsung-implications-for-product-design-user-interface-ux-design-software-development-and-the-future-of-high-technology-consumer-products/

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• What Is a Research Design | Types, Guide & Examples

What Is a Research Design | Types, Guide & Examples

Published on June 7, 2021 by Shona McCombes . Revised on September 5, 2024 by Pritha Bhandari.

A research design is a strategy for answering your   research question  using empirical data. Creating a research design means making decisions about:

• Your overall research objectives and approach
• Whether you’ll rely on primary research or secondary research
• Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
• Your data collection methods
• The procedures you’ll follow to collect data
• Your data analysis methods

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research objectives and that you use the right kind of analysis for your data.

You might have to write up a research design as a standalone assignment, or it might be part of a larger   research proposal or other project. In either case, you should carefully consider which methods are most appropriate and feasible for answering your question.

Table of contents

Step 1: consider your aims and approach, step 2: choose a type of research design, step 3: identify your population and sampling method, step 4: choose your data collection methods, step 5: plan your data collection procedures, step 6: decide on your data analysis strategies, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research design.

• Introduction

Before you can start designing your research, you should already have a clear idea of the research question you want to investigate.

There are many different ways you could go about answering this question. Your research design choices should be driven by your aims and priorities—start by thinking carefully about what you want to achieve.

The first choice you need to make is whether you’ll take a qualitative or quantitative approach.

Qualitative research designs tend to be more flexible and inductive , allowing you to adjust your approach based on what you find throughout the research process.

Quantitative research designs tend to be more fixed and deductive , with variables and hypotheses clearly defined in advance of data collection.

It’s also possible to use a mixed-methods design that integrates aspects of both approaches. By combining qualitative and quantitative insights, you can gain a more complete picture of the problem you’re studying and strengthen the credibility of your conclusions.

Practical and ethical considerations when designing research

As well as scientific considerations, you need to think practically when designing your research. If your research involves people or animals, you also need to consider research ethics .

• How much time do you have to collect data and write up the research?
• Will you be able to gain access to the data you need (e.g., by travelling to a specific location or contacting specific people)?
• Do you have the necessary research skills (e.g., statistical analysis or interview techniques)?
• Will you need ethical approval ?

At each stage of the research design process, make sure that your choices are practically feasible.

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Within both qualitative and quantitative approaches, there are several types of research design to choose from. Each type provides a framework for the overall shape of your research.

Types of quantitative research designs

Quantitative designs can be split into four main types.

• Experimental and   quasi-experimental designs allow you to test cause-and-effect relationships
• Descriptive and correlational designs allow you to measure variables and describe relationships between them.

With descriptive and correlational designs, you can get a clear picture of characteristics, trends and relationships as they exist in the real world. However, you can’t draw conclusions about cause and effect (because correlation doesn’t imply causation ).

Experiments are the strongest way to test cause-and-effect relationships without the risk of other variables influencing the results. However, their controlled conditions may not always reflect how things work in the real world. They’re often also more difficult and expensive to implement.

Types of qualitative research designs

Qualitative designs are less strictly defined. This approach is about gaining a rich, detailed understanding of a specific context or phenomenon, and you can often be more creative and flexible in designing your research.

The table below shows some common types of qualitative design. They often have similar approaches in terms of data collection, but focus on different aspects when analyzing the data.

Your research design should clearly define who or what your research will focus on, and how you’ll go about choosing your participants or subjects.

In research, a population is the entire group that you want to draw conclusions about, while a sample is the smaller group of individuals you’ll actually collect data from.

Defining the population

A population can be made up of anything you want to study—plants, animals, organizations, texts, countries, etc. In the social sciences, it most often refers to a group of people.

For example, will you focus on people from a specific demographic, region or background? Are you interested in people with a certain job or medical condition, or users of a particular product?

The more precisely you define your population, the easier it will be to gather a representative sample.

• Sampling methods

Even with a narrowly defined population, it’s rarely possible to collect data from every individual. Instead, you’ll collect data from a sample.

To select a sample, there are two main approaches: probability sampling and non-probability sampling . The sampling method you use affects how confidently you can generalize your results to the population as a whole.

Probability sampling is the most statistically valid option, but it’s often difficult to achieve unless you’re dealing with a very small and accessible population.

For practical reasons, many studies use non-probability sampling, but it’s important to be aware of the limitations and carefully consider potential biases. You should always make an effort to gather a sample that’s as representative as possible of the population.

Case selection in qualitative research

In some types of qualitative designs, sampling may not be relevant.

For example, in an ethnography or a case study , your aim is to deeply understand a specific context, not to generalize to a population. Instead of sampling, you may simply aim to collect as much data as possible about the context you are studying.

In these types of design, you still have to carefully consider your choice of case or community. You should have a clear rationale for why this particular case is suitable for answering your research question .

For example, you might choose a case study that reveals an unusual or neglected aspect of your research problem, or you might choose several very similar or very different cases in order to compare them.

Data collection methods are ways of directly measuring variables and gathering information. They allow you to gain first-hand knowledge and original insights into your research problem.

You can choose just one data collection method, or use several methods in the same study.

Survey methods

Surveys allow you to collect data about opinions, behaviors, experiences, and characteristics by asking people directly. There are two main survey methods to choose from: questionnaires and interviews .

Observation methods

Observational studies allow you to collect data unobtrusively, observing characteristics, behaviors or social interactions without relying on self-reporting.

Observations may be conducted in real time, taking notes as you observe, or you might make audiovisual recordings for later analysis. They can be qualitative or quantitative.

Other methods of data collection

There are many other ways you might collect data depending on your field and topic.

If you’re not sure which methods will work best for your research design, try reading some papers in your field to see what kinds of data collection methods they used.

Secondary data

If you don’t have the time or resources to collect data from the population you’re interested in, you can also choose to use secondary data that other researchers already collected—for example, datasets from government surveys or previous studies on your topic.

With this raw data, you can do your own analysis to answer new research questions that weren’t addressed by the original study.

Using secondary data can expand the scope of your research, as you may be able to access much larger and more varied samples than you could collect yourself.

However, it also means you don’t have any control over which variables to measure or how to measure them, so the conclusions you can draw may be limited.

As well as deciding on your methods, you need to plan exactly how you’ll use these methods to collect data that’s consistent, accurate, and unbiased.

Planning systematic procedures is especially important in quantitative research, where you need to precisely define your variables and ensure your measurements are high in reliability and validity.

Operationalization

Some variables, like height or age, are easily measured. But often you’ll be dealing with more abstract concepts, like satisfaction, anxiety, or competence. Operationalization means turning these fuzzy ideas into measurable indicators.

If you’re using observations , which events or actions will you count?

If you’re using surveys , which questions will you ask and what range of responses will be offered?

You may also choose to use or adapt existing materials designed to measure the concept you’re interested in—for example, questionnaires or inventories whose reliability and validity has already been established.

Reliability and validity

Reliability means your results can be consistently reproduced, while validity means that you’re actually measuring the concept you’re interested in.

For valid and reliable results, your measurement materials should be thoroughly researched and carefully designed. Plan your procedures to make sure you carry out the same steps in the same way for each participant.

If you’re developing a new questionnaire or other instrument to measure a specific concept, running a pilot study allows you to check its validity and reliability in advance.

Sampling procedures

As well as choosing an appropriate sampling method , you need a concrete plan for how you’ll actually contact and recruit your selected sample.

That means making decisions about things like:

• How many participants do you need for an adequate sample size?
• What inclusion and exclusion criteria will you use to identify eligible participants?
• How will you contact your sample—by mail, online, by phone, or in person?

If you’re using a probability sampling method , it’s important that everyone who is randomly selected actually participates in the study. How will you ensure a high response rate?

If you’re using a non-probability method , how will you avoid research bias and ensure a representative sample?

Data management

It’s also important to create a data management plan for organizing and storing your data.

Will you need to transcribe interviews or perform data entry for observations? You should anonymize and safeguard any sensitive data, and make sure it’s backed up regularly.

Keeping your data well-organized will save time when it comes to analyzing it. It can also help other researchers validate and add to your findings (high replicability ).

On its own, raw data can’t answer your research question. The last step of designing your research is planning how you’ll analyze the data.

Quantitative data analysis

In quantitative research, you’ll most likely use some form of statistical analysis . With statistics, you can summarize your sample data, make estimates, and test hypotheses.

Using descriptive statistics , you can summarize your sample data in terms of:

• The distribution of the data (e.g., the frequency of each score on a test)
• The central tendency of the data (e.g., the mean to describe the average score)
• The variability of the data (e.g., the standard deviation to describe how spread out the scores are)

The specific calculations you can do depend on the level of measurement of your variables.

Using inferential statistics , you can:

• Make estimates about the population based on your sample data.
• Test hypotheses about a relationship between variables.

Regression and correlation tests look for associations between two or more variables, while comparison tests (such as t tests and ANOVAs ) look for differences in the outcomes of different groups.

Your choice of statistical test depends on various aspects of your research design, including the types of variables you’re dealing with and the distribution of your data.

Qualitative data analysis

In qualitative research, your data will usually be very dense with information and ideas. Instead of summing it up in numbers, you’ll need to comb through the data in detail, interpret its meanings, identify patterns, and extract the parts that are most relevant to your research question.

Two of the most common approaches to doing this are thematic analysis and discourse analysis .

There are many other ways of analyzing qualitative data depending on the aims of your research. To get a sense of potential approaches, try reading some qualitative research papers in your field.

If you want to know more about the research process , methodology , research bias , or statistics , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Simple random sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Cluster sampling
• Likert scales
• Reproducibility

 Statistics

• Null hypothesis
• Statistical power
• Probability distribution
• Effect size
• Poisson distribution

Research bias

• Optimism bias
• Cognitive bias
• Implicit bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Anchoring bias
• Explicit bias

A research design is a strategy for answering your   research question . It defines your overall approach and determines how you will collect and analyze data.

A well-planned research design helps ensure that your methods match your research aims, that you collect high-quality data, and that you use the right kind of analysis to answer your questions, utilizing credible sources . This allows you to draw valid , trustworthy conclusions.

Quantitative research designs can be divided into two main categories:

• Correlational and descriptive designs are used to investigate characteristics, averages, trends, and associations between variables.
• Experimental and quasi-experimental designs are used to test causal relationships .

Qualitative research designs tend to be more flexible. Common types of qualitative design include case study , ethnography , and grounded theory designs.

The priorities of a research design can vary depending on the field, but you usually have to specify:

• Your research questions and/or hypotheses
• Your overall approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative )
• The type of design you’re using (e.g., a survey , experiment , or case study )
• Your data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires , observations)
• Your data collection procedures (e.g., operationalization , timing and data management)
• Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical tests  or thematic analysis )

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.

Operationalization means turning abstract conceptual ideas into measurable observations.

For example, the concept of social anxiety isn’t directly observable, but it can be operationally defined in terms of self-rating scores, behavioral avoidance of crowded places, or physical anxiety symptoms in social situations.

Before collecting data , it’s important to consider how you will operationalize the variables that you want to measure.

A research project is an academic, scientific, or professional undertaking to answer a research question . Research projects can take many forms, such as qualitative or quantitative , descriptive , longitudinal , experimental , or correlational . What kind of research approach you choose will depend on your topic.

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Research methods in engineering design: a synthesis of recent studies using a systematic literature review

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• Published: 16 January 2023
• Volume 34 , pages 221–256, ( 2023 )

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• David Escudero-Mancebo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0849-8803 1 , 2 ,
• Nieves Fernández-Villalobos   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2559-0652 1 , 3 ,
• Óscar Martín-Llorente   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9200-5797 1 &
• Alejandra Martínez-Monés   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3201-0345 2  

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The relation between scientific research and engineering design is fraught with controversy. While the number of academic PhD programs on design grows, because the discipline is in its infancy, there is no consolidated method for systematically approaching the generation of knowledge in this domain. This paper reviews recently published papers from four top-ranked journals in engineering design to analyse the research methods that are frequently used. The research questions consider the aim and contributions of the papers, as well as which experimental design and which sources of data are being used. Frequency tables show the high variety of approaches and aims of the papers, combining both qualitative and quantitative empirical approaches and analytical methods. Most of the papers focus on methodological concerns or on delving into a particular aspect of the design process. Data collection methods are also diverse without a clear relation between the type of method and the objective or strategy of the research. This paper aims to act as a valuable resource for academics, providing definitions related to research methods and referencing examples, and for researchers, shedding light on some of the trends and challenges for current research in the domain of engineering design.

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1 Introduction

Doctoral studies have a long tradition in higher education systems (Bogle 2018 ). Doctoral studies are highly relevant because they are considered as a key for technical development and industrial excellence in developed countries. Normally, a PhD diploma is compulsory for pursuing and it is highly valued for getting involved in research projects in companies. The goal of doctoral programs is to provide postgraduates with competences for the generation of knowledge in a given domain. The means to generate knowledge depends on the area, being research methods and techniques potentially different, and evolving in parallel with the development of the domain. In young domains such as Engineering Design, the discussion about which research procedures and paradigms should be employed is still open.

Simon ( 1996 ), in his book The Science of Design ,  defined design as a search for an optimum in a space of alternatives that take into account the specifications and restrictions of a given problem. Hatchuel ( 2001 ) highlighted limitations of Simon’s position discussing that designing cannot be reduced to taking decisions among a bounded set because the number of concepts related to the problem and the possible number of decisions to be taken could be expandable and uncountable, not only due to human creativity but also to social interaction. (Subrahmanian et al. 2020 ) place Simon and Hatchuel’s approaches in a historical timeline that describes different models of how designing is understood, evidencing the challenges for research design as a discipline that defines a common language that includes the impact of context and users in designing, in addition to the problems.. Probably due to the youth of design as a research discipline, or due to its socio-technical nature, it does not yet have a consolidated research methods and techniques. Blessing and Chakrabarti ( 2009 ) proposed the DRM (Design Research Methodology) motivated by “ frustration about the lack of a common terminology, benchmarked research method and a common research methodology in design”. Through the analysis of recent research papers, this work has the aim to confirm how these visions about research in engineering design are projected in current state-of-the-art publications.

Since the work of Blessing and Chakrabarti, there have been some relevant proposals that have shed light on different aspects of the global design research landscape. Koskinen et al. ( 2011 ) proposed the term ‘constructive design research’ and presented alternatives to integrate research within the practice of design. Joost et al. ( 2016 ) used the term ‘design as research’ in a volume that compiled discourses of experts about questions on design research and its relationship with other disciplines. Vaughan ( 2017 ) presented a survey that collected different points of view related to doctoral education in the opinions of design graduates about practice-based research design. Redström ( 2017 ) presented an essay about how to develop theory -knowledge- by practice, experimentation and making -design. These works are a multi-faceted compendium of practical experiences and visions of experts on how to perform activities related to research in the domain of design. Although many examples and discussions presented in the cited books focus on the topic of research through/by design, rather than on research in engineering design, all of them agree on the relevance of research into the design due to the increasing number of PhD programs that could benefit from background knowledge about this topic. In this paper, we present an alternative approach to shed light on the relations between research and design: instead of collecting the personal visions of experts, we summarise and classify research papers on research in Engineering Design in terms of aims and contributions, methods and approaches, data collection techniques, and research instruments used for the collection of data. To this end, we have carried out a systematic review of the literature on research in engineering design. The overarching research question (RQ) that drives the review is: What is the current landscape of research methods in engineering design?

Access to doctoral studies normally requires candidates to have a Master’s degree in which they have taken courses about research methodologies. Doctoral studies normally culminate with the defense of a PhD thesis in which postgraduates have to show their capabilities to generate knowledge in a specific field. Submitting a PhD thesis that includes activities previously reviewed in scientific journals is generally considered as a quality warranty of the research performed by the student. Although publishing journal papers is not the only way to assess the excellence of the research work performed in a PhD thesis, the quasi-exponential increase of scientific publications we are witnessing (Tenopir and King 2014 ) indicates that it is probably becoming a universal standard for rating the quality of research. Therefore, being aware of the kind of works published in scientific journals related to engineering design could be of outstanding importance for scholars who have to configure the contents of the courses related to research methodologies in this field, as well as for PhD supervisors and students to focalize efforts for being more productive in terms of publications. The analysis of scientific papers about research in engineering design performed presented in this paper aims to contribute to this aim.

There are many possible ways to analyse, categorise or classify research works because there are many dimensions of analysis. Creswell ( 2009 ) presents a classical distinction between (1) quantitative, (2) qualitative and (3) mixed-methods (combining qualitative and quantitative research methods). For quantitative methods experimental designs, non-experimental design are distinguished. For qualitative, narrative research, ethnographic research, phenomenological research, grounded theory and case study research are distinguished. For mixed-methods, sequential, concurrent and transformative methods are distinguished. Blessing and Chakrabarti ( 2009 ) identified the following ones: (1) paradigm, that includes empiricism (Randolph 2003 ; Solomon 2007 ) and ethno-methodology (Atkinson 1988 ), methodologies, theories, views and assumptions (Kothari 2004 ); (2) aim, research questions and hypotheses; (3) nature of the study, including observational vs interventional (Thiese 2014 ), comparative vs non-comparative; (4) units of analysis; (5) data collection methods including recordings, interview, questionnaires (De Leeuw 2008 ); (6) role of the researcher (Fink 2000 ); (7) time constraints, duration and continuation of the research process; (8) observed processes including layout drawing, prototype or product; (9) setting referring to laboratory or field research (Paluck and Cialdini 2014 ); (10) tasks including type and complexity and nature; (11) number of cases, case size and participants (Diggle et al. 2011 ); (12) object of analysis distinguishing objects, companies, projects, documents… (13) coding and analysis, analysis and (14) verification methods (Brewer and Crano 2014 ); or (15) findings, that is, statement models or conclusions resulting from the study. Reich and Subrahmanian ( 2021 ) use the PSI framework (Problem, Social and Institutional space) to analyse and categorise research design works focussing on dimensions related to the problem being addressed concerning (1) disciplinary, (2) structural complexity and (3) knowledge availability; dimensions related with who is included in designing concerning (4) the perspective required to formulate the problem, (5) the inclusion of participants in the design process and the (6) capabilities of the design team; and finally dimensions related with how designing is executed taking into account (7) the ties or connections between actors, (8) the accessibility to knowledge and (9) the institutional complexity (Reich and Subrahmanian 2020 ). The dimensions presented by Blessing and Chakrabari have the ambition to classify different aspects to be taken into account when research in engineering design works are tackled. The dimensions proposed by Reich and Subrahmian are complementary and arise when they analyse the factors influencing success in engineering design projects. When analysing papers, some of the details related to some of the listed dimensions could be missing in the descriptions (timing, success validation etc.) so that we had to devise alternative proposals.

Our analysis pivots around the division between empirical qualitative, quantitative research and mixed-methods proposed by (Creswell 2009 ). This classification was complemented with analytical research methods, as specified by (Adrion 1993 ), cited by (Glass 1995 ) (defined in Sect. 2.2). From this germinal division, data-collection methods, strategies, and contributions of the studies are reported in cross-analysis tables. We aim to identify the main goals and results pursued or obtained by researchers (dimensions 2 and 15 of Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009 ), the strategies of enquiry and methodologies they follow (dimensions 1, 3, 9, 10 of Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009 ), and which data sources and instruments are most (and least) commonly used (rest of dimensions of Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009 ) in the domain of engineering design.

The structure of the document is the following: First, we present the review method and the categories used to classify the papers. We then present the quantitative results of the number of papers in each of the categories and the cross relations of the different classes, shedding light on the relative weight of each of the qualitative and quantitative approaches and the most frequent data-collection methods used. Next, we discuss the usefulness of the obtained results for academics and professionals interested in research design and the paper ends with the conclusions. Complementary material is provided with a brief description of each of the analysed papers.

We follow Kitchenham et al. ( 2009 ) as a guideline for performing the systematic review. The nature of the research question did not suit a usual search in the databases, as we were interested in analysing the approaches to research published in the field of engineering design. For this reason, we focused on identifying papers published in relevant journals in the field. The data sources are journal papers in the field of engineering design.

A simple search in the Journal of Citation Reports using the term “Design” as a key search title criterion, generates a list of 99 journals indexed in different categories. Only 80 are indexed in 2020, the rest of them in previous years. As we aimed to high-impact journals reporting research in engineering design, we focused on the journals indexed in SCIE (Science Citation Index Expanded) related to Science and Technology, discarding the 22 journals indexed in ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index), the 10 indexed in AHCI (Arts and Humanities Citation Index) and the 5 indexed in SSCI (Social Sciences Citation Index). Among the 43 remaining journals indexed in SCIE, 13 of them correspond to categories related to Chemistry and Biology (for example Anti-Cancer Drug Design or Molecular System Design & Engineering ) 11 of them to Computer Science or Electrics (for example Design Codes and Cryptography or Computer Aid Design ); 3 with Mathematics (for example Journal of Combinatorial Design ) and 2 with Building ( Architectural Engineering and Design Management or Structural Design of Tall and Special Building ). Closer to engineering design are the 14 remaining journals: 4 indexed in Mechanics Journal of Mechanical Design, Mechanics Based Design of Structures and Machines, Journal of Advanced Mechanical Design Systems for Manufacturing and Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design ), 4 related to Materials ( Materials & Design, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, International Journal of Mechanics and Materials in Design and Road Materials and Pavement Design ); and 2 related with vehicle design ( Journal of Ship Production and Design , and International Journal of Vehicle Design ). In spite of being closer to the topic of research in engineering design, we discarded these journals for being too specific. The remaining 4 journals were: (i) Design Studies (DS), (ii) the International Journal of Design (IJD), (iii) the Journal of Engineering Design (JED) and (iv) Research on Engineering Design (RED). Table 1 shows that these journals share the category denominated “Engineering Multidisciplinary”. In this category, there are 6 journals that have the term “Design” in the title, the four selected plus International Journal of Technology and Design Education (also indexed in SSCI), Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design Analysis and Manufacturing (also indexed in Computer Science) that were discarded for being specialized in education and in artificial intelligence with applications in engineering design, respectively, and therefore, out of the focus of our research.

Each of the selected journals declare in their presentation their aims and audience: RED focuses on design theory and methodology, DS focuses on design processes, JED focuses on different aspects of the design of engineered products and systems, and IJD publishes research papers in all fields of design. The audience of DS, JEC and IJD is broader than the one of RED, which focuses on mechanical, civil, architectural, and manufacturing engineering. Overall, the four journals constitute a rich and representative sample that includes works of diverse nature, applying a variety of research methods and approaches to different problems in the context of research in engineering design.

Sample selection in systematic literature reviews must be structured, comprehensive, and transparent (Hiebl 2021 ). To comply with these three requirements, we established a recent and limited temporal window and applied random selection to select the sample. We collected 17 papers from each journal, as 17 is the number of papers available in one of the journals under analysis (IJD) and we chose to use the same number of papers per journal to avoid bias (i.e., giving more importance to one journal than another) in the study. For the journals with more than 17 papers in the period of analysis, random selection was applied. We focused on papers published between November 2018 and November 2019, which was the most recent available time window when this work was started.

This methodology led to a final total of 68 papers. We followed a collaborative team-coding approach (Saldaña 2021 ). Papers were selected and assigned randomly to a pair of reviewers. Each reviewer coded two papers every two weeks. Disagreements and new code proposals were resolved in periodic meetings involving the four researchers/authors. The first author of this paper played the role of “codebook editor” (MacQueen and Guest 2008 ), updating the code list after the meetings and he used the data from the analysis to build the final tables and present the resulting themes derived from the study.

With the aim of answering the general question of this review, RQ:, “What is the current landscape of research methods in engineering design?”, we focused on the following more specific sub-questions:

What are the research goals pursued by the analysed works?

What are the main experimental approaches found in the reviewed papers?

What data collection methods are employed in the reviewed works?

Which instruments are normally used to collect these data?

To answer these questions, we followed an anticipated data condensation approach (Miles et al. 2020 ). We defined four overarching topics corresponding to the research sub-questions: aims and contributions of the research; research approach; data collection techniques; and instruments for the collection of data. For each topic, we defined a set of categories, based on our revision of engineering design methods (see Sect. 2). During the iterative coding work, emerging categories were included when required. The new categories were used to re-codify all the works. This combination of deductive and inductive coding enabled us to derive new meanings from the data.

In the rest of this section, we present the categories that were identified in the analysis under each topic. Appendix shows complementary information with representative examples of the categories.

2.1 Aims and contributions

Concerning the aims/contributions of the research (RQ1), we started from an empty list of research targets which was enriched as the number of reviewed papers increased. Finally, the following research goals were identified through the coding process:

To study or propose a methodology, that focuses on papers whose main objective is to study an existing design methodology by analysing its validity in works that propose a new design methodology or that develop a part of it more deeply.

To delve into a given aspect of design, which includes papers that focus on exploring an aspect of a design (team communication, sketching, generation of ideas, materials...) or that explore one area of design that is recognised as challenging (social design, inclusive design, ecological design...).

To design, develop, or test a specific product , which includes those papers that set out the process of creation or development of a specific product or a group of them. Some of these works describe the overall process of creating a product, and others focus on a specific phase of its development (research, ideation, testing, and validation).

To make recommendations or propose guidelines, which include articles whose main aim is to systematize the results of their research to provide advice, either at a methodological level or in the design of new products.

Proposing a theory includes those articles that use logical reasoning or mental operations, such as imagination, intuition, abstraction, and deduction, with the aim of enunciating concepts or creating models, explanations, or theories about the phenomena under study.

Proposing a framework of analysis or a taxonomy that enables concepts or objects to be classified into categories.

More than one code could be assigned to each of the papers. This could be the case of a paper that aims to develop a specific product and ends by proposing guidelines.

2.2 Research approach

Concerning experimental approaches found in the reviewed papers (RQ2), as explained in the introduction, we propose the use of the distinction between quantitative, qualitative, mixed, and analytical research methods, defined as:

Quantitative empirical studies are those that aim at testing theories by examining relationships between variables, based on the collection of numerical data which is analysed using statistical procedures.

Qualitative empirical studies are those that aim at exploring and understanding in depth the meaning that individuals or groups give to a problem. They usually involve the collection of non-numerical data obtained in the participants’ settings and follow inductive analysis approaches in which the researchers interpret the meanings of the collected data.

Mixed-methods studies are those that combine both quantitative and qualitative approaches at diverse levels (data sources, analytical methods, etc.), so that the overall study is stronger than using each of the two approaches (i.e., quantitative, or qualitative) separately.

Analytical studies are those that focus on the formalization of a model and its demonstration. They start out by proposing a formal model with a mathematical formulation, derive results using deductive approaches, and, if possible, compare these results with empirical observations.

With respect to quantitative empirical studies, we subcategorize them into experiments, quasi-experiments and non-experiments, depending on the way the subjects of interest are assigned to an experimental group or to a control group:

Experiments: the assignment of subjects to the experimental or to the control group is random.

Quasi-experiments: there is not a random assignment of a subject to the groups.

Non-experiments: there is not control on the grouping of subjects.

When a known qualitative strategy of inquiry is used, it is also tagged. According to the definition proposed by Creswell ( 2009 ), strategies of inquiry are types of methods, designs or models that provide specific direction for procedures in a research design.

Ethnographic research documents the beliefs and practices of a particular cultural group or phenomenon in its natural environment from the perspective of insiders (Lapan et al. 2012 ). The researcher stays on site for a considerable amount of time to analyse practices and behaviours of groups, by observing, interviewing and (sometimes) participating in the process under analysis. Very popular in social sciences, it is also used in architecture (Cranz 2016 ).

In phenomenological research , the researcher identifies the essence of human experiences about a phenomenon as described by participants, while the researcher sets aside his or her own perspective (Wilson 2015 ).

Grounded theory is a strategy of inquiry in which the researcher derives a general theory grounded in the views of participants, involving the use of multiple stages of data collection (Jørgensen 2001 ).

Hermeneutics inquiry focuses on disclosing how participants’ interpretations of a phenomenon determine the way they live in the world (Stigliano 1989 ). This technique is popular in architecture (Pérez-Gómez 1999 ) .

Case study research is an empirical strategy of inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context (Yin 2009 ). It uses descriptions of programs, events, or other phenomena to construct a complete portrayal of a case for interpretation and possible action (Lapan et al. 2012 ).

Eikeland ( 2006 ) describes different approaches to action research that involve applied research, moving experimentation from laboratories to field, inviting the subjects of research to join the community of researchers and involving practitioners in research with the insistence of thinking through personal practices. Action research is a very popular approach in social sciences (Stringer 2008 ; Clark et al. 2020 ) and it is also proposed for architecture (Herr 2015 ) and for the practice of product design (Swann 2002 ). This method is related to the terms research-through-design, practice-based-design research or research-by-design (Redström 2017 ; Vaughan 2017 ), that has been discussed to be a kind of action research in works like (Kennedy-Clark 2013 ; Motta-Filho 2021 ).

Case study is generally used for exploratory research or for pre-testing some research hypotheses (Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009 ). Action research requires a high degree of flexibility and is usually qualitative, data-driven, participatory, and makes use of multiple data sources. Case study and action research also appear in the following criteria of classification, following the proposal of Blessing and Chakrabarti ( 2009 ) referring to data-collection techniques.

2.3 Data-collection techniques

In this subsection, we present the list of data-collection techniques we have tagged, to analyse what is proposed in RQ3. Following the list of data-collection methods presented in section A.4 of Blessing and Chakrabarti ( 2009 ), excluding experiments, case studies and action research we prefer to include in the list of inquiry research strategies presented in the previous subsection.

Observation is a technique in which the researcher records, in real time, what is happening, either by hand, recording it or using measuring equipment. As Blessing and Chakrabarti ( 2009 ) explain: ‘The quality of observational data is highly dependent on the skill, training and competency of the observer’ (Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009 ). Observations are the main source of data in ethnographic studies (see Sect. 2.1), but this strategy is also commonly used in social sciences (Creswell 2009 ) and in visual design (Goodwin 2000 ), architecture (Cuff 1992 ) and product design practice (Wasson 2000 ).

Simultaneous verbalization refers to the situation in which the participants speak aloud while using a system, with the aim of providing information about the cognitive behaviour of the participants, which may not be obtained through normal observation (Ohnemus and Biers 1993 ). Often used to analyse problem-solving behaviour, its most important feature is the real-time aspect. Simultaneous verbalization sessions usually last a few hours and never more than a day, due to the effort required by both the participants and the researchers in their corresponding analysis. Although audio recordings are sometimes used to record simultaneous verbalization, they are understood as inappropriate for a process such as design, which usually involves drawings and gestures, so video recordings are considered more appropriate.

Collecting technical documents consists of obtaining technical documents related to a particular project, topic or product, from various sources (Rapley and Rees 2018 ). Analysis of these documents is often used early in a research project to understand the organisation, the background of the project and the experience of the designers. It is commonly employed in most observational studies. However, if it is used as a single source of information, it can result in such limitations as the usual lack of data on the context in which the documents were created and the reason for their content. It is, therefore, convenient to complement them with other methods such as interviews.

Collecting physical objects involves mock-ups, prototypes and other physical models that may be relevant for developing a product or testing it. The model or prototype could refer to a part of the product or the whole product. For traditional engineering research, which focuses, for example, on the analysis of product behaviour, the products are the main source of data (Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009 ). In our review, we consider those works that start collecting different objects to carry out a study on their usefulness, or on the behaviour of users, for example. The object is a general term that can refer both to drawings and physical objects. Among the former, we find all those sketches, drawings and diagrams that have emerged throughout the conception of a product or its development, or throughout a research process, which could yield important information to organise ideas and draw conclusions.

Questionnaires are used to collect people´s thoughts or opinions about a certain product, process or method (Radhakrishna 2007 ). A priori, they seem easier to use than real-time methods, such as observation or simultaneous verbalization, and they are useful to obtain data from a greater number of cases. However, some of its disadvantages, such as the time required by the participants and the potential bias of the results, must also be taken into account.

Interviews have the same purpose as the questionnaires but are carried out face-to-face (King et al. 2019 ). Sometimes they are not carried out individually but using a group dynamic known as focus group: a group interview that mixes aspects of interviews and observations, as it provides information from the study of the interactions between participants. Focus groups can provide richer information than interviews, but they can have a negative effect on the contribution of specific participants.

2.4 Instruments for the collection of data

Data collection methods are supported by instrumentation. This section describes the categories we found to respond to RQ4, exposing the instruments that are normally used to collect these data. Independently of the strategy of inquiry applied, there are several instruments that are used to keep records of the observations. These recordings are important to keep evidence and to enable the reproducibility of the analysis. We tagged the papers depending on the use of classical audio, video and image recordings and the more recent technique of eye tracking (Bergstrom and Schall 2014 ).

In experiments and case studies, we are also interested in physical measurements that are used to objectify observations.

When questionnaires and/or interviews are the data-collection techniques, we tagged who is the attendee, distinguishing between stakeholders , users of products or participants (observed people) in the research and experts or designers. We also found it relevant to tag when the study uses workshops as a means to obtain information.

The last topic of interest that has been tagged is the fact that the research work uses simulation algorithms or tools as a source of information. We use this tag when the simulation tools are a fundamental part of the research, as it provides the information analysed in the paper (Behera et al. 2019 ), or because the tool or the algorithm itself is the main contribution (Mathias et al. 2019 ).

3.1 Aims and contributions of the reviewed papers

Table 2 shows the codes assigned to each of the papers analysed. This section summarises the results related to RQ1 (research goals). As shown in Table 2 , most of the works focus on methodologies or on the analysis of a specific aspect of the design processes. The presentation of a product and the building up of knowledge with taxonomies, guidelines, theories, or reviews, are exceptions.

Five papers propose a theory: (Comi et al. 2019 ) present the concept of shared professional vision; (Benavides and Lara-Rapp 2019 ) present the principle of weaker dependencies in axiomatic design; (Martinec et al. 2019 ) introduce the state-transition model (synthesis, analysis, evaluation) in conceptual design and Lloyd ( 2019 ) defends the theory of the social turn in design, Aktas and Mäkelä ( 2019 ) focus on the relation between craft, materials, makers.

Six works focus on the evaluation of a specific product: a software product in Takahashi et al. ( 2018 ) and Belkadi et al. ( 2019 ); or physical objects in the case of Roesler et al. ( 2019 ), Hyysalo et al. ( 2019b ) and McKinnon and Sade ( 2019 ).

Concerning the works related to methodologies, we find papers that propose a method based on analytical methods or algorithmic solutions such as those related to axiomatic design (Chen et al. 2019a ) and those related to such methods as research-through-design, where the importance of the method followed is prominent in the study (Tsai and Van Den Hoven 2018 ; Hyysalo et al. 2019b ; McKinnon and Sade 2019 ; Hanrahan et al. 2019 ); or methodologies for product development such as Daalhuizen et al. ( 2019 ), with emphasis on different aspects such as work in groups (Gyory et al. 2019 ), sustainability (Santolaya et al. 2019 ) or democratised design (Hyysalo et al. 2019a ).

A good number of papers present frameworks of analysis or classifications with different purposes. Bresciani ( 2019 ) for classifying visualization dimensions, McDonald and Michela ( 2019 ) to classify moral goods, Roy and Warren ( 2019 ) for card sets, Park-Lee and Person ( 2018 ) identify three practices on briefing, Vegt et al. ( 2019 ) deduce 3 types of invasiveness evoked by the rules in gamified brainstorming, Valverde et al. ( 2019 ) classify the type of feedback in automotive push buttons, Cooper ( 2019 ) presents the five waves in design research, Luck ( 2019 ) describes the framework to distinguish between design, design research, architectural design research and practice, Hobye and Ranten ( 2019 ) present five behavioural strategies for interactive products and Van Kuijk et al. ( 2019 ) presents a framework to analyse usability concepts of electronic products and Petreca et al. ( 2019 ) for analysing the relation between sensors and textile. We also include in this category the papers related to ontologies, that are used to represent knowledge.

Proposing recommendations is a common result in the analysed research papers, including a variety of themes such as recommendations on the use of guidelines by new designers (Reimlinger et al. 2019 ); the use of specific materials (Genç et al. 2018 ; Pedgley et al. 2018 ; Aktas and Mäkelä 2019 ; Petreca et al. 2019 ); how to orient future studies on the use of mobile technology by elderly people (Li and Luximon 2018 ), or about design and poverty (Jagtap 2019 ) or ethnographic studies in developing countries (Wood and Mattson 2019 ); appliance design (Selvefors et al. 2018 ); use of games in brainstorming (Vegt et al. 2019 ); or specifying requirements (Morkos et al. 2019 ). Cooper ( 2019 ) proposes interprets the history of design research through five waves.

The most frequent type of works delve into a particular aspect of product design such as sketching (Sung et al. 2019 ; Self 2019 ), prototyping (Menold et al. 2019 ; Mathias et al. 2019 ), material (Pedgley et al. 2018 ; Aktas and Mäkelä 2019 ; Barati et al. 2019 ; Petreca et al. 2019 ), interaction (Hobye and Ranten 2019 ; Valverde et al. 2019 ), briefing (Park-Lee and Person 2018 ), working in groups (Graeff et al. 2019 ), iterations and testing (Tahera et al. 2019 ; Piccolo et al. 2019 ); behavioural complexity (Hobye and Ranten 2019 ), manufacturing (Yang et al. 2019 ), or usability (Van Kuijk et al. 2019 ).

3.2 Strategies of inquiry and methodologies

This section summarises the results related to RQ2 (main experimental approaches founded): qualitative approaches are a majority, but the number of quantitative or mixed-methods studies is also relevant. Other approaches, such as the use of analytical methods, are less frequent. Table 3 shows that, when the goal of the paper is related to proposing or studying a methodology (first column in Table 3 ), the percentage of pure quantitative papers is lower than in the rest of the cases. Regarding whether there is a tendency towards any methodology depending on the journal; Table 2 shows that the Journal on Engineering Design seems to focus more than the other journals on non-qualitative strategies of inquiry.

When quantitative methods are used, experiments are more frequent than quasi-experiments and non-experiments (14 out of the 17 quantitative studies present an experiment). We found 26 experimental studies, with 5 quasi-experiments (Saliminamin et al. 2019 ; Vegt et al. 2019 ; Sung et al. 2019 ; Self 2019 ; Santolaya et al. 2019 ) and 4 non-experiments (Selvefors et al. 2018 ; Morkos et al. 2019 ; Roesler et al. 2019 ; Piccolo et al. 2019 ).

The use of case studies is pervasive in qualitative research (more than half the studies that classified as qualitative base the research on a case study). Furthermore, many quantitative studies support results from case studies; for example, some analytical studies in which case studies are used as proof of concept of the proposed models (Chen et al. 2019b ; Zhang and Thomson 2019 ; Li et al. 2019a ).

Nevertheless, other qualitative methods, such as ethnography, hermeneutics, action research and phenomenological studies, are also used. The use of specific methods related to design is scarce (the discussion about this concern is dealt with in detail below). Ethnography is used in three cases (Roesler et al. 2019 ; Van der Linden et al. 2019a ; Comi et al. 2019 )—also the annotation as observation in the tables—and one more paper uses ethnography as the study focus (Wood and Mattson 2019 ). Hermeneutics is used by (McDonald and Michela 2019 ; Cooper 2019 ; Lloyd 2019 ; Luck 2019 ).

Action research is used by Pakkanen et al. ( 2019 ) to investigate, in combination with case studies, modular systems in industrial environments. The work of Bresciani ( 2019 ) could be considered an action research study with the goal of building a grounded theory evaluation technique for visual thinking. McKinnon and Sade ( 2019 ) align their work in the field of research through design using a set of gadgets to obtain information about environmental home good practices. Research through design is also used by Genç et al. ( 2018 ) to explore new materials and Tsai and Van Den Hoven ( 2018 ) to explore user experience. Hyysalo et al. ( 2019b ) and present the evaluation of a panel following the principles of research through design. Close to this method is that presented by Barati et al.( 2019 ), who complement their study with workshops where a group of students explores their proposals.

3.3 Data-collection methods

Results regarding RQ3 (data collection methods) are summarised in this section. Table 3 shows which main methods and techniques for collecting data are used in the different studies. The analysis of the sources of information is completed with a revision of the instruments used to collect data and with a discussion about the role of human input presented in the following sections. None of the data-collection methods identified seem to be dominant in the papers studied.

Technical documents of diverse nature are the main source of information used (Table 2 reports 23 out of the 68 papers analysed using technical documents). Interviewing is also frequent (22 times reported in Table 2 ). Expert and user opinions are both used as sources of information, but neither is a majority (22 and 20 papers, respectively, reported in Table 2 . Observation is mostly used in qualitative studies, where almost half use this technique. Concerning quantitative studies, apart from measurements, expert opinions appear as a frequent resource. This is because it is common to collect the opinions of experts in questionnaires or in evaluation templates that convert opinions into numeric values.

Verbalization is used in Martinec et al. ( 2019 ) and Gyory et al. ( 2019 ) for team work analysis and in (Khalaj and Pedgley 2019 ), where designers and users had to verbalize impressions.

Objects are collected as a data source in a relevant number of studies. Some are the results of students’ work as in Gralla et al. ( 2019 ); brainstorming outputs (Vegt et al. 2019 ); prototypes (Feijs and Toeters 2018 ; Barati et al. 2019 ), or commercial products (Roy and Warren 2019 ). Sketches are the type of object analysed in (Genç et al. 2018 ; Martinec et al. 2019 ; Gyory et al. 2019 ; Goucher-Lambert and Cagan 2019 ; Comi et al. 2019 ); while for (Li and Luximon 2018 ; Sung et al. 2019 ) sketches are the main concern of the research.

Questionnaires are less frequently used, and when this happens, they are designed ad-hoc for each study. Given the wide variety of topics and aims of the reviewed works, no standardised questionnaires have been found. Questionnaires, therefore, take different formats: Amazon Mechanical Turk is used once (Goucher-Lambert and Cagan 2019 ); a Likert scale tool evaluation (Graeff et al. 2019 ); binary and open questions (Pakkanen et al. 2019 ); ranking of preferences (Franceschini and Maisano 2019 ); or ad-hoc software tools (Li et al. 2019a ).

Interviews are frequently used as a source of information in qualitative and mixed strategies of inquiry. Interviews are associated with phenomenological studies (Li and Luximon 2018 ; Park-Lee and Person 2018 ; Selvefors et al. 2018 ) and also in ethnographic studies (Roesler et al. 2019 ; Van der Linden et al. 2019a ; Wood and Mattson 2019 ; Comi et al. 2019 ). The interviewed population can be a group of users of a given technology (Li and Luximon 2018 ) or a group of experts (Bresciani 2019 ).

Concerning the sample size used in the 24 papers whose research method has been classified as experimental, and taking into account that the sample may refer to studied objects or to participants/users, which, in turn, may be individuals or teams, the number of participants/users varies between 4, in Martinec et al. ( 2019 ), and 169, in Ozer and Cebeci ( 2019 ). The number of studied objects also varies from 6, in Mathias et al. ( 2019 ) to 256, in Li et al. ( 2019b ). In Santolaya et al. ( 2019 ) a methodology is experimentally tested in 2 case studies.

3.4 Instruments

Results regarding RQ4 (instruments used to collect data) are summarised in this section. Measurements refer both to metrics obtained with a physical device and to qualitative ratings obtained from human-based scores. In the first group, we can mention the metrics of energetic consumption (Selvefors et al. 2018 ; Santolaya et al. 2019 ), mass material (Santolaya et al. 2019 ), volumes of objects (Mathias et al. 2019 ), displacement of buttons (Valverde et al. 2019 ), online shopping user interaction data (Ozer and Cebeci 2019 ), or the timing of tasks in (Mathias et al. 2019 ). In the second group, we can cite (Saliminamin et al. 2019 ; Gyory et al. 2019 ), which score the quality of design proposals, and (Franceschini and Maisano 2019 ), who use design preferences as the input for an analytical model.

Simulations and/or software developments of algorithms take on an important role in several papers. Belkadi et al. ( 2019 ) present a software tool; Chen et al. ( 2019a ), Feijs and Toeters ( 2018 ), Mathias et al. ( 2019 ) and Takahashi et al. ( 2018 ) present or test software tools for different goals, such as analysing Lego buildings, and generating fashion patterns for projecting requirements into design parameters. Li et al. ( 2019a ) focus on modelling knowledge; Piccolo et al. ( 2019 ) use analysis and visualization tools to present results; while Ozer and Cebeci ( 2019 ) and Saravanan and Jerald ( 2019 ) use machine learning techniques such as neural networks and clustering. De Lessio et al. ( 2019 ) present a software tool to support planning and Yang et al. ( 2019 ) to support manufacturing. Boussuge et al. ( 2019 ) propose using ontologies to capture high-level modelling and idealisation decisions, characterising the simulations of CAE models from CAD assemblies. Other papers related to ontologies use software to model them (Cheong and Butscher 2019 ; Hagedorn et al. 2019 ; Wang et al. 2019 ).

Workshops are frequently used for evaluating results and sharing experiences by a group of experts with discussions (Van der Linden et al. 2019a , b ; McKinnon and Sade 2019 ; Self 2019 ; Wlazlak et al. 2019 ). In (Genç et al. 2018 ; Martinec et al. 2019 ), the workshops become designing activities in the research-through-design methodology. In Takahashi et al. ( 2018 ), workshops are used to observe users while they interact with a system and, in Pakkanen et al. ( 2019 ), to collect information from experts. In Garcia et al. ( 2019 ), workshops are meetings with stakeholders.

The opinions of stakeholders can be the core of the research study (Self 2019 ) or they can be used as part of usability tests (Takahashi et al. 2018 ). Most often, questionnaires and interviews are performed with users of a product (Selvefors et al. 2018 ; Roesler et al. 2019 ; Hanrahan et al. 2019 ; Ozer and Cebeci 2019 ); by active participants of the process under analysis, such as professionals in companies (Reimlinger et al. 2019 ; Wlazlak et al. 2019 ); or by students that are required to do a project (Vegt et al. 2019 ; Li et al. 2019a ; Abi Akle et al. 2019 ; Graeff et al. 2019 ). The experts that participate in questionnaires or interviews are designers, architects, engineers (Li and Luximon 2018 ; Park-Lee and Person 2018 ; Pakkanen et al. 2019 ), or academic staff evaluating results (Morkos et al. 2019 ; Sung et al. 2019 ; McKinnon and Sade 2019 ). In interviews occurring in ethnographic studies, the subjects providing information could be considered the topic of analysis (Wood and Mattson 2019 ), but at the same time, they could be experts (Comi et al. 2019 ).

4 Discussion

4.1 variety of aims and approaches.

The principal finding of our research is that there is a very high diversity in the works we have analysed in the journals related to engineering design. This variety affects the aims and scopes of the research works, the methods, and the data sources. Table 4 shows that variety affects the papers in the four journals analysed with only minor differences among them. Thus, DS (Design Studies) and RED (Research in Engineering Design) seem to focus more on methodological aspects, while IJD (International Journal of Design) and JED (Journal of Engineering Design) focus more on delving into particular aspects of the design process or on products, but at most 7 papers out of the 17 falls into one of the categories. According to the results, DS and IJD journals attract more papers with a qualitative approach (only 2 papers in each journal are purely quantitative), while most of the papers from JED and RED follow a quantitative or analytical approach (only 3 and 7 papers, respectively, are purely qualitative). However, we have found papers with both approaches in all the journals. RED uses less self-reported data (interviews, questionnaires or workshops), while DS uses this source of data the most, but in both journals there are exceptions, such as the works of Mathias et al. ( 2019 ) in DS or Garcia et al. ( 2019 ) in RED.

Despite this broad spectrum of papers, we found a clear interest in methodologies and the in-depth analysis of a given aspect of the whole process of designing generally applied to a particular case study. The interest in both topics is justified by the nature of the design and the youth of the discipline. As a process of searching for optimum solutions, design is clearly related to methodological concerns. As a young discipline, the space for contributing to the different tasks of the whole design process is huge. The analysis of the process of engineering design has evolved from being considered from a purely technical perspective to being studied as a socio-technical process. From a technical point of view, (Beitz et al. 1996 ) distinguished between conceptual design and embodied design for identifying a list of tasks that contribute to facing problems of engineering design in an effective and systematic way. From a socio-technical perspective, different authors have pointed out that the design process is influenced by aspects related to teamwork capabilities (Dorst 2004 ), the inclusion of participants (Van der Bijl-Brouwer and Dorst 2017 ) or by the institutional complexity (Reich and Subrahmanian 2020 ). Our study shows that there is space for research works that focus on both perspectives of analysis, being found works that are closely related to tasks that affect conceptual design (Martinec et al. 2019 ; Benavides and Lara-Rapp 2019 ; Self 2019 ), embodied design (Petreca et al. 2019 ) and also to social aspects of the design process (Piccolo et al. 2019 ).

It has been observed that there are a relatively low number of papers proposing recommendations, guidelines, frameworks, and taxonomies. We understand how difficult it is generalizing and classifying a discipline with multiple tasks, agents, approaches and sub-domains. Nevertheless, generating these types of representations of knowledge could be a substrate for the growth of the discipline. Design is a context-specific endeavour, but trying to generalize results so that other authors could reuse the generated knowledge in other domains would be positive for the growth of the discipline. The selected papers include product development and engineering design, which are two different areas, albeit overlapping. Recommendations and guidelines are always useful for the practice of engineering design, but more importantly, classifying concepts and types of activities with frameworks and taxonomies is an essential process in the building of knowledge in any research area. The variety of aims and approaches is probably the reason for this deficit, but research in engineering design would benefit from works analysing the many methodologies proposed from a meta level that permits obtaining general concepts that are domain-independent and universally applicable.

Results presented in Table 2 and summarised in Table 3 could be used to derive patterns or preferred styles in research design. Papers using analytical approaches mainly use case studies to validate the proposed models and they use simulations to compare results with expectations. Here, the case studies are used as proof of concept of the proposed models. They do not consider human input as a main feature of analysis. The ones related to methodological concerns are the papers focusing on axiomatic design and the ones relating to specific aspects or to frameworks are the ones related to ontologies. Most papers with quantitative approaches use experimental setups in which they compare different configurations of a given problem. The means to collect numerical data highly depend on the type of work, with no outstanding method or instrument. This approach is mainly used when the goal is to study a given aspect of design, which is coherent with the fact that experiments are meant to measure variables that can be isolated, and therefore these studies need to focus on specific features of the design process. Like analytical papers, qualitative approaches are mainly based on case studies. The main difference is related to the nature of these case studies. In qualitative approaches, the case studies aim at gaining insight into the complexity of the studied design processes from the point of view of the participants. In consequence, the preferred data collection methods are observations and interviews and/or workshops, to collect data from users and experts. They use rich data sources (audio, photography, video or software tools) to make observations rigorously. Qualitative approaches are the most used methods, independently of the aim of the paper, but they are dominant for proposing frameworks of analysis or deriving guidelines and recommendations, probably because the active interpretation of experts is a must for these concerns. Papers using mixed methods triangulate the information obtained in quantitative experiments with information obtained with qualitative methods. Therefore, their pattern is closer to one of the papers using quantitative methods than to the ones using qualitative methods.

The application of one approach or another should respond to what Subrahmanian et al. ( 2020 ) call the different models of designing. When the artifact or the process is clear, analytical, and quantitative methods, closer to approaches followed in natural science can be applied. When people, culture, society, and politics must be taken into consideration, the use of analytical and quantitative methods is not appropriate. When individual designers play a role, and, especially, when social aspects and context must be taken into consideration, design processes become more complex and dynamic, involving aspects that are better studied by qualitative approaches that are able to capture the complexity of the object of study and the participants' perspectives.

4.2 Implications for the research in the engineering design community

As mentioned in the introduction, one of the objectives of this paper was to provide suggestions about the course contents that doctoral studies in the domain of engineering design must carry out. The first implication of our analysis relates to the type of research methodologies that students must be introduced to. According to the analysed papers, it seems essential that future researchers receive training in both qualitative and quantitative methods. The analysis shows that qualitative research is very common and that rich sources of data, such as observations or users and experts opinions collected through interviews are frequent. Furthermore, pure qualitative research approaches, like ethnography and phenomenology are commonly found. Nevertheless, experimental approaches should also have a relevant role in the student curricula because it is frequently used as well. We understand that this qualitative-quantitative duality responds to the nature of engineering design, a complex field that requires both technical background and the consideration of behavioural and social aspects related to design.

A second implication has to do with the instruments and data collection methods that researchers on engineering design must get familiar with. Research studies in this domain could require accessing real design scenarios that are authentic field studies rather than controlled lab studies. This is a relevant divergence with respect to other research domains that permit isolating variables and participants. There are implications for the instruments used for collecting data, with the need of considering techniques that permit collecting information in real settings and during longer periods of time. but also, that human fact is a relevant variable that affects both design teams managements, communication with users and social aspects. This fact justifies the use of technical reports, questionnaires, and observation as the main sources of information in these studies.

It must be noted that publishing in a journal should not be an end in itself, and the real value of a paper does not rely on the journal in which it is published but on its contribution to the growth of the discipline (Bladek 2014 ). However, there is a universal tendency to identify research quality and impact with these publications, and students that pursue a research career usually need to accomplish certain goals related to publishing. For this reason, we think that doctoral students in engineering design can find this work useful, as it provides an overview and pointers to different types of research work published in four top-quality journals in the field, and this may give them tips on the kind of knowledge they need to acquire to have their work published in these journals or similar ones.

4.3 Relation to other surveys

Probably due to the youth of engineering design as a research discipline, the number of papers devoted to literature reviews in these fields is still sparse. From the few reviews found, most refer to particular aspects of engineering design: such as inspiration and fixation (Crilly 2019 ); sustainability (Coskun et al. 2015 ); user value (Boztepe 2007 ); Alzheimer and play experience (Anderiesen et al. 2015 ); performance in industrial design(Candi and Gemser 2010 ); relation between creativity, functionality, and aesthetics (Han et al. 2021 ); fuzzy front-ends for product development (Park et al. 2021 ); surrogate models and computational complexity (Alizadeh et al. 2020 ); smart design (Pessôa and Becker 2020 ); design and poverty (Jagtap 2019 ); mass customization (Ferguson et al. 2014 ); product stigma (Schröppel et al. 2021 ); uncertainty (Han et al. 2020 ); decision-making methods (Renzi et al. 2017 ); modular product design (Bonvoisin et al. 2016 ); or product-service systems (Vasantha et al. 2012 ).

More interesting, for their similarity with respect to the present study, are the works presented by Tempczyk ( 1986 ) and Cantamessa ( 2003 ), both presenting reviews or surveys about research and studies on engineering design. These two works and the one presented in this paper differ in their sources of information. Tempczyk ( 1986 ) made a survey by sending questionnaires to academic staff concerning research subjects and methods; Cantamessa ( 2003 ) made a review of the proceedings of two editions of the conference on engineering design. There is a temporal distance of 17 years between the work of Tempczyk ( 1986 ) and the one of Cantamessa ( 2003 ) and 18 years between the work of Cantamessa ( 2003 ) and the present study, but we must highlight the fact that the three studies report methodologies as one of the main topics of research. Computer-aided products are reported by Tempczyk ( 1986 ) as a relevant topic, and Cantamessa ( 2003 ) also refers to software tools as a recurrent topic, while we also identified a category named simulation which included software tools and algorithms. The three works also report a high variety of approaches and themes. The main difference between these studies and the present one is that Tempczyk ( 1986 ) reports on training as an important concern for researchers and Cantamessa ( 2003 ) observes different streams of research, loosely coupled with an excess of referencing to previous works. As regards references to training concerns, we did not find any paper related to training, probably because, nowadays, there are journals specifically devoted to learning in the domain of engineering and design. As regards the criticism of Cantamessa ( 2003 ) concerning the notable amount of self-references in the analysed papers, we did not observe such a circumstance in the journal papers we have reviewed. On the contrary, our review has found that the papers reviewed contain complete state-of-the-art sections in which other research groups are referenced and other studies are discussed. This finding partially contradicts what Cantamessa ( 2003 ) found in his review. We think that the nature of the sources of data in his review, based on proceedings which are shorter could have influenced these divergent results. Our study may point to a more mature stage of research that builds on the knowledge already offered in the community. This finding may be based on the fact we are working on journal papers that offer more mature results.

4.4 Limitations

The systematic literature review presented in this paper covers a recent period of time spanning one year of publications. The sample is representative of recent research in engineering design, but it does not provide information about tendencies in the field. For example, we have observed a relevant number of quantitative studies in comparison to qualitative ones, but we cannot say if this is a tendency. Future work would be required to compare our results with those of a longitudinal study covering a larger period of years. We expect that our work can be considered as the first step in this longer-term study that could provide useful information about the evolution of research into the young discipline of engineering design.

By selecting Blessing and Chakrabarti ( 2009 ) as a framework to categorize research papers, we did not pay attention to the important concern of the success of the research which could be a critical point for connecting the study aim, with the approach, research method, etc. Reich and Subrahmanian ( 2021 ) show that it is possible to use the PSI framework (Problem, Social and Institutional space) to describe what researchers and designers did in case studies to analyse the matching of methods, aims and approaches with the success of the projects. In spite of our work being merely descriptive of the aims, methods and techniques used by authors, we offer a corpus of categorised research papers for analysing in future works on whether the research design is appropriate for its goals.

The analysis of the sample of journal papers selected has permitted us to build a consistent set of categories for classifying research works in engineering design. We consider this sample comprehensive, based on a saturation analysis carried out on the sample, that showed that all the categories used in the analysis could be identified with 69% of the papers that were actually used in the analysis. Nevertheless, while selecting 68 papers from only four journals, we could have discarded other works that could include other alternative approaches also valid for research in engineering design. Moreover, the choice of a single year-window is another limitation of this study, as it does not enable us to provide a full vision of the field and its evolution. Nevertheless, we think that the classification presented in this paper could be the basis for subsequent studies, which should consider a broader timeframe, and therefore, a larger selection of papers across several years. Other approaches for selecting the analysed papers like sampling at the same rate in all the journals could also have led to representative results.

5 Conclusions

In this paper, we have presented a systematic review of recent literature on research methods and instruments used in a one-year period of research papers in the field of engineering design. By taking this approach, we offer a "fixed image" of recent research in the area and point to some gaps and challenges in the field.

The review shows that there is no single methodological approach accepted as the standard in the field; and that there is a large variety of goals, approaches, data collection methods and instruments to collect them. In spite of this variety, we have observed a certain preference towards qualitative methods, which can be justified by the increasing consideration of engineering design as a complex process affecting humans and their contexts.

We think that this paper contributes to research in engineering design by providing initial evidence for researchers about the kind of work that are expected by high-impact scientific journals in this domain. Additionally, academics can find in this paper a list of topics (methodologies, data-collection procedures, instruments, etc.…) that must be part of the programme of courses on research in engineering design.

6 Appendix: Coding scheme: categories and examples

The tables included in this Appendix have aim to present the knowledge generated in this paper in the form of a coding scheme, that can be used as an instrument to describe the taxonomy of research aims (Table 5 ), approaches (Table 6 ), data collection techniques (Table 7 ), and instruments (Table 8 ) in engineering design.

Data Availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

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Escudero-Mancebo, D., Fernández-Villalobos, N., Martín-Llorente, Ó. et al. Research methods in engineering design: a synthesis of recent studies using a systematic literature review. Res Eng Design 34 , 221–256 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00163-022-00406-y

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Design and manufacturing of dielectric resonators via 3d printing of composite polymer/ceramic filaments.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. materials, 2.2. three-dimensional printing process, 2.3. differential scanning calorimetry (dsc), 2.4. tensile tests, 2.5. density tests, 2.6. microscopy analysis, 2.7. dielectric characterization, 2.8. design and manufacturing of drs, 2.9. frequency response and bandwidth of the drs, 3. results and discussion, 3.1. thermal analysis, 3.2. mechanical properties, 3.3. printability, 3.4. electromagnetic measurements, 3.4.1. dielectric results, 3.4.2. drs design and prototypes, 3.4.3. comparison and potential applications, 4. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Sofokleous, P.; Paz, E.; Herraiz-Martínez, F.J. Design and Manufacturing of Dielectric Resonators via 3D Printing of Composite Polymer/Ceramic Filaments. Polymers 2024 , 16 , 2589. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym16182589

Sofokleous P, Paz E, Herraiz-Martínez FJ. Design and Manufacturing of Dielectric Resonators via 3D Printing of Composite Polymer/Ceramic Filaments. Polymers . 2024; 16(18):2589. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym16182589

Sofokleous, Paris, Eva Paz, and Francisco Javier Herraiz-Martínez. 2024. "Design and Manufacturing of Dielectric Resonators via 3D Printing of Composite Polymer/Ceramic Filaments" Polymers 16, no. 18: 2589. https://doi.org/10.3390/polym16182589

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