Seminar one reading reflection--Suping Shi

The first seminar is more about the theoretical knowledge for designing an interview. Luckily our group finished the interview before this seminar. So we can get the chance to review our interview. Data gathering is a central part of establishing requirements, and of evaluation. It is usually the most interactive part. There are usually three main techniques for gathering data: interviews, questionnaires, and observation. For this part, we designed an semi-structured interview which means we just set up few main questions according to the theme. And due to the reaction of the interviewee we came up with different questions. We chose this way because this is a more flexible way to do the interview and it can be more flexible. It is quite important to take the triangulation into consideration, because it will help us to consider things from different perspectives. The next thing we need to consider about is data recording, the most usual way to do that is using video or audio. We chose the audio way and inform the interviewee in advance that their voice will be recorded for the ethics reason.

After the data gathering part, we will come to the data analysis step. It is a very important part since it provides a more comprehensive account of the behavior being observed or performance being measured. For data analysis there will be qualitative analysis approach or a quantitative analysis approach, or a combination of qualitative and quantitative. When we come to the last part, it is called establishing the requirements. That is quite like to establish the results of the interview. Contextual inquiry, studying documentation, and researching similar products are widely used to accomplish this part. And brainstorm is the method that will usually be evolved.

My questions to the seminar:

1. What is the the suitable number of people for the study?
2. If we tell the interviewees that the recording of the interview will be published, will this information influence their idea?
3. If we notice that the ferry offers no English broadcasting for the destination on the ferry, can we call this method “observation” ?