Design Research Dissertation

Week 1 - Week 14

Mohamad Irfan (0326620)

Design Research Dissertation

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INSTRUCTIONS

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PROJECT 1

Week 9

This week I submitted my Dissertation draft as promised by a deadline extension.

Dissertation Final Draft

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PROJECT 2

For our next project we were tasked with creating a book layout for our dissertation. Because my dissertation is about UX and UI design of mobile applications I decided to use clean and refined shapes and layouts in my book design.

Book Layout for Disseration

Dr Hayati asked me to do another book cover design to see if it would be more fitting for the book. For this second cover design I decided to keep it simple by illustrating a mobile with applications and retaining the orange and blue gradient colour theme.

Book Layout with second cover design

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FINAL PROJECT

For our final project we had to adapt our dissertation draft into an article for an online journal of our choice. The following is my justification for my chosen journal:

The journal I have decided to choose is ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). The reason I have chosen this journal is because the topics and nature of the journal is more relevant to my dissertation topic and content. My second option of Journal of Information Technology and Software Engineering (JITSE) seems a lot more technical and engineering related and not focused on the scope of design. The journals aims and objectives are a lot more upscaled and written to solve existing issues and improve a situation.My third option which is the Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society also seems out of the scope of mobile application design. TOCHI also has existing articles related to or directly about UX and UI design and usability testing. An example of this is an article titled ‘How UX practitioners produce findings in usability testing’, which includes a study of usability testing, the work conducted to do usability tests, literature related to usability testing, and more. The journal is also flexible in terms of how many pages and word count, but the existing articles are typically very lengthy and detailed, which is fitting for the volume of content my dissertation has which is over 20,000 words.

Article Final Adaptation

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FEEDBACK

Week 2
Dr Hayati told me that I am lacking in Primary Data. I need more observational and experience data. I also cannot focus solely on User Interface as it would just be like I am focusing on graphics. I need to implement some UX as well. 

Week 3
Today Dr Hayati told us to finalize our skeleton before I actually write the content. For the literature review we should split up the sections based on different topics covered from our critical reviews. We should combine the similiarities and differences of the critical reviews.

Week 4
Dr Hayati reminded me to have my skeleton complete by next week. I should already be putting in the data I have and not wait until I have gathered the rest of my primary data. After inserting the data I already have I can see what I need to research more on.

Week 5
Dr Hayati said that I should introduce and transition my paragraphs more smoothly. The reader will get lost if I just jump into different topics without letting the reader know what they are reading about. The discussion should be written against the findings, what method could I have used to obtain more data. For my literature review I should take information from the gathered articles and use different articles to formulate my review and be critical.

Week 8 
Fix certain sentence structures in introduction and critical review, in-text citation needs to be fixed.

Week 9
Design a book cover and book layout. The cover and layout has to fit the theme of the dissertation and its contents. Look at pinterest for book layout inspiration, the text and image arrangement etc.

Week 11
Design another book cover for a comparison and see which one fits better.

Week 12
Look for journals related to the nature and contents of my dissertation. Do not choose an engineering journal if your dissertation is about design. Try to find design related journals.

Week 13
My first chosen journal should be changed as it not very relevant and reliable. I need to choose a different journal and then pick one of the three with proper justification as to why I chose that journal to write an article for.