EUT 271E Research for Product Design, Fall 2022 Assist. Prof. Dr.

Özge Merzali Çelikoğlu

Res. Assist. Nesrin Türer
Res. Assist. Pelin Efilti

Assignment 1

Research through unobtrusive methods and surveys towards narrative development

Submission Deadline: October 27th, 2022

Presentations: October 27th and November 3rd, 2022

I. Definition
You are required to collect data by using unobtrusive methods and surveys, which are related to a research
question you formulate based on a topic of your choice and then, interpret these data towards developing
personas and scenarios. Eventually, you are required to submit your process of data collection and the
following narrative development process as a report, which contains all your raw data and your
interpretations on how you made sense of these raw data.

II. Research question (10%)

You need to give your research subject and, define your research question along with the aim and scope of
the study.

III. Process (60%)

Your research and analysis process will proceed as following:

i) Data collection through unobtrusive methods (20/60)

• Traces: Observe physical traces people leave behind, take pictures of them and write down your
interpretation under each photograph.

• Archives: Explore written data, which can be archives (of newspapers, online media, etc.), running
records, related discourses, interview transcriptions, and etc. You are expected to present all textual data
with their references.

ii) Data collection through surveys (20/60)

• Sampling: Choose one of the sampling methods from random sampling, convenient sampling, snowball
sampling and purposeful sampling and your reasons why you have chosen those particular sampling
methods. You are required to conduct your survey with at least 30 participants.

• Preparation of survey questions: Formulate your survey questions based on the categorization of
‘closed’ and ‘open’ questions and include both types in your survey. You are required organize them as a
table, which consists of two columns entitled as ‘closed questions’ and ‘open questions’. You are
expected to prepare at least 10 questions. In addition, you are required to design an 11th question by
using one of the following scales, such as Likert scale; Paired adjective scale; Rating scale; Ranking
scale.

1
iii) Narrative development (20/60)

• Personas: Examine the data you collected through unobtrusive measures and surveys in order to define
particular aspects of lifestyles, behavior patterns, socio-economic status, and etc. Based on your
observations and interpretations, develop a persona.

• Scenarios: For the persona you defined, write down an actual practice scenario of use related to your
research subject. Your scenarios must give a detailed description of the practice and be at least 300
words in length.

IV. Evaluation (30%)

Once you finish the process of data collection, you are required to evaluate the methods you used based on
your experience by explaining:
• 3 (or more) advantages
• 3 (or more) limitations

V. Submission & Presentation

You are required to submit and present both your written report (A4) and presentation of the findings
(A3), individually, via Ninova.
This report should include all the raw data (visual and textual data) you collected during the process; your
interpretation; and, finally, your evaluation of your own process.
Please follow the structure provided in this document to organize your report keeping this document as the
cover page. You are also expected to follow the same structure in your presentation.

Good luck!