Design Research Methodology / Task 2: Critical Review

21/04/2022 - 12/05/2022 (Week 4 - Week 7)
Reagan Val Adelbert Mahadi / 0349177
Design Research Methodology / Bachelor of Design in Creative Media
Task 2 / Critical Review

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LECTURES

Week 5

In week 5, Ms. Hayati provided a presentation about critical review.

What is a Critical Review

A critical review is much more than a simple summary; it analyzes and evaluates a book, article, or another medium. Writing an excellent critical review requires that you understand the material and know-how to analyze and evaluate that material using appropriate criteria.

A critical review of a journal article evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of an article's ideas and content. It provides description, analysis, and interpretation that allow readers to assess the article's value.

Points to Consider

• Who is the intended audience?
• What is the author's purpose? To survey and summarize research on a topic? To present an argument that builds on past research? To refute another writer's argument?
• Does the author define important terms?
• Is the information in the article fact or opinion? (Facts can be verified, while opinions arise from interpretations of facts.) Does the information seem well-researched or is it unsupported?
• What are the author's central arguments or conclusions?
• Are they clearly stated? Are they supported by evidence and analysis?
• If the article reports on an experiment or study, does the author clearly outline the methodology and the expected result?
• Is the article lacking information or argumentation that you expected to find?
• Is the article organized logically and easy to follow?
• Does the writer's style suit the intended audience? Is the style stilted or unnecessarily complicated?
• Is the author's language objective or charged with emotion and bias?
• If illustrations or charts are used, are they effective in presenting information?

Prepare an Outline

Choose a statement that expresses the central purpose or write-up/literature of a review. When thinking of a write-up/literature, consider the author's intentions and whether or not we think those intentions were successfully realized. Organize our remaining points into separate groups such as points about structure, style, or argument. Devise a logical sequence for presenting these ideas. Remember that all of our ideas must support our central write-up/literature.

Write the First Draft

The review should begin with a complete citation of the article. For example, Platt, Kevin M.F. "History and Despotism, or: Hayden White vs. Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great." Rethinking History 3:3 (1999) : 247-269.

Use the same bibliographic citation format as you would for any bibliography, works cited, or reference list. It will follow a standard documentation style such as Harvard or MLA or APA.

The first paragraph may contain:

• a statement of our write-up/literature
• the author's purpose in writing the article
• comments on how the article relates to other work on the same subject
• information about the author's reputation or authority in the field

The body of the review should:

• state our arguments in support of your write-up/literature
• follow the logical development of ideas that we mapped out in our outline
• include quotations from the article which illustrate your main ideas

The concluding paragraph may:

• summarize our review
• restate our write-up/literature

Revise the First Draft

Check for the following when revising:

• grammar and punctuation errors
• organization, logical development, and solid support of your write-up/literature
• errors in quotations or in references

Revising can even lead to a radical change in your central write-up/literature.

Process of Writing a Critical Review

1. Skim read the text. The main question or questions the text tries to answer and the main answers it gives
2. Think of evaluation criteria. Talk about the text and criteria with classmates
3. Read the text again and note the important points in detail such as the subject, question, arguments and/or evidence, conclusions made, and our evaluation using our criteria
4. Read related texts, note differences or similarities, and explain them
5. Outline critical review, matching points of description with evaluation criteria
6. Start writing a review

Structure of a Critical Review

Fig. 1.1 Structure of a critical review

Week 6

Week 6 is a holiday so there was no class.

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INSTRUCTIONS



Task 2: Critical Review

For task 2, we need to utilize secondary data to support our study. Secondary data can be obtained by using relevant literature and reviewing them critically, contextual, and in relation to the research problem. We are required to select relevant secondary sources such as publications and online journal articles. Ensure that it is relevant to the topic and updated (publication within the last 5 years). We are also required to write a review critically and synthesize the five articles.

Fig. 2.1 Critical Review

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FEEDBACK

Week 5
Don't review a thesis as it's too much. Use articles from 2017-to 2022. Refer to the notes to fulfill the objectives. Both objectives are for understanding and maybe adding/tweaking something like to identify the important points of something or maybe to identify an element of a fundamental creating appealing character. I need to identify the elements that make a good character design, not just both, to understand because it's insufficient. I need to specifically identify the certain elements that support that believable character or good character design, Ms. Hayati's suggestion is to tweak one of the objectives to identify from understanding and create 2 more questions out of it. Fix my references too and follow the APA format.

Week 6
Independent learning week

Week 7
Decide on which research am I going to use (qualitative and quantitative research).

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REFLECTIONS

Week 5
During this week, I read the lectures and tried to understand the contents inside the slides so that I can understand more about the task that we need to do. It's a bit hard for me to find the articles because I can’t seem to find the one that I want and there aren’t many articles that are related to character design.

Week 6
I still can’t seem to find the right article that I want for this task, and I tried to use the library website to find more articles regarding my topic but got no luck. This task is quite confusing for me so I’ll try to do the best one I can right now and try to listen for feedback from Ms. Hayati next week/

Week 7
After getting feedback from Ms. Hayati I get clear direction on this task as I was quite confused about what am I supposed to do. But then I finally finalized my task and submitted it.

During this week, I read the lectures given by Ms. Hayati and learned more about qualitative and quantitative research. Which allowed me to have a little insight into what kind of data collecting method I am going to use for my next project. Although, I am still not sure about the qualitative research that I will be doing on this project.