Design Research Methodology / Critical Review

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23/08/2021 - 13/09/2021 / Week 1 - Week 4

Ngu Kah Shin / 0347666

Design Research Methodology / B' in Creative Media / Taylor's Design School

Assignment 2: Critical Review


 LECTURES 

 Week 5 

What is a Critical Review?
It is an explicit type of critical writing that requires you to evaluate some aspects of
  • a literary text or artwork
  • a research article
  • an argument or interpretation of an issue, text or artwork.
Why write critical reviews?
  • It 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
How do I write a critical review?
  • Search for relevant research articles, NOT blogs, Wikipedia, websites, etc.
How does a critical review look like? 
Parts of a critical review:
  1. Full reference in APA style
  2. Summary of the article 
  3. Critique and Evaluation
  4. Conclusion

Effective Critical Review
  • An awareness of the overall idea, the purpose and the intended readers of the text.
  • Looked at from various perspectives.
  • Evaluated in relation to theories, approaches and frameworks.
  • This evaluation involves analysing the content and concepts of the text, separating them into their main components, and then understanding how these interrelate, connect and influence each other. 


 INSTRUCTIONS 



FINAL SUBMISSION

Critical Review (PDF)



 REFLECTION 

After we had our research proposal done, we then moved on to choosing 5 relevant articles that could later benefit us in our next assignment. It was quite unexpected to find most of the relevant articles revolving around nudge theory in a digital setting are limited. Most of the research articles I have read also cite their references from the same research paper, specifically Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness by Thaler and Sunstein, released in 2008. Many of the articles were also published at least 3 or more years ago, which made things difficult for me as my lecturer requested the articles chosen to be recent.


Through the 5 articles, the most distinct piece of knowledge I have found is how nudge theory is applied in the digital world and how is the design process behind it. There is a lot of thought put into the designing of digital choice environments and the process is not as easy as it seemed. Being a UI/UX design student, I have learned a lot and will try to implement the knowledge acquired into my design pieces. This was also quite useful for my Social Innovation Project. My project title was mental health and well-being mobile apps UI/UX, where I had to design a prototype of a mobile app. I was able to translate the nudge mechanisms learned onto that module.


This assignment was probably my favourite one out of the three because I had to read up a lot of articles on the Nudge Theory. It was especially enjoyable because it was interesting to me. I had to critically assess the strength and weaknesses of each article. To analyze, interpret and describe. This was enjoyable until I found out I was writing in the wrong format! I had to reevaluate and trace back my steps to correct my mistakes which took a lot of fun and ended up costing a lot of my time.


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