Be curious…become a researcher…create a discussion guide!

You believe that the creation of a discussion guide is an easy or simple procedure ? Well you should think twice…

At this semester at Uni we came against with an other interesting challenge created by our professor Mrs. Betty Tsakarestou. For one more time, our new lesson “Mobile Reputation” of CMC Panteion couldn’t be but updated on the new trends that rule the today’s world, concerning mainly the domain of communication. What is more, this course enables the students to gain knowledge about how social media had become a necessary part of our everyday life, how collaborating consumption had inserted at the market but also how this two options can be combined and used -through our mobiles- not only by the people who are into this field but by everyone with no exceptions.

As long as, the purpose of our professor is not just to read some book’s lines but successfully “marry” the feedback that she gives to guide us with the personal experience, the project of this year’s course was to make a research about how a team of people with certain, common characteristics use social media and collaborative activities.

My team comprised by Agapi, Elena, Sofia and me decided to explore the habits of a gamer. Why did we choose this specific group? After having made a research about the subject of collaborative consumption we highlighted some basic points that it includes, such as the technological support, the necessity of trust and of course, the great meaning of collaboration. Thus, the gamers are the best example that can reflect this system. Why? If we take under consideration the fact that for their activity -first of all- and then communication the Internet, as well as, any form of technological device is needed, collaboration for them is the only way to “win” and of course, while they usually play online games, they are in contact with people that don’t know but have to trust and cooperate with for the desired outcome, we can easily answer this question. In addition, we can not avoid to mark that for us this community presents an other important element that can help us understand and study even better the term of collaborative consumption; As there are individuals who are into gaming for professional reasons and others just for entertainment, we can observe how this practice can be applied in two forms.

So after having selected our focus group, we found the people from whom we would take the interview. We tried all of them to have a close age but also to there is diversity at the sexes.

Next step, was to examine a little bit their world so as to learn some words-keys that they tend to use -such as steam, FPS, RPG, LAN- in order to make them feel even more comfortable during the interview and by this way have a proper communication.

Then we created our discussion guide as you can see it above …

We thought that the beginning should conclude general information about the life of the interviewee for us to understand what kind of person is, how he/she lives, what else he/she likes, apart from gaming. In other words, to have a globally point of view for him/her. But also, it’s a way to start an interview without making the other feels like he is in front of an examiner.

Then, we pass through the main body of the interview. We had a great variety of questions so as to cover most of the concerned topics. What we wanted to learn is: 1) the use of social media either for gaming or generally in everyday life, 2) how useful are for him/her and 3) how essential they are though to be, too. Furthermore, in many cases we used similar questions so as to verify our results or help the interviewee add any information that had might forgotten. As our goal was to create an interview in depth we tried to ask “open” questions where the interviewee could expressed freely. Additionally, we tended to ask lots of “why” during this procedure, in our effort to “squeeze” him/her and make a great, inclusive “juice”.

After creating the discussion guide we had to test it so as to discover the strong and the weak points of it. Our first interview given by Spyros had shown us that even if the subject of collaborating activities in gaming was answered at the already existing questions, it was important for us to be even more specific. So we added it in a final section, as well as a field for the mobile necessity and activity of the interviewees. By this way, the rest interviews were taken successfully and offered us a huge amount of information to share, learn from it and in many cases teach with it. After all, everything is knowledge.

In conclusion, we us future researchers understand how important is to always have a purpose to explore, that intrigues our curiosity and make us want to answer every “why” that exists in our minds. Because that’s the way to success: ask, take answers and move on.