Designing and Developing an App for a Mixed Methods Research Design Approach

Abstract

We present the story of how we designed and developed an application that provides expert consultation in mixed methods research—the Mixed Methods Research Design App. We provide a description of the key design decisions, the design failures, the related revisions made during the process of designing the app, and the contribution to the design knowledge. We used methodologies consistent with the design and development of an expert system, modified for areas specific to an app, such as user interface design. Being user-centered was the main rationale for our major design decisions. The app has three main sections that help users understand and use domain knowledge in their research project. One design failure was that users felt the app looked overwhelmed. The follow-up refinements included adding more pages to simplify the visual impression of each page, changing the overall navigation structure, and adding more contents to engage users. We conclude that the factors that influenced our design decisions are the end users’ experience, domain expert’s opinion, technology resources, domain knowledge representation, and general interface design principles.