Disnertation Hell

I am now officially in dissertation HELL. Everyone told me it would happen, and I kinda believed them. I wasn't expecting it to be this miserable. It isn't that I don't love my topic, cause I do. I consider myself so incredibly fortunate to be able to research something I feel so strongly about. Nevertheless, I am in this terrible hole that no one else can get me out of and it is painful! I have read so much literature on the topic that my head is spinning. At this point I am attempting to distill each publication down to a few key points that mesh with my topic. The literature is vast, yet there has been so little research done that is closely related to my topic.

Ok, you ask, what is my topic? I am going to look at image use across several groups of users in order to inform system design. The most thoroughly reasearched area surrounding this topic is the type of terms that are used to retrieve images. While image descriptors (cataloging, indexing, etc.) are critical for their retrieval from an image system, it isn't the complete picture. From my literature review it seems as if researchers are starting with the images or the system and then users are introduced into the study. I would like to begin with the users and discover how and why they use images, how they go about looking for images and the decision-making processes they use in selecting their images. My hunch is that the various groups I will look at (which are all fairly closely related) are unique, each in their own way and that these differences need to be accomodated in the system's design. Further areas to be examinded are possible tools that could be developed to enable (new) modes of analysis for these users.

Alright, now that I have become motivated I suppose I need to go back to the annotated bib for another 40 pages or so of distillation of ideas. Will write again real soon!

My my how time flies!

Has the clock been drinking too much coffee lately? I was just reminded of my blog (thanks to S.) and thought I would stop by. It has been over a year since I posted a thing! How did that happen?

I finally finished the coursework for the doctoral degree and now I am working on the literature review for my dissertation. It is slow and painful work... and I have decided today to stop the madness and only read directly relevant things (oh ok, the most relevant things since there isn't any directly related literature) to my research. Even the pared down list is a painful number, but it sure beats the 40+ pages of entries I faced otherwise. I have spent too many hours on my fanny reading dreadful IS research. It really makes me wonder how some of this stuff makes it past the editor.

Ok, time to get away from the keyboard... and this happens so rarely these days.