Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Research--摘录对照学习之

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Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Research

• 1. Schedule! I tell my students that the first step in writing a research paper is to admit you have a research paper. Write up a schedule with a series of milestones to accomplish by a specific date (e.g. find 10 sources by September 20, finish preliminary research by October 15), and keep to it. You will need time to get an overview of what material is out there, find out what’s in your library, select relevant material, read it, take notes, and start putting it together — and to do a second wave of research to clear up points raised in the writing of your first draft.

• 对应思考：
  
• 应对我自己的产品设计思路来讲，同样应该有个计划。毕竟没有所谓完美的产品，也不可能一下子把所有的特性包含进来，更不用说，即便是已经想到的功能特性都可能要进行裁剪，保证内部合理的逻辑组合和符合运营周期的阶段性节奏把握。
• 那么首先是：产品、市场述求规划，计划上、中、下策和对应的执行方案和产品策略。
• 验证市场述求的计划。这是在实际论证可行性和问题以及可能的解决方案了。
• 根据验证情况，修正上面的规划。
  

• 2. Start, don’t end, with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a great place to start your research — spend some time searching for keywords related to your topic, browsing the links you find on each page, and following their suggested resources. Take notes, especially of any good sources they recommend. The goal here is to get a good overview of the subject you’re writing about, and Wikipedia is far better for that than most print sources, because of its hyperlink ed nature. By the time you get ready to write, though, you should have much better sources at your command than Wikipedia, so avoid citing it in your paper.
• 对应思考：
• 在我的产品设计方面，惯常的思路是看别人类似的系统，寻找它们好的和不那么贴切的特性，包括自己希望出现但是没有看到的特性。但是自己实践了一阵子之后，总感觉有些零散感觉，不是很系统。虽然后来专门找时间整理过，但依然感觉欠缺。现在看来，忽略了wiki这样的可以作为理论支撑体系的重要资料来源。
• 对应的，应该在wiki中找找我想要的方向的理论体系。
  

• 3. Mine bibliographies. Once you’ve found a good, solid academic book or essay on your topic, you’re golden — at the end there will be a list of dozens or hundreds of sources for you to look up. You can usually skim through the bibliography and note down anything whose title sounds relevant to your research. Academic authors aren’t very creative with their titles, so it is usually pretty easy to tell what their work is about from just the title or subtitle. Go back through and see if you recognize any of the authors’ names — these too might be worth following up. once you start finding the work the first book referenced, do the same thing with their bibliographies — soon you’ll have a list of far more sources than you need (but you need them, because your library may not have all the books and journals referred to, and inter-library loan is so slow as to be useless for students who need to finish by the end of the semester).
• 对应思考：
• 这里也是一种整理其他资料的方式，不仅仅参考书目。来源、标题、副标题、关键词、内容基本描述、作者、相关性或者参考研究权重。通常这些信息就能够构成很好的自己下次进行详细研究的基本框架。换句话说，不是也传递了类似产品应该具有的功能么？
• 另外一个重要环节：懂得从收集来的资料中过滤，否则，信息将变得超过处理能力。这一环节的有效进行，应该也依赖于前面管理手段的优劣。换言之，这种管理工具要能够满足信息过滤的要求。
• 同时过滤后的信息，应该保存在备用资源库中，为下一个研究所用。
• 问题是，目前有什么好的工具能够方便得进行这种信息的管理和追踪么？

• 4. Have a research question in mind. Technically, your thesis should emerge from your research, when you have data in front of you. But you need a kind of “working thesis” while doing your research — a question you want to answer. As you come across new material, ask yourself if it looks like it will help you answer your question. Anything that looks relevant but doesn’t help answer your question you can put back. It’s tempting to gather a lot of background material, and some is necessary, but too much will waste your time without contributing to your research. Get one or two good sources for background (your initial Wikipedia searching should be adequate in most cases) and then keep focused by working towards an answer to your research question.
• 对应思考：
• 过滤资料的关键原则：相关但是对于回答你的问题没有帮助的，滤掉。显然依赖于你自己首先定义好需要解决的问题。
• 大部分情况下，从wiki中获取的相关的背景资料已经足够。对我来说，这是个惊人的结论，也是个惊喜的结论。毕竟这意味着需要的搜寻成本大大降低。其实仔细想想wiki这些年的迅速发展，也就不奇怪他能够起到这样的作用了。
• 是不是应该有个问题管理的东西或者方式呢？回答的角度、侧面、程度、假设、
  

• 5. Deal with one piece at a time. Don’t try to tackle your subject all at once. Get enough of a sense of the topic that you can create an outline of the things you need to understand, and then deal with each piece on its own. You’ll find the connections between the pieces when you write your first draft.
• 对应思考：
• 解析好了问题列表，分而治之、各个击破。可能是效率最高的。
• 至于各个问题之间的联系，除了本来的想法之外，完成一稿后会更加清晰、明确。
• 对于产品设计来讲，这个思路也可以用在不同阶段各个大部件的控制，也可以用在一个大部件内部小问题的控制。
• 落回到了节奏和阶段控制的问题上。这么做的前提是，有个方便、可扩展的架构。但是不意味着不用修改或者极少修改。只是容易修改，而且不会伤筋动骨。以我的经验似乎还没有看到需求方向甚至应用方面都完全不同了的系统要求，能够极少地修改就能实现。如果哪位知道，请不吝赐教。
  

• 6. Use a system. Start your research with an idea of how you plan to collect and organize your notes and data. Although I’ve written papers using index cards before, my favorite system is to use a one-subject notebook. At the top of a fresh page, I write the full bibliographic reference for a book or paper, then copy quotes and write notes — both tagged with the page numbers they came from — interspersed with thoughts and ideas that occur to me as I’m reading. I’d love to use a computer more efficiently when doing research, and have built databases and tried wikis and outliners and other kinds of software, but I’ve never found a system that worked well — I spent more time fiddling with the software than getting work done. Whatever system you decide on, make sure that every quote, fact, and thought is tied in some way to its source so that you can easily insert references while you’re writing.
• 对应思考：
• 确保每一项引用、事实证明材料、观点都能方便找到他们的来源。这个似乎是这样系统的最基本也是最高原则。应用中，自然应该保证他们的可修改和追踪。
• 可借鉴的记录方式：卡片；单主题汇总式笔记本。
• 单主题汇总式笔记本：
• 一本书或一篇幅文章的参考书目列表；
• 引语的拷贝和自己的笔记，同时记录在书中的页码；
• 阅读中的零散想法；
  

• 7. Know your resources. Spend some time getting to know what resources, both online and offline, your library to offer. Most libraries offer tours to students, or talk to a research librarian — or at the least, walk through the library to get a feel for what is where, paying special attention to the microfilm repository and periodicals, which you’ll use a lot in the course of most research projects. Most university libraries also subscribe to a number of academic databases, and most are now accessible online — get to know the research material you can access from home. J-Stor, for instance, holds full-text photographic copies of hundreds of journals, all easily searchable. There’s nothing quite like thinking of something in the middle of the night, logging on, and printing out two or three relevant journal articles to review in the morning.
• 对应思考：
• 可能社会人士大部分忽略了可用的社会图书馆资源，尤其是在北京这样的文化中心。
• 网络的资源也应该在平时有良好的概念和用法的概念在脑海或者就在某个地方整理着？应该在某个地方整理着，问到这里的时候，我突然想起了刘韧给大家网上开课时候讲的哪里找资料的记录。
• 那么这种记录每种资源特性和使用方式的东西如何管理呢？线上还是线下？可访问性？主要特色？更新周期？使用方法？还有什么呢？
  

• 8. Ask for help. Use the human resources available to you as well as the material resources. Most professors spend their office hours waiting in disappointment for a student to drop in and give them something to justify the time they’re required to keep an open hour — be that student! Ask for help in finding and evaluating sources, or for help in figuring out what to do with the material you’ve collected so far. Another often-overlooked resource is your friendly neighborhood librarian. Librarians are, in my estimation, the best people on Earth — they know the material in their charge forwards and backwards, they are deeply concerned with seeing it used, and they have committed their lives to making information more available. Most librarians will be happy to help you find relevant material for your project, and some will even locate specific pieces of hard-to-find information for you. Don’t forget to ask your fellow student for help, too — some of the might have come across work directly relevant to your topic.
• 对应思考：
• 很好！这正是社会化的部分！
• 别人对你所收集资料的评价、有用性指导、用途指导、处理方式指导（近乎于具体研究的指导了）。导师、资料管理员、学长、外部专家等不同人意见不同。
  

• 9. Carry an idea book. As you start really getting into your project, your mind will start churning through what you’re reading, even when you’re not consciously working on it. If you’re like me, you’ll be struck by sudden revelations at the least convenient times — in the bathroom, in the shower, at the supermarket. or while getting ready for bed. Keep a small notebook and a pen with you everywhere (well, maybe not in the shower — although I do keep dry erase markers by the sink so I can write down quick thoughts on the bathroom mirror when I get out of the shower); jot down notes whenever an idea crosses your mind, and transfer these notes into your research log (or software, or whatever) as soon as you can.
• 对应思考：
• 没错，这正是我自己整理思路的方式。因为经常在脑子里面盘旋，很可能是在午休的时候思如泉涌，马上就是枕边的笔墨伺候。
• 这也是应用中要考虑手机或者PDA之类的手持设备的原因。
  

• 10. Bring it up to date. Pay attention to the publication date of your material — while it’s ok to use older material, ideally you’d like the bulk of your references to come from the last 10 years or so. If research in your topic seems to dry up a decade or so back, it might be because the field moved on, but it also might be because funding opportunities disappeared, a major researcher died, or any number of accidental reasons. One trick is to Google the major researchers whose work you’ve found and see if you can find their homepages — most will list recent publications and their current research activities — it could be that someone has a book about to come out, or reports published in obscure or foreign journals. If so, you might try inter-library loan, or in some cases, try contacting the researcher herself and ask if they can send you a draft or reprint. Be courteous, explain what you’re working on and what you’re trying to find out, where your research has taken you so far, and what light you hope their work can shed on your topic. Do not ask for a list of references or what your thesis should be — nobody wants to do a student’s work for them.
• 对应思考：
• 很好，大家又回到了网络上，尤其是搜索引擎上，而且是涵盖任何可能资源的搜索。那么这些结果需要某种方便形式的保存和提取么？进而进入自己个人知识库中么？显然需要的，但也许不用太担心，基于合理的选择，点上的单独处理足矣。虽然也有人会说最好能够批量处理。
• 在互联网产品领域里，有些东西可能根本不能拿十年来衡量。3年就很漫长和久远了。但是值得注意的是，某些领域的解决方式可能因为新技术的参与或者新生。设计的时候还是应该有延续性的思考和选择，进而扬弃，而不是完全扔下不考虑。
• 具体在获取别人帮助方面很有建设性。可以有了自己的单子请别人给与评价意见，但是不适合请别人给出单子？至于研究某个专题的必读参考书目之类呢？