As this study is intended to explore the interactional behaviour of the client with the media of the design in terms of participation, for which the qualitative approach is the most appropriate method. This is because it is well known that the qualitative method is a proper way to explore how people arrange, structure, and make meaning of their daily lives in the real word (Hesse-Biber, 2010; Hillebrand & Berg, 2000). This study was also considered a comparative framework in which the participants were exposed to two different stimuli, and thus the experimental research design is the appropriate entryway. Maxwell and Loomis (2015) and Robinson and Mendelson (2012) stated that, generally, researchers see experiments as being part of the quantitative approach. Therefore, the challenge lies in how to combine an experimental research design and the qualitative approach.
The mixed methodology used has bridged the gap between the traditional quantitative and qualitative approaches (Haverkamp et al., 2005). Therefore this study sought to ascertain how to adopt an experimental design to collect textual qualitative data. According to Robinson and Mendelson (2012) a qualitative experiment is the appropriate means to achieve this. The following section demonstrates how a qualitative experiment can be adopted as a part of a mixed method design to generate conversational qualitative data that can be analysed by using Conversation Analysis (CA).
2.1 Qualitative Experiment
There is a need in this study to use qualitative strategies to explore the clients’ experiences and perceptions of participation in the design of their house when using 3D CV media as opposed to 2D TV media. It was necessary to compare the effect of using the two different media by analysing the responses of two different groups of individuals. Here, the interest lies in the effect of the intervention, namely of 3D CV media, on some object, which is client participation, and this is the definition of the experiment. For instance, Moerbeek and others (2000) defined an experiment as a process that is implemented to ascertain the impact of two different treatments, an intervention and a control, on the outcome variables of individuals.
In light of the foregoing, the qualitative experiment approach was adopted in this research to combine the concept of the experimental design with the needed qualitative strategies. Robinson and Mendelson (2012, p. 332) defined qualitative experiment as “a hybrid methodological technique that fuses elements of experimental design with qualitative strategies”. They stated that this strategy uses qualitative approaches such as the in-depth interview to assess the differences in the reactions between individuals in groups subjected to different conditions, a technique that is typically associated with experimental research. They further explained that a qualitative experimental design could expose the different experiences of people after they had viewed media content in different formats.
The qualitative experiment has been touched on in some previous studies. For instance, Patton who is one of the experts in qualitative evaluation research in the USA (Kardorff, 2004) referred to this approach as one of the forms of the mixed approach of evaluation research. He proposed six alternative design scenarios, as shown in Fig. 1, one of which is: “Experimental design, Qualitative data, and Content analysis” (Patton, 2001, p. 250). He regarded this strategy neither as a pure experimental quantitative strategy nor as a pure naturalistic qualitative strategy; rather a mixed strategy.
Cresswell and Clark (2011) identified four major techniques of mixed method design, one of which is embedded design and this has been chosen by the researcher as a suitable approach for this part of the present study. They stated that the embedded experimental model “is defined by having qualitative data embedded within an experimental design such as a true experiment or a quasi-experiment” (Cresswell & Plano Clark, 2011, p. 69). Moreover, Creswell (1994) proposed the “dominant–less dominant design”, whereby techniques from both traditional methodologies are combined, but in just one paradigm, either qualitative or quantitative. Creswell later described this approach as the “Concurrent Embedded Strategy” where “one method could be used within a framework of the other method” (Creswell, 2009, p. 215) as in Fig. 2. Moreover, (Maxwell, J. and Loomis, 2015) in their “An Alternative Approach” research have refer to the use of the quasi-experiment within a mixed methods approach.
Based on the findings in abovementioned literature, the present research adopted the qualitative experimental approach. A conversational dialogue between the architect and client was used as a strategy in the qualitative approach to assess the participation behaviour of the clients in designing their houses in the early stages using two different versions of media in an experimental design condition. The 3D CV conversational group represented the intervention group and the 2D CV conversational group represented the control group.
2.2 Quasi-experimental Design
Campbell, Stanley, and Gage, (1963) stated that when the researcher lacked the full control over the scheduling of experimental stimuli, then this situation is regarded as a quasi-experimental design. In addition, they stated that quasi-experiments lack random assignment. Likewise, Creswell (2009, p. 155) stated that, “when individuals are not randomly assigned, the procedure is called a quasi-experiment”. In the present study, the assignment of participants was carried out within two stages. A non-random assignment was carried out in the first stage, while a random assignment in the second stage. The non-random assignment enabled the researchers to assign the participants into groups following the matching approach to control the variables that might influence the outcomes. In order to achieve that, Creswell (2009, p. 155) stated that “one approach is matching participants in terms of a certain trait or characteristic and then assigning one individual from each matched set to each group”. The criteria for matching that might affect the outcomes were sex, age, number of the family members, and level of education. Therefore, the participants were not randomly assigned into groups in terms of these four criteria. For instance, the 12 participants were not randomly assigned into eight males and four females. The male group was also not randomly assigned into three PhDs and five Masters, and the female group was not randomly assigned into two PhDs and two Masters. However, the number of the family members and level of education were found to be almost in the same range. In the second stage, these groups, namely: the male PhDs group; the male masters group; the female PhDs group; and the female masters group were randomly assigned to the two groups of the experiment, namely 3D CV and 2D TV. The random assignment in the second stage enable the researcher to control the variables that were not matched because it was difficult to be measured such as clients’ awareness in design or their enthusiasm to participate in the design process. The present study is considered as a quasi-experimental design as the assignment process is not fully carried out randomly. However, the researcher still have considerable control over the selection process and over how non-random assignment is execute (Shadish et al., 2002). The final result for the assignment process is as shown in Table 1.
Table 1
Participants' information
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2D TV Conversations
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3D CV Conversations
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Sex
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Four males & two females
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Four males & two females
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Age
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Range between 35 and 39
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Range between 34 and 38
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Education
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Three PhDs & three Masters
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Two PhDs & four Masters
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No. of the family members
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Range between 4 and 6
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Range between 3 and 6
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2.3 Conversation analysis
Conversation analysis (CA) has been used as a mean to explore this interactional behaviour between the building user and the architect that naturally occurs in early design conversations. CA is a sociolinguistic approach that aims to collect and analyse naturally occurring verbal interaction data, and this data is not arranged by the researcher (Chatwin, 2004; Have, 2008; Ungureanu & Hartmann, 2020). Research on CA has developed an enlightenments into the organization of conversation that can be implemented in several social sciences studies, in which talking together plays an essential role (Hammersley, 2003; Have, 2008; Matthews & Heinemann, 2012). CA approach has been used in a number of previous studies in order to gain insights into design activities (Fleming, 1996; Glock, 2009; Hammersley, 2003; Luck, 2007a; McDonnell, 2009; Ungureanu & Hartmann, 2020; Wendler & Rogers, 1995) The normative approach has been adopted as a method of CA to study the interaction order between the architect and client as stated explicitly in its own right (Heritage, 2001).
A set of conversations between an architect and client in the early stage of designing a house, as it takes place in everyday architectural practice, was adopted as the source of data in a quasi-experimental design. This approach generated considerable information data about the impact of the media used in the architect–client conversation with regards to user participation in the early stage of the design process. The data was collected from 12 separate conversations between the same architect and 12 volunteer participants. All the interviews were audio recorded and then transcribed into a text document using an abridged version of the transcription notation system developed by Gail Jefferson (Whalen et al., 1987, pp. ix–xvi), as shown in the Appendix. Using Jefferson’s system, the vocal activities of a conversation can be represented in adequate detail to capture the flavour of the original speech, and more importantly the talk sequence and structure (Luck, 2007a). All the transcripts were broken down into small units or segments according to the topic under discussion (McDonnell, 2009; Suwa et al., 1998). Each segment treats one issue of the design in a particular way. The output of each issue was either an exchange of information about the design or a decision to do or modify something in the design; hence the researcher called the segments ‘design contributions’. A change in the topic or the design issue introduces the start of a new segment.
2.4 Data analysis
One of the good ways to manage qualitative data and interpret its meaning is to develop analytical categories and then index the data accordingly (Bryman & Robert G.Burgess, 1994; Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Locke et al., 2020; Miles, M.B & Huberman, 1994). Developing categories can be done either by deductive approach or by inductive approach, or a combination of both (Chenail, 2008; Green, 2008; Julien, 2008). Chenail (2008) and Green (2008) stated that when the researchers generate the categories deductively, they normally refer to literature, previous studies, and their own experience or a prior questions posed by them. They further explained that when they generated the categories inductively, they do not refer to a preset list, but rather the categories emerged from the data set. Similarly, for this present study the researcher has deductively and inductively developed the analytical categories.
After developing the analytical categories, all the collected qualitative data were analyzed by using content analysis procedures (Baxter, 2009; Erlingsson & Brysiewicz, 2017; Riffe et al., 2014), where they were indexed and coded accordingly (Locke et al., 2020). Nvivo 8 software was used to facilitate the coding process of the textual data (Smith, 2008) as the computer programs provide a variety of techniques for analyzing textual data (Bos & Tarnai, 1999). Frequency counts analysis was carried out based on the number of interviewees referred to the category, or the number of the occurrences of categories in the two groups of the conversational media. In general the frequencies counts are used to identify how often the categories or the themes occurred in a qualitative sample (Witte, Robert S., Witte, 2009) and to convert textual data into quantitative data to be manipulated statistically (Shelley & Krippendorff, 1984; Stebbins, 2008). Therefore, an inferential test for comparing mean value of variables of the analytical categories was conducted in this study. For comparison purpose the study used an independent-samples t-test (also called a two-sample t-test) to test the null hypothesis that there is no difference between the means of the two populations from which the samples were drawn (Pollak & Cohen, 1981).
2.5 The design
The design problem describes a house design on a 20 × 18 m (66 × 59 feet) parcel of land. The design was presented in 2D TV media to six of the 12 participants, and the same design was presented in 3D CV media to the other six. Google SketchUp 8 software was used to create the 3D version. The architect gave the same five-minute brief about the design and the concept to each client regardless of the version of the media. Each client was asked his/her opinion on the design and to feel free to give his/her comments and to ask any questions he/she liked.
Pre-testing of the conversational design format is essential (Malmqvist et al., 2019; Schreiber, 2008) Two pilot conversations were conducted before the twelve conversations were done; one with 2D TV media and one with 3D CV media. As a result of the pilot conversations, some amendments to the initial architectural design were made.
2.6 Selection of Participants
The participants were selected from the lecturers of the XXXX University in Malaysia. An invitation letter to participate in an interview was emailed to 200 lecturers from the university’s list. The invitation letters were sent in batches at a rate of 50 invitations every time because the researcher was not able to determine the final number of participants who would be interviewed because the collection of data ceases only at the saturation point (Corbin & Strauss, 2015; Given, 2008; Glaser & Strauss, 1967).