The research I wish to pursue for my doctoral degree encompasses two broad intellectual spaces that my interests lie within. These broad interests are human-computer interaction (HCI) and management information systems (MIS). What I wish to explore within these two broad spaces are system design, evaluation, operation efficiency, and interconnectivity.

HCI – Human Computer Interaction

Regarding HCI, my goals are to pursue connections between operator performance and effective computer system designs with the goals of proposing system designs that could facilitate efficient computer-operator performance. My research interests in HCI rely on experimenting with multiple designs and creating/defining requirements that can either support or outline disrupting factors in operating systems concerning interaction. Research in this field is applicable to multiple systems, including safety-critical systems, artificial/embedded intelligence systems, and autonomous technology systems, any of which I am interested in exploring. I wish to examine a variety of immersive mediums and their HCI components to discover if consistent variables and patterns can be found. I hope to use these findings to create newer standards that can contribute to efficient system designs.

MIS – Management Information Systems

In the realm of MIS, my research interests rely on defining and exploring the concept of value and how that can be applied to information when operating in information systems environments. In my perspective, research in this field involves considering the methodologies of information and its organization. Another consideration is how operational efficiency is defined when designing MIS applications, to see where one could highlight the element of user experience and benefit in these systems. My experience in this field primarily consisted of working with database management systems (DBMS) and performing evaluations on how information is received, queried, and optimized for delivery. Part of this experience also consisted of evaluating what the users’ needs were, and redesigning these systems to accommodate those needs with respect to the business processes. In the realm of research, I wish to take my knowledge and explore established standards of human attributed value in these systems, with the goal of experimenting with new designs that could be implemented in MIS applications, and that would be intuitive to the users’ needs.

HCI/MIS Research driven into Mobile Operability

My interests in mobile systems and application rely on exploring the idea of information delivery and its partner requirements for operation. Part of my research experience in this realm, which ties into HCI, is examining human interoperability through mobile applications. These were behavioral studies to understand what information was needed on demand in a specific scenario, or how some mobilized applications increase communication between the user and the enterprise over standard computer application (Grabowski, Lutzhoft, Rancy, 2015). I wish to research how, through the use of mobile applications, we can increase interconnectivity between systems. I wish to contribute toward defining universal constructs that constitute best practices when building and deploying mobilized applications for specific programs.

Epistemological/Ontological Stance

From an epistemological standpoint, I see myself approaching research based on the principles of empiricism. Empiricism is generally regarded as “empirical knowledge that comes only or primarily from sensory experience” (Benton and Craig, 2010). As observation is one of my primary research methods, the principles rooted in empiricism closely resemble the previous work I have done. However, I also perform a second type of analysis, where my primary observations are translated into logical data, often deductive, to provide an explanation for the phenomena being observed. This secondary analysis leads to my evolved form of empiricism, positivism. Many methods today assume a positivist role, as positivism’s primary focus is to “explain what the data presented means” (Trauth and Jessup, 2000). Following this epistemology, the primary purpose of my research methods is to gather data (observatory) and perform analyses to present results solely on the data collected. Part of my research goals are to define variables and research “effective” designs that can attribute “value” to the system at hand. Speaking from that standpoint, this would mean that my data should not explain just “how” but “why.” The “why” in the lens of my research is specifically concerned with contextual information, regarding a “user-centered” approach. For this, I would need to involve research methods that not only explain what the data means, but also asks the questions regarding how that data came to be and why. The reasoning behind investigating this is to explore the implications of the results gained from my research.

After multiple iterations of research and examining HCI-type design work, I finally came to a medium between pure positivism and rationalistic outcomes, which is interpretivism. Using an interpretivist approach means that I still can follow the qualitative methods of “observation, surveying, and interviewing,” but that I can also ground that data into quantitative statistical testing. The important difference in this approach is that the data “involves context” (Trauth and Jessup, 2000), which specially aids in my goals to research the phenomena around “user-centered design.” By nature, many of the interpretivist studies that this paper will review presents an iterative and heuristic take on examining individuals, behaviors, and patterns for emergent and generative theory-based research. This is the type of research I value and see myself performing in my dissertation. By following the principles of my epistemic view, I believe I can accomplish the challenges of defining my literature and results in a generalizable mindset. The goal behind generalizing my research is to ensure that its applicability is not just geared toward a specific audience, or placed as an ideology, but rather applied in a universal manner, with the results being on an understandable and accepted premise.

Previous Work

Prior to beginning my doctoral research, I engaged in HCI- and MIS-type research. My work during my undergraduate research and Master’s thesis involved observing phenomena in technology design and user adoption. For my undergraduate studies, I looked at information system (IS) technology design schemas in “collaborative” mechanisms to contribute toward a universal design of information exchange between legacy and emergent systems. This type of research has heavily forged my MIS type interests, examining variables such as technical performance, latency, retrieval, translation, processing, and unified machine language (UML) abstraction. Using some of the designs from my undergraduate work, I have transitioned to developing and examining systems that can aid human operators in safety-critical systems for my Master’s thesis. This transition forged my background in the HCI realm, as the system designs I evaluated were explored and tested using variables such as performance, situational awareness, satisfaction, confidence, adoption, trust, and self-efficacy. For example, my most recent endeavor in this field led me to examine these variables and requirements design for operational efficiency while operating wearable Augmented Reality technology for information visualization on a maritime bridge navigation system (Grabowski, Rowen, Rancy 2018). Subsequently, I now engage with theory in my doctoral program to further explore the relationships between technology and user behavior. By exploring these relationships, I hope to evaluate technological and user-centered variables that can contribute toward a model defining user-behavior with information-seeking value in emergent technologies.