Monday 30 November 2015

OUGD501 - COP Session - Primary Research Considerations

Observations:
Observing the situation to consider cause and effect, trends, habits - can be quite limiting and biased, it still has value but observation is only effective when it happens multiple times.

Market research:
habits, opinions, tastes, perceptions of consumers in a specific target market -  you can conduct questionnaires, surveys, focus groups, opinions polls, interviews

Quantitative and Qualitative research
Questionnaires are a very effective way of gathering decent primary research, used to establish the 'needs' of the target audience, or used to assess the effectiveness of the design work on the desired users/consumers

What do you need to know and what do you want to learn?

-consider aims carefully
-identify population and sample size
-easy to interpret question styles (consider how long it will take to fill out the questionnaire)
-open or closed questions...multiple choice?
-avoid using leading questions
-go from the general to the particular
-go from factual to abstract questions

Questionnaires - should be completed by as many people as you find possible, the more the better. Getting a wider range of people to answer the questions will give you a broader scope on the issues that you need answering.

Focus groups - very beneficial, can be tricky because the members of the group can be easily influenced by the tone of voice, body language etc of the person hosting the group and asking the questions

Interviews - in-depth, focused and refined discussion/Q&A with individuals
based around preplanned question structures, but can also develop around impromptu questions and open discussion

User/Audience testing - in order to assess the effectiveness of your design work it may be pertinent to test your work on members of the specified target market
-consider testing perception, readability, aesthetic appreciation, perception of quality and so on - all of this feedback is invaluable and can benefit the development of a body of work greatly

Ethical considerations - should be made when dealing with members of the public, especially if the topic is regarded as sensitive - should the date be kept anonymous? should participants be made aware of the research focus? should participants have the right to withdraw|? Asking people if they wish to remain anonymous is important for a number of reasons, always better to ask than to regret not asking at a later date.

Task: Consider carefully whether primary research can help your COP project - identify research aims, research methods, population and sample sizes. Consider the relevance of primary research in relation to the themes, topics and issues you are focusing on in the essay

The concepts and themes that I am tackling in my essay are in some ways highly abstract and philosophical, asking people questions to do with these themes may be challenging because the majority of people probably haven't come into contact with terms such as simulacrum or pastiche in much depth.

Representational images - how it stands for its original meaning and in fact there is no original meaning.

What primary research could I do? Do I really need to do any primary research? I don't think its really 100% necessary for me to do primary research for my investigation this year in COP

A questionnaire? An interview?

Practical work: consider the mechanisms of what makes a piece of work 'hyper real' the experiences and meanings associated with images come from images. Decoding hyper reality

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