My subject matter is:
Childrens toys, particularly traditional and established toys
Possible categories will include:
Material, colour, audience, educational
Research processed will include:
Primary: Questionnaire, survey and interview towards parents, different age groups and toy shop owners to find out what toys are established/trusted and remembered and why. Secondary: Museum, internet and library research to find out about different types of toys.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
Sunday, 13 December 2009
What If... Self Evaluation
What problem did you identify?
Rough sleepers lack awareness of where they can obtain health/medical care.
What evidence did you find to support your decisions?
I found out that 60.7% of people questioned thought Homelessness was a problem in their city of residence and when questioned, the general public assume drug and alcohol issues are a primary cause of homelessness. My questionnaire also told me that 80.8% of people walk on by when they see a homeless person and many have negative feelings such as sad and sorry for them. This research was all towards finding out if homelessness was a problem and not specifically targeted at the heath care. I found out a centre where rough sleepers can receive heath/medical care in Leeds from the internet.
What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?
I created a Questionnaire (linked on a Facebook page) which gave the group qualitative and quantitative primary research. This was achieved by using both open and closed questions and gave us statistics and opinions.
I also bought a few newspapers to gather any news on the subject which gave us qualitative secondary research.
I also carried out some internet research, collecting statistics and facts, a form of secondary quantitative research.
What methods of research did you find useful and why?
I think all methods of research were useful at collecting different types of information. Primary research is good as you can direct it in the way most useful to your study. Secondary is often quicker, but often I found the information was older and so things may have changed. Qualitative and quantitative worked well together in our research. Our qualitative often backed up our quantitative and we could use them both equally to inform our final resolution.
How did these inform your response to your problem?
The qualitative research gave us the knowledge that our problem was in fact a problem in Leeds, and our quantitative research gave us the facts and figures in order for us to tackle it.
What methods did you encounter as problematic?
Aiming the final resolution was problematic as it was a new audience that none of us had tackled before. We didn't want to sound patronising with our language or simple design, but we did want to make something which would be to the point and be clear it was aimed at the homeless.
How did you overcome this?
We discussed how we could best make the design more suitable for the audience and decided to keep it simple as our message was a simple one. We didn't need to add any unimportant information. We used a green cross in place of a letterform to represent "doctor" and used only 2 colours. We also decided upon a graffiti stencil approach for our design instead of a poster/mailshot etc... I thought that posters are normally a tool used to promote or advertise something to a consumer audience, completely different to our audience. Something real and permanent in their environment would be more effective and we even thought about location and positioning of the graffiti stencil to maximise opportunity of it being seen and taken note of by rough sleepers.
What research could you have carried out that would have proved more useful?
It would have been really useful if we could of spoke to a homeless person or rough sleeper and got their insight into the problem. Maybe there was a bigger issue in the minefield of homelessness that only they truely know about?
Five things you have learnt about the design process over the last two weeks...
Rough sleepers lack awareness of where they can obtain health/medical care.
What evidence did you find to support your decisions?
I found out that 60.7% of people questioned thought Homelessness was a problem in their city of residence and when questioned, the general public assume drug and alcohol issues are a primary cause of homelessness. My questionnaire also told me that 80.8% of people walk on by when they see a homeless person and many have negative feelings such as sad and sorry for them. This research was all towards finding out if homelessness was a problem and not specifically targeted at the heath care. I found out a centre where rough sleepers can receive heath/medical care in Leeds from the internet.
What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?
I created a Questionnaire (linked on a Facebook page) which gave the group qualitative and quantitative primary research. This was achieved by using both open and closed questions and gave us statistics and opinions.
I also bought a few newspapers to gather any news on the subject which gave us qualitative secondary research.
I also carried out some internet research, collecting statistics and facts, a form of secondary quantitative research.
What methods of research did you find useful and why?
I think all methods of research were useful at collecting different types of information. Primary research is good as you can direct it in the way most useful to your study. Secondary is often quicker, but often I found the information was older and so things may have changed. Qualitative and quantitative worked well together in our research. Our qualitative often backed up our quantitative and we could use them both equally to inform our final resolution.
How did these inform your response to your problem?
The qualitative research gave us the knowledge that our problem was in fact a problem in Leeds, and our quantitative research gave us the facts and figures in order for us to tackle it.
What methods did you encounter as problematic?
Aiming the final resolution was problematic as it was a new audience that none of us had tackled before. We didn't want to sound patronising with our language or simple design, but we did want to make something which would be to the point and be clear it was aimed at the homeless.
How did you overcome this?
We discussed how we could best make the design more suitable for the audience and decided to keep it simple as our message was a simple one. We didn't need to add any unimportant information. We used a green cross in place of a letterform to represent "doctor" and used only 2 colours. We also decided upon a graffiti stencil approach for our design instead of a poster/mailshot etc... I thought that posters are normally a tool used to promote or advertise something to a consumer audience, completely different to our audience. Something real and permanent in their environment would be more effective and we even thought about location and positioning of the graffiti stencil to maximise opportunity of it being seen and taken note of by rough sleepers.
What research could you have carried out that would have proved more useful?
It would have been really useful if we could of spoke to a homeless person or rough sleeper and got their insight into the problem. Maybe there was a bigger issue in the minefield of homelessness that only they truely know about?
Five things you have learnt about the design process over the last two weeks...
- Research is great. It can make or break your design and brief. Knowing the importance of the different types of research helped us develop our design. If we only had quantitative, we would of got nowhere and vice versa.
- Posters are not the answer to everything. They may look pretty (sometimes)... but do they really work?
- Design is not just about something looking pretty. We used it to try and tackle a real life problem and feel like we did alright.
- Communication can often be less is more. We knew what we needed to communicate and why... nothing more needed.
- It is a 26 minute walk to Leeds PCT from the underpass near Woodhouse Lane Carpark.
Five things you would do differently next time.
- Contribute more to the final design. I don't feel like I created enough initial designs.
- Stay in College if I have work to do... instead of going home with the intention of doing it but then watching Shameless and eating biscuits.
- Let others take the lead. I feel like I took a main role in the decision making again and would really like to know if that helped or hindered the project.
- Refine my presentation skills.
- Save InDesign files!
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