Craig-Myself-Carl-Chloe
After a brief 30 minutes of intense discussion we finally settled on the idea of researching into the illness that goes by the name of Seasonal Affective Disorder; cunningly SAD. Fred suggested not to go anywhere near an investigation that related to the seasons, but we went for the rebel approach and got stuck in. 'Ave it. Amongst this we also looked into suicide rates and daylight hours within England.
Most primarily we identified the problem as being 'During the winter months people feel more depressed'. Therefore we subsequently decided that we needed to cheer people up throughout the snowy (joke) season of this fine and wonderful country! An excellent task.
In order to support these theories our collective body of research was mainly sourced from an array of questionnaires focussed on evaluating peoples moods in relation to the weather. This proved particularly useful in helping us pin point what factors of the winter people didn't like, but also what they did like. We felt that looking at both ends of the spectrum would help us to identify a more informed decision about what could make people smile throughout the given period. Logical, no?
Overall the top 5 words out of a very long list that people chose to describe winter by were as follows: Cold, wet, dark, miserable/depressing and festive. This was additionally supported by the fact that 60% of people preferred the months of spring/summer in opposition to the 25% who preferred autumn/winter. 15% stated no preference.
On the whole, the methods used to obtain various entities of information fell nicely into these four categories:
- Primary Quantitative: Tallied results from questionnaires.
- Primary Qualitative: Questionnaires asking people's opinions, face-to-face discussion.
- Secondary Quantitative: Research into pre-existing statistics on daylight hours, suicide rates and the number of people affected by SAD.
- Secondary Qualitative: Research into SAD, the winter blues, what makes people happy, Gap and Benetton advertising campaigns.
Particularly problematic in my opinion was the collection of secondary sourced research, something I am actually a little surprised about. Most significantly me and the rest of the group found it somewhat difficult to filter out the relevant and more informed pieces of information that would actually aid us in the progression of our project. I feel this may be a skill that increases with experience and plain perseverance? I'll get back to you on that one.
One issue that I felt may have been quite useful would have been to investigate what other creative design processes are available to effectively present a specific aim or purpose. Although I was really proud of what our final resolution(s) turned out to be, I was a little less enthusiastic of the fact that we went for a generic poster/billboard approach. I do not like generic; except for bold Helvetica that is tightly kerned and has an underscore after each sentence. Oh yes.
So, next time:
- Take our research into the public domain on a greater scale.
- Have a stronger sense of direction before going into the photography studio.
- Conduct further research into creative ad-campaigns.
- Choose a resolution format that is realistically achievable in terms of print and production.
- Not leave Carl, Craig and Chloe to their own devices with a camera...
And what did I learn about the design process?:
- Research definitely helps to produce a precision resolution.
- Getting the studio lighting right goes a long way.
- I'm not fond of communicating with general public as they get pissed off.
- Sharing the burdens of any given problem is a blessing.
- Unclear messages can be a big downfall toward the outcome.
Well then, to sum this week up in a nutshell I feel this experience has certainly been beneficial and a very big lesson in getting my head around the importance of informed research. I hope the group are as happy as I am about the final resolutions. I think we done ourselves justice although we just need a full scale copy to put up on a billboard frame somewhere. If you know of any cheap methods of completing this do get in touch.
As it's Christmas soon, here's some presents...
And of course some finals...
x
Most primarily we identified the problem as being 'During the winter months people feel more depressed'. Therefore we subsequently decided that we needed to cheer people up throughout the snowy (joke) season of this fine and wonderful country! An excellent task.
In order to support these theories our collective body of research was mainly sourced from an array of questionnaires focussed on evaluating peoples moods in relation to the weather. This proved particularly useful in helping us pin point what factors of the winter people didn't like, but also what they did like. We felt that looking at both ends of the spectrum would help us to identify a more informed decision about what could make people smile throughout the given period. Logical, no?
Overall the top 5 words out of a very long list that people chose to describe winter by were as follows: Cold, wet, dark, miserable/depressing and festive. This was additionally supported by the fact that 60% of people preferred the months of spring/summer in opposition to the 25% who preferred autumn/winter. 15% stated no preference.
On the whole, the methods used to obtain various entities of information fell nicely into these four categories:
- Primary Quantitative: Tallied results from questionnaires.
- Primary Qualitative: Questionnaires asking people's opinions, face-to-face discussion.
- Secondary Quantitative: Research into pre-existing statistics on daylight hours, suicide rates and the number of people affected by SAD.
- Secondary Qualitative: Research into SAD, the winter blues, what makes people happy, Gap and Benetton advertising campaigns.
Particularly problematic in my opinion was the collection of secondary sourced research, something I am actually a little surprised about. Most significantly me and the rest of the group found it somewhat difficult to filter out the relevant and more informed pieces of information that would actually aid us in the progression of our project. I feel this may be a skill that increases with experience and plain perseverance? I'll get back to you on that one.
One issue that I felt may have been quite useful would have been to investigate what other creative design processes are available to effectively present a specific aim or purpose. Although I was really proud of what our final resolution(s) turned out to be, I was a little less enthusiastic of the fact that we went for a generic poster/billboard approach. I do not like generic; except for bold Helvetica that is tightly kerned and has an underscore after each sentence. Oh yes.
So, next time:
- Take our research into the public domain on a greater scale.
- Have a stronger sense of direction before going into the photography studio.
- Conduct further research into creative ad-campaigns.
- Choose a resolution format that is realistically achievable in terms of print and production.
- Not leave Carl, Craig and Chloe to their own devices with a camera...
And what did I learn about the design process?:
- Research definitely helps to produce a precision resolution.
- Getting the studio lighting right goes a long way.
- I'm not fond of communicating with general public as they get pissed off.
- Sharing the burdens of any given problem is a blessing.
- Unclear messages can be a big downfall toward the outcome.
Well then, to sum this week up in a nutshell I feel this experience has certainly been beneficial and a very big lesson in getting my head around the importance of informed research. I hope the group are as happy as I am about the final resolutions. I think we done ourselves justice although we just need a full scale copy to put up on a billboard frame somewhere. If you know of any cheap methods of completing this do get in touch.
As it's Christmas soon, here's some presents...
And of course some finals...
x
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