Assignment 5b

Over the past year I have learnt many new skills from Design Studies, they range from primary and secondary research methods, how to create a Harvard bibliography to mind mapping and much more. Here I would like to propose how I would go about applying the techniques I’ve learnt to a tackle a studio brief differently.

I have chosen to look at one of my recent briefs where we were each given a different area of the shipping forecast and research, mine was Fair Isle. We then had to create an attraction within our area and brand or advertise it. The constraints of the brief were very open as we could tackle it in whatever way we wanted, anything from building an underwater community or creating an alternative reality set far in the future, our solution could be as sensible or crazy as we wished.

Through my research I discovered that the Norse name for Fair Isle means island of peace, from this I started to think about creating a religious community on the island. This led me onto creating a religious cult who worship birds and are recruiting members. Which then resulted in me to creating an advertising campaign for a rehab centre on the island, making claims of wonderful success rates and results, however it is all too good to be true as once the addicts are on the island the rehab centre makes no attempt to cure them, instead keep them there with the aim to sacrifice them to their gods, the birds.

Although I carried out research at the beginning of this brief I am now going to explore how by applying the news skills I have learnt I could achieve a more in-depth understanding and a greater valuable knowledge of the subject.

I would begin with mind mapping and brain storming the area, perhaps in small groups with others in the class and help others in return to mind map their area too, this would spark initial ideas and a wide variety of suggestions would be generated which I may have not thought of by yourself. From these initial ideas I would be able to base the following research on the ideas that have been generated.

To gain a basic understanding of the area of Fair Isle I would do a Google search although I know online sources are not always to be trusted and you should never solely rely on the information you gather to form online research.

During my online research I came across some photos taken on Fair Isle by a local photographer. Taking inspiration from the visual experiment technique from the beginning of this semester I could print off a selection of photos and show them to a range of people. It would be beneficial to gather responses to the photos focusing on how the photos of the island and island life make people feel, if they could connect the photos in a short story or feel any strong connections or just general feelings towards the photos. This would generate very valuable data into people’s interpretations of the island and uncover any preconceived ideas people may have of Fair Isle. This is valuable information that Google could not generate!

I then may look at the library’s Cross-Search facility to see if there has been any interesting research done on Fair Isle or other remote islands regarding issues such as island living. If I was still focusing on religion and cults then this research tool would be very useful for finding secondary data on this subject area. As because the subject of religion is so broad, there are many articles on the subject.

I will also use the library to research different advertising approaches, especially Guerilla style advertising as I feel this approach is the best way to reach my target consumer.

A very beneficial research method for this project to gain a great knowledge of the area would be observation. However because the island is very remote this is not a very practical method. Perhaps instead of observing the island I could go to a number of different religious buildings to observe and to gain a more diverse knowledge of different religions. This would help me when I came to construct my own religious cult for Fair Isle. I could also arrange a visit to a local rehab centre to observe and collect literature such as any posters or leaflets to see how they are designed to draw inspiration for my own design work.

I think it would be extremely important to carry out interviews with the cult’s target market, who are alcoholics and drug addicts are at their lowest, desperate to a get clean quick by the easiest way possible. This would mean sourcing addicts and interviewing them to find out exactly what they would look for in a rehab centre. If the requests generated were unachievable in a legitimate rehab centre, all the better for my research, as I want the centre to sound ‘too good to be true’, whatever they suggested I could use as valuable material for my advertising. I could also show the subjects a selection of the adverts I had created to gain feedback and to see how effective they would be. I could then use their feedback to revise the advertising campaign, making it more effective.

Sourcing alcoholics and drug addicts could potentially be putting myself at risk so I could interview recovered addicts as an alternative.

By applying these research techniques to a studio brief I am gathering a richer type of information. I can gain knowledge that is of a higher value and much more useful than the facts and figures found on the internet. All too often a Google search is the first thing we do when is comes to research. But I definitely think by using these primary and secondary research methods within my studio briefs I will achieve more interesting outcomes and solutions that reflect real people’s problems and needs.

One of the most important things I have learnt this year is that design is more than aesthetics. Design is about creating meaning, it is about understanding people’s stories, if you cannot understand their stories then you cannot design for them. This is why it is so important to involve people, though interviews, observation and discussion in your research, as ultimately you are designing for them.