Your Own Research

This is an A2 page where you start to identify an area.

What do I need to research?

After completing the first few pages of your research you should now have a clear idea where your research is heading. You may have come across an area that you think needs further research or a problem that needs extra investigation. This is a page that you will decide on the content.

Your page must:

·         Fit in with the rest of your research.

·         Be referred to when you are designing and developing your final product.

·         Identify another need or area of interest within your project.

Some ideas that you could use:

·         A designer who has specialised in the area your situation is based on.

·         A continuation from your “Identifying a Need” page. Maybe you need to research measurements or the area you are designing for.

·         A manufacturing technique that is unusual or specific to your project. YOU SHOULD NOT RESEARCH MATERIALS AS THIS WILL BE MARKED LATER ON IN THE COURSEWORK.

·         Sustainability or environmental issues regarding products relating to your project.

·         Another area of your choice.

This page should be full of information (not just copied from the internet). You will also need an introduction to the page saying how the page is relevant to your project and research. Once you have written up the sheet (use diagrams also), you will need to write a conclusion to explain how you will use the information to help you to develop and produce a successful final product.

                           

Target Audience Sheet Guidelines.

As/A Level Product Design   

Target Audience Sheet Guidelines.

This is an A2 sheet where you will introduce and explain your chosen target audience for your product. It is important that you know who your target audience is so that you can use their likes and needs to help to develop your product. A target audience can be formed of people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc., e.g. teenagers, females, single people, etc. A combination of factors, e.g. men aged 20–30 is a common target audience. Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested. Discovering the appropriate target market and determining the target audience is one of the most important activities in marketing management biggest mistake it's possible to make in targeting is trying to reach everybody and ending up appealing to no-one.

Your sheet needs to be based on your chosen target audience and you need to carry out an in depth interview with a member of your chosen group. The opinions and information you gather will then help you to design a successful project.

Photo- this should be a photograph of the type of person you are aiming your product at.     Who and why? Who is the photograph of       Target market description- this should be a detailed explanation of your target audience. ·         Describe person e.g. male/female, age etc. ·         Where do they live/what type of house ·         Family/ do they live on their own/with a partner? ·         What type of job do they have and salary? ·         Pets? ·         Interests/hobbies ·         What do they spend their money on? ·         What gadgets/technology do they like to buy? ·         What activities do they do in their spare time? ·         What types of food do they eat/ where do they dine out? ·         Colours and styles they like?   Example: (This is a target audience description for a graphic product design brief)   My target market and virtual customer is male, aged between 35 and 55. My user would probably be married with children. He owns his own home, drives a nice car, maybe a BMW or Mercedes. They have expendable income at this stage in their lives that they spend on quality products. They are not taken in easily by advertising and carefully consider quality before spending. They would prefer high quality, professional looking materials in their products (eg.high quality, thick g.s.m card) and the aesthetics should look stylish, smart and discreet. The typography should look smart, modern but quite serious and the colour scheme should not be bright, probably dark blue, greys, blacks and white. The customer would not mind spending money on batch produced products but would not spend money just because he has it to spend. Printed products would be laminated to give quality and maybe use expensive finishing processes such as spot varnishing to highlight certain detail. Quality and attention to detail are vital in the design of this person’s products.

Interview- this section needs to be an in depth interview with a member of your target audience. The questions should be open ended questions not yes/no questions as you would do in an interview. You should design questions that would help you to understand and identify a need/s that your target audience may have. You could also add in photos and use your “Ide3ntifying a Need” page to help aid the conversation. You should also have a brief introduction to this section explaining who the interviewee is and why you have chosen them to interview.

Questionnaire- this section involves asking a cross section of a minimum of 10 people from your target audience. You will need to think of relevant questions that will help you when designing. The questions can be short with yes/ no answers. Avoid unnecessary questions such as “What is your name?” and “Age?” These things you should already know as you are asking the questionnaire to your target audience. Font must be no bigger than size  12! Once you have asked the questionnaires you will need to present the results clearly either using graphs or charts. You will then need to summarise your findings and explain how you will use the information to help you with your designing. Are there any results you found that you were not expecting?

 

Identifying a Need Sheet Guidelines.

As/A Level Product Design   

Identifying a Need Sheet Guidelines.

This is an A2 page where you start to identify the need for your product.

What is a need?

We all require food and shelter at the basic level, but after that we want different things because we all have different life styles. People use manufactured products so that they can do things. As people get older they want different things. It is the role of the Designer to find out what people want and produce solutions to their problems.

People complain that the product they have just purchased does not do what they wanted it to do. The need of the consumer is not being met by the product. This is the starting point of many "new" designs. Manufacturers spend fortunes asking customers about their own and competitors’ products to see if they can alter an existing product by adding new features to boost flagging sales.

NEED = What the consumer wants. This need may be real or it may be dreamt up by marketing department.

On this page you will need to take real photographs and visit the place where your product will be used. You should take photographs of:

·         The current location. You may need to visit the place where your product will be used or situated.

·         The current product and the problems

·         Items that will relate to your design and what you are looking at

·         Anything else that is relevant to your situation

Once you have the photographs you need to choose the relevant ones. These will be the photos that help to explain the problem or need for your situation. The information you need on this page is:

·         Label the photos and explain what you are looking at in each photo.

·         You could also describe how the current product is used.

·         What are the problems with things such as cleaning, storage, use etc.

You could also get the views of the person/s that use the current product in the situation you are looking at, but remember this will be more detailed on your Target Audience Page.