OUGD405 - The Importance of Research

10 reasons for research and why they are important
- Increases the quality and depth of an outcome
- Opens new pathways of ideas that may not have originally been considered
- Gets you in the mind frame of your subject, causing you to be more focused
- Time to engage and reflect on current ideas to help and develop new ones
- Improves and develops your own opinions and perspective on the topic
- Research is ongoing - there are endless things to discover
- Allows for experimentation and a broad perspective of the subject
- Documents your thought process, so it is easy to look back on/ re-visit previous research
- Gives an order/structure to a vast amount of information
- Process of elimination - enabling you to find the most successful outcome

10 methods you could use to generate a breadth of information:
- Questionnaires - collect qualitative and quantitative data
- Mind-maps/ spider-diagrams of own knowledge
- Mood boards - to create a visual representation of knowledge examples related to the subject
- Taking photographs to influence your individual design development
- Outside medias/ method of production
- Talk to a variety of people/ experts/ the general public to get a more valid, reliable, first-hand response
- Interviewing specific people related to the subject
- Creating prototypes to test ideas
- Visiting an exhibition to explore things such as trends and influences

Outcomes of carrying out these research methods:
- Statistics, opinions, comparisons, visual representations
- Documentation of process, aids to research, allows presentation, supports primary and secondary ideas
- Can aid primary, secondary and direct research to help visualise and justify work
- Visual research and ideas, research influences and inspiration
- Expands knowledge, creates broader ideas

Factors which can sometimes prevent effective research:
- Time - sometimes it can be difficult to find the time to carry out extensive research.
- Cost - This can be an issue due to not having enough money to carry out various idea tasks.