Investigating - OCRIdentifying user and stakeholder requirements

Identifying problems and needs

Research before and after the design brief can identify any limitations to ideas and help with initial designs. Analysis of research and user feedback can lead to changes being made to the brief, such as a change in timescale or budget. The results of feedback, testing and product analysis should give the designer a good starting point to adapt, test, evaluate and improve their product.

Not all design is aimed at selling the maximum number of products. There are many problems that need solving for a very small target market, for example:

• designing fastenings for small children to use
• creating products for the partially sighted, which might include bright colours or large buttons
• redesigning products using the ergonomic data of a wheelchair user

Regularly feeding back to the client ensures the designer continues to fulfil the aims of the design brief.

Primary data

Primary sources of information are gathered by the designer and used to help improve their designs:

• Market research - Looking at products that already exist and talking to clients to collect a wide range of information on what is successful and what needs developing to ensure a product is viable. Interviews and questionnaires can be used to gather information on shape, colour, materials and function of existing products and the answers analysed to improve the product.
• Focus groups - Another valuable perspective can be found by talking to the product’s target market. Small groups can be interviewed, giving feedback before, during and after production, which can be used to improve the outcome.
• Product analysis - Looking at products that already exist can help improve further designs by pinpointing issues to improve designs and prototypes.
• Anthropometrics - Collecting maximum and minimum measurements about the target market’s sizes can help improve designs by making the product easier or more comfortable to use. Anthropometric data can be used to work out the dimensions and load stresses of a product.
• Ergonomics - Testing and analysing how a person interacts with the product can improve its functionality and how it fits into its surroundings.

Secondary data

Secondary sources of information use data already found by other people or organisations that are relevant:

• Existing data - Average anthropometric and ergonomic measurements are available online, as well as government statistics and a huge range of questionnaires and public opinion.
• Media - Books, newspaper articles, reviews and the internet all provide access to the opinions of others.

Presenting data

Data from questionnaires can be presented visually using graphs, pie charts and tables, making it easier to analyse and summarise. Anthropometric and ergonomic details collected can be averaged out to find the sizes that fit most users. The average measurement percentile is typically the biggest group of users sharing a measurement.

Example

In order to design a new shoe rack for a classroom, it would be useful to know the most common shoe size in the class. To record the data, a combined tally chart and frequency table will need to be produced, as shown below:

Using a tally chart speeds up the process of recording data - the tally is added together to give the frequency. To produce a bar chart of this data, the UK shoe size could go along the x-axis and the frequency along the y-axis: