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context Exploration
With an idea of your contexts you now need to start thinking about how you might explore them - discovering as much about them as possible. Think about who the stakeholders are and what they are going to need from your solution. These are the sorts of things that will help you build a picture of your contexts - You need to evidence how you are exploring them:
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Completing visits - where could you go? Who could you speak to? What specifically could you look at/ for?
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conducting interviews - who would you interview? What questions would you ask? What do you need to find out about?
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observations - what could you look at/ in to? products? human behaviour? Anthropometric data? Existing product success...?
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surveys & Questionnaires - what data could you gather to help you determine an appropriate solution? Think about your TM/FG.
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speaking to focus groups - discussions and conversations with people will help you understand the context
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Existing product research - have you thought about what types of existing product research might help with your context exploration? There will be some great examples of products out there already.
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The bigger picture - what other things might you need to look into/ consider - the environment? Moral , ethical or cultural considerations?
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Secondary research - Can you support your initial thoughts with some secondary research (internet/ books/ magazines etc)
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the 'engineering' - what type of testing/ experimentation/ calculations might you have to explore?
What else can you do?
Contact and discussions with potential stakeholders and users within the context to identify possible focus areas and opportunities, problems and needs.
Putting yourself right in the context/situation where there are needs and problems needing solutions
Looking at the context from different perspectives by ‘living in’ or ‘working in’ your context for a day
create A concise and clear record of your investigations, highlighting areas for further consideration
Photographs and videos to add clarity, evidence and authenticity to your investigation of the context. Also consider how you could contact and evidence conversations – think along the lines of FaceTime/ Skype (with screen grabs), summaries of conversations, recording conversations (with permission)
Assessment criteria says
Exceptional investigations identify a breadth of highly challenging problems and opportunities for further consideration. Objective and innovative consideration of market potential through the approaches taken.
Use section 1 to help
This page is all about exploring/ investigating your contexts - this is what you need to present.
Create a separate page for each of your contexts, exploring, as a minimum, each of the suggestions above.
At this stage you don't need to make any decisions, you are just showing the potential each of the projects have.
Below is an example of how you could present your information and includes some examples of questions you could ask and answer
Project exploration: cooking with kids
who are my users?
Who are my stakeholders?
what do i currently know about them?
what else do i need to find out?
how will you contact stakeholders?
What will i ask them?
What similar scenarios/ problems are there? Where have you seen examples?
how have they been solved?
Is there any room for improvements?
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Are there any existing solutions/ examples of products which already help in the kitchen or teach children?
Can you speak to anyone about what these do or need to do?
What are the reviews like? Do they have a good/ bad rating? Why?What would need researching to make a better version?
What questions from your context map need answering at this stage?
Summary box:
What is this page about?
What are the main things you want to highlight from what you have discussed/ explored?
what additional questions do i have about the problem at this stage?
what research have you completed to help with this initial part of the investigation?
is there any further research you need to do?
Although This is your opportunity to communicate areas of the project you think might need exploring, you can also include information about things you have researched/ explored and decided are not of use.
For example:
I started to explore potential materials, but at this stage I don't know what the requirements will be. I will come back to exploring materials later (when i know more about the requirements of my design)
Design Technology @ NCB
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