Subject report Research and Practice

May 2021 MFA Product Design making

Subject Report Design Research and Practice Module

María Morales Die

INTRODUCTION This is the subject report for the Advance Design Practice block of the Design Research and Practice Module. The work submitted in this block for the Product design specialism is the Maker Spaces directory made during the first term of the academic year, and the Bench project developed at the beginning of the second term. This document discusses the new research skills acquired during the module and applied to these projects.

Context The plan for this module experienced certain modifications during the development of the course, especially during the first term, due to pandemic restrictions.

This changed the outcome expected for the maker-spaces block which ended up being a directory of resources for designers that listed a different kind of maker-spaces resources and their characteristics.

This changed the nature of the project which turned to be based on secondary research at the time because most spaces had attending restrictions.

The research applied o projects

Maker-Spaces As mentioned in the previous section, the research work carried out for the maker-spaces project was mostly secondary.

The research consisted of looking for businesses that offered rapid prototyping and manufacturing services in the area and classifying them by the services offered.

Services and companies that were considered useful for designers were also included, such as upholstery services and online platforms to share CAD files.

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The types of business were classified into three categories, spaces where you can access and use the tools and machinery yourself, space where you collaborate with the technician in charge to advise you on your project and third-party service where you order the work and are not involved. in the making process.

The project was done using information about the services shared on the internet, but I also contacted one of the businesses, Open Factory, and despite the restrictions of the moment they were open to collaborate and offer their services.

It is important to point out that even though the research method applied in this project is the search for existing documentation, and therefore it is secondary research.

My experience working in the workshop during the first quarter is what allowed me to identify most of the services that make up the directory. So in part, there was primary research based on observation and experience, having carried out projects myself, which guided me when it came to knowing what kind of services to look for.

This project also served as learning to recognize relevant information and synthesize it to later represent it attractively. It was necessary to recognize which data would be useful to the users of the directory and obtain information from the same categories of all the services to facilitate the comparison between them.

Bench For the Bench project, primary as well as secondary research methods were applied. The project called for the redesign of an urban rest area, but before that, it was necessary to identify an actual area where the project could be implemented. This was done using research methods learned during the first term, documenting everything through images and visual representation with annotations.

In my case, I chose to research the area I used to live in, which was a student accommodation. I started by having walks around the area drifting and observing in which areas people usually congregated, then I decided to take visual evidence of the seating areas around and map out the area pointing out the different seating areas and the path in between them. From experience of the previous months and observation, I could identify which seating areas were being used and which were not.

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After identifying the most used seating area in the area I was able to focus on analyzing the characteristics and particularities of the particular seating area and identify problematic aspects of it, in this case, the noise that was produced when people from the residence gathered between stone buildings, and make a conscious decision to focus the redesign project on trying to solve this issue.

Conclusion The characteristics of the research methods applied in each project differ in their primary or secondary nature, which allowed me to explore and experiment with both aspects in different ways. I must admit that my experience in the field of applied design research before starting this course was very limited and lacked structure, but with these new skills, I have found that it opens up the possibilities of approaching a project in a way that I had not initially considered.

an area I need to work on. The methods applied in this block I think were appropriate to the circumstances surrounding each project.

Overall, acquiring these new research skills has opened my mind in terms of doing design projects because they help to identify aspects that I might overlook.

In general, acquiring these new research skills has opened my mind in terms of doing design projects because they help to identify aspects that I might overlook. I do not yet have the ability to apply certain methods comfortably due to my lack of experience in the field but in terms of these projects they proved to be a useful tool in developing them. Research is an essential part of a design project but until now I have not had the structure and tools in place to do this. Thanks to these new skills I now have a new way of dealing with design briefs.

As I have seen with these projects, especially the bank project, I now have a new way of starting projects that will allow me to approach them from new angles and perspectives.

Even so, I feel that I still lack experience with certain research methods and could probably apply them better once I start using them more assiduously. This will allow me to know which methods are the most appropriate depending on the project I am working on, as I believe that, for the moment, this is PAGE 4