DESIGN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY - FINAL PROJECT AND REFLECTION
26TH AUGUST - 27TH NOVEMBER (WEEK 1 - WEEK 14)
NG VEYHAN (0349223) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
DESIGN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
FINAL PROJECT AND REFLECTION
Instruction
Practical
For the first week, we were assigned a simple task, to come up with a topic that we can cover in a research paper, preferably if it has overlap with the desired specialization that we wish to pursue.
Personally, I am aiming for a specialization in Animations and Visual Effects, therefore I wished to cover a topic related to that. Animation does play a vital role in the creative industry, and its quite a broad term to be considered. For the research paper, I would decide to go for a topic that I am more "familiar" with, which would be animation in the gaming industry.
Considering the current landscape of the industry surrounding games, there is a rather large amount of highly debated topics such as representation of certain demographics, accessibility for a casual player base etc.
First things first, I had to find something that could be improved.
I began to look for some external sources that could prove the validity of my hypothesis as a point of research. Through this research I also managed to narrow down the topic that needed to be researched.
I had to look around for more specific sources to help aid my research, but many of the relevant articles that I have found focused on movies rather than games, and were mostly written during the infancy of the 3D animation industry.
I had to finish up the remaining part of Project 1 this week, and submit the slides by the next class. The sources that I had found were still a little shaky, but enough to make a substantial research topic.
Without any classes this week, we were pretty much left to our own devices for our work. Making use of what I had learned during the library session in the previous week, I browsed some books on animation in hopes of finding more relevant material.
Returning after having a week without the lectures, we were to begin working on our next assignment, which was the critical review. I searched up a few databases to see if there were any papers related to studying the animation process to be used in the review.
Browsing through websites such as JSTOR and ResearchGate, I refined my search to more recent sources as it was one of the requirements when searching for sources for this project. However, there actually weren’t that many studies focusing solely on the developmental pipeline for the animation process, which made looking for sources rather difficult.
The critical review for Project 2 was almost due, and I had prepared my reviews at the time. However an unforeseen hiccup occurred in that the sources that I had used were of not the correct type. I had looked for full books rather than smaller journals and studies.
Having to look for another set of sources, I went back to JSTOR to look for more appropriate material. This time I had made sure to refine my search for journals. I also skimmed through some of the material that I had requested previously from authors on ResearchGate.
After the rush from last week, I managed to piece together a few reviews for journals that I have collected. Although I hadn’t managed to do all 5 just yet, I did manage to get 3.
As I was more busy with assignments from other modules, I was paying more attention to that this week. I compiled the reviews together and read it through to ensure the grammar and arrangement was accurate, then downloaded the docx file as a pdf and submitted it.
As there was no lecture this week, we were expected to start working on Project 3 and consider how we would want to collect our research data. Reading through the provided material, I decided on what type of data to collect.
Despite there being no tutorial session, I still did a little work in researching the background of this assignment. The data collected could be categorized into qualitative or quantitative data. As I felt I had to make time for assignments in other modules, I decided to go for quantitative data as conducting interviews was overly time consuming.
Now that I had decided the method I would use in the data collection, I had to begin creating the instrument to be used in the project.
For this week, it was the period to consider the benefits and drawbacks of collecting either qualitative and quantitative data. Some draft questions were also created to give an idea of how I would eventually structure these questions.
The goal I had set for this week was the finalization of preparation for creating the research instrument. The questions were reviewed by Dr. Hayati to see if there were any suggestions to amend the questions to be more specific.
The questions to be used in the online questionnaire had already been drafted last week. At this stage, I would be trying to make the questions more personalized to each respondent, despite the large sample size required for quantitative data. By splitting the questionnaire into two main paths, it managed to filter out the basic demographic I required for my research.
This week is mostly dedicated to the collection of data for the online questionnaire. I had to expand the reach of the questionnaire and try to attract a large enough number of respondents.
Since I wanted to get a larger sample size with more preferences across different games, I visited a number of Discord servers which were communities for different types of games. From shooters to card games, I tried to advertise the questionnaire to as many people as possible.
For the online questionnaire, the number of responses I had collected still fell just short of the required number for the study. Dr. Hayati said it was fine for now and advised to work on the analysis of the data for this week.
In terms of analysing the data, the results that I had collected were contrary to my expectations. While I could see why the data came out as it did, but it really did put into perspective how I haven’t fully understood the preferences for most people.
The submission for Project 3 is this week, however we were still allowed to make some additions if we have gotten more research data afterwards. For this reason I still kept the questionnaire open in hopes a few more responses would roll in.
I referenced most of the work I have done previously in the semester when preparing my final report. I think writing this report would help in compiling everything in the final blog. According to Dr. Hayati’s advice, I could add more studies to my critical review.
I had completed the slides for the presentation by this week. Since the deadline for the presentation is in “Week 15”, I set it a bit lower in terms of priority as there was work that had to be submitted by the end of Week 14.
I started out with fifteen slides for the presentation, but after doing a quick mock presentation I realized that it was much too many pages and it exceeded the allocated five minutes for the presentation so I cut it down to thirteen. I also finished up the final report to be submitted at this time.
Feedback
WEEK 1: No feedback for this week as it was only the first week in the semester.
WEEK 2: Dr. Hayati commented that the topic of my research was very vague, and it often dipped into the category of Entertainment Design rather than sticking to my intended specialization in Animation and VFX. The intended topic of research was still given the green light, and I should continue to look for some research materials after amending the title a little.
WEEK 3: Research topic was largely decided, but the scope was still a little too large. I would have to narrow down the research problem to only one.
WEEK 4: None, as it was a public holiday that week.
WEEK 5: I should finish looking for my references soon. The sources I have found so far lacked cohesion.
WEEK 6: The references were mistaken and weren’t supposed to be books, but journals. The extra knowledge that I have acquired from reading the materials could be useful.
WEEK 7: I have gotten a grasp of what I was supposed to analyze in my critical review. Being able to discern biases in the reading material is also good progress.
WEEK 8: No feedback for this week as it was ILW.
WEEK 9: No feedback for this week as Dr. Hayati was feeling unwell.
WEEK 10: For the questionnaire, there should be more variety in the answers. It is recommended to have some open ended answers.
WEEK 11: No feedback for this week as it was Deepavali.
WEEK 12: The number of respondents for the questionnaire is still a little lacking.
WEEK 13: The number of studies in Project 2 Critical Review was still insufficient. I could supplement my research data with qualitative research.
WEEK 14: I hadn’t attended lessons for this week as I decided to finish up other work first.
Reflection
WEEK 1: I found the premise of this module rather interesting in a way that was different from the other modules. Even after a slight skim over the internet for research materials, I realized that this project a more of an opportunity to not only work on problem solving skills, but as well as giving myself more perspective through the research conducted by others beforehand.
WEEK 2: As it is still my first time trying my hand in a written module such as this, it was understandable that there would be some hiccups here and there. While I am still completely set on taking the path of Animation and VFX, my hobby in illustrating showed its influence in my research topic. I am thankful to Dr. Hayati for helping me clarify my research topic to prevent any confusion further down the road.
WEEK 3: Looking for research material this week was rather draining. An interesting read I did come across did studies on animating non-humanoid figures, which did raise a point to me that this research topic could extend further from just human movements.
WEEK 4: The interface of the EBSCO database was the easiest to navigate in my opinion. It did facilitate much quicker searches and helped save some time by filtering out unwanted results such as old books, books on 2D animation rather than 3D etc. Therefore, I felt researching for this week's work was easier compared to my attempts last week.
WEEK 5: While I had a fairly clear idea on what kind of research topic I was aiming for, I felt that the papers the database offered were focusing too much on the theoretical side of animation and less so on the practical, hands-on portion. It did make my search a lot more tedious, but I had managed to scrape together a few relevant articles.
WEEK 6: Having to look for another set of sources, I went back to JSTOR to look for more appropriate material. This time I had made sure to refine my search for journals. I also skimmed through some of the material that I had requested previously from authors on ResearchGate. After receiving feedback from Dr. Hayati, my schedule became a lot more packed due to my mistake. However it was still fortunate that I managed to rectify the misunderstanding.
WEEK 7: It was a relief that I did at least manage to absorb much of the knowledge that I acquired previously from the books. It managed to streamline my reviewing process of the journals afterwards and recognize particular sections with possible inaccuracies and biases.
WEEK 8: For this week, I hadn’t really decided thoroughly on how I wanted to collect my research data. Although I had already decided on collecting a set of quantitative data, I still had to consider how to implement such a collection method.
WEEK 9: There was no feedback currently from Dr. Hayati, as such I was unable to properly gauge my progress. I would just do what I could currently and hopefully I would have been keeping proper pace in this project.
WEEK 10: As the questionnaire was largely completed, I was already considering how to distribute the research instrument. It was surprisingly not much of a rush against other modules this week, possibly due to a lower workload from other modules.
WEEK 11: Trying to attract interest for this questionnaire was incredibly difficult. As there was no incentive to respond to the online questionnaire, very few people would take a minute just to respond to it. Hopefully I could just brute force a number of people just by spreading it as far as possible.
WEEK 12: It was a pretty laborious process when sorting through the results that I have obtained. As I wanted to see if there was any correlation between certain selection of games choices and their responses to further questions, I individually went through each entry. Creating the slides itself wasn’t terribly difficult, however.
WEEK 13: This week was crunch time for most of the modules. I had to prepare the final submission for this module as well. While Dr. Hayati recommended that I make some amendments and add more to the critical review in Project 2, I feel that I currently don't have enough time and even if it was possible it could only be done next week.
WEEK 14: As I had finished the practical work for this semester in this week, I focused on completing the work for other modules. All that was left was to record the final presentation to be submitted, and the e-portfolio needs to be written. It was a bit of a rush, but I think I still managed to keep myself on a steady schedule for submission.
Semester Reflection
Experience
As this is a written module, the workflow of this module was a little less than what I was accustomed to. Thankfully I had some experience prior when I had to create a physics research paper when I was still in college. While writing of the paper itself wasn’t a terribly arduous task, it was much of the reading that was more challenging. Sometimes it was rather disheartening when looking for relevant sources to the study and having to sift through a great number of irrelevant works.
The lecturers were also helpful and understanding that it was likely a first experience of a written module for many of us. Dr. Hayati gave us some pointers on how we should direct and further narrow down our studies to make it easier to manage the scale of our projects. Despite the tight schedule when combined with work from other modules, the workload was surprisingly bearable.
Observations
Compared to other modules which focused more on developing the creativity of the students, this module challenged our critical thinking towards information. It does encourage the students to take a less biased view on various issues and therefore be able to give a subjective opinion.
Asides from approaching a problem critically, the module had also helped me develop a stronger sense of perspective. In order to solve the issue at hand, the best solution might not always be the most straightforward one. By considering all the possible solutions and its outcomes, I think it makes it more likely to arrive at an optimal conclusion.
Findings
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