Further research & the direction of my project

During this class, we were assigned to complete a series of questions regarding to our research.

Short introduction: Over the past 3-4 weeks, I have focused on looking at the Stone Era, Bronze Era and Iron era to educate myself. This is a subject I do not know in great depth so I decided that it was vital to look at each era separately. On top of that, I also looked at 7 different designers that used stone or wood as their primary material. It was important to me to look at those designers as it helped me understand how I can use the material in order to complement my designs. 

These were the questions:

How has my research informed my project? 

This research helped guide me in a specific direction that I did not think of from the start. At first, I was going to create 5 different products from the same era. However, looking at examples made me shift my idea to 5 variations of 1 product inspired by different eras. My research helped my understand different aspects of each era in order to familiarise myself with it before proceeding on designing. 

I also briefly looked at different type of lamp fixtures in order to broaden my knowledge and create a collection of 5 different lamps (shape, size, type, material). 

How useful has my research been? 

I try to target and research things that will have a positive impact on my project, and I believe that's what I have been doing so far. Using those designers helped me expand my knowledge on how to use stone as it is a very unfamiliar material to me. It also showed me that combining uncommon materials such as wood and stone can help create a beautiful outcome. 

The specific research about each era helped me understand the key elements happening in each and how I can use those elements to develop a delicate and detailed collection of lamps. 

What further research can I carry out to build on previous research? 

In my previous blogs, I started researching the different eras separately. However, I noticed that there were so many elements from each era that I could not go into detail. I decided that at the end of each blog post I would write 5-6 key points that can influence my project. Then, I will create my initial ideas based on those 5-6 inspirations. After that, I will choose which 1 specific inspiration I want to proceed with, research it in more depth and then develop it. I need more specific and in depth research that will allow me to form links to my project in order to get inspiration from it. 

I will also add more research for designers in order to familiarise myself with the different materials and techniques even more. I am still very unfamiliar with stone so I want to further enhance my knowledge. 

How will the further research inform my work?

I think that so far I have briefly researched the different eras in order to get a better understanding of what was happening and how one era differed from the other. In the future, I will complete more specific research which will be the one that shapes my rough thoughts into polished ideas. I will also complete research on designers that worked with clay, iron or bronze as I will be using various materials for this collection. I have to properly research techniques and the properties of materials to ensure that my collection will be affordable, durable and sustainable. 

A concern raised by my tutor was that the research I completed so far may be excessive. I do understand that point because I thought the same thing. I thought to myself that maybe I may be doing more or unnecessary research than what I should. However, I quickly realised that I almost knew nothing about these eras. Therefore, I had to dive into each era separately in order to understand the changes from one to the other. I had to look in depth about different factors to see the progression and understand completely what I am doing. 

In my opinion, if the designer himself does not know in depth about the project, his outcomes may be inaccurate or unsuccessful. In previous terms, I did not have to conduct so much research. The primary reason being that I targeted modern university students with transformative furniture. I could relate to that topic and I was very familiar with it, as I completed multiple similar projects in the past. 

However, with primitive eras, this is something completely new to me. I will try and be as accurate and specific with my blogs without being excessive. 

This is the reason as to why I made the blogs about my research short. I only included useful information that interest me. I did not include unnecessary/ excessive information.

Image referencing:

Sgaier, S.K. (2019) Practitioners are always searching for bright ideas to address global development challenges. Machine learning can help. [online] Available at: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/demystifying_machine_learning_for_global_development [Accessed: 05/05/21]