Research
So you have had the initial meeting. You know the basics of waht the client wants. Now its time to do a little reasearch. You got a good start on the reasearch during the meeting when you asked all those questions and wrote the awnsers down. Now its time to use the information gleened from that meeting to further your designs potential. If a product is directed at a certan group of people then it might help to take a look at what sort of thing that group is intrested in. If your design is supposed to be about say history or the arts then looking at different aspects of those subjects may be helpful. If you are working on a design for a food or toy for children then you will want to look into what intrests the children in the age group the design is ment for.
There are many ways to go about doing research. There are just as many places you can go to do your research. The library is a good place to start, but with the great invention of the World Wide Web you could do most of your research at home. For things like new product advertisement designs there are things called "focus groups". These groups are designed with the sole purpose of finding out what people like. Another way to do the same thing would be to form a survey. Surveys, how ever usefull they may be, tend to take time and for the average designer, time is very prescious. The way you gather your information depends a lot on how much time you have to finish your research (which is exzactly why you need good orginizational skills). You also have to take into account how many other jobs you have to complete.
Another thing to keep in mind when doing research is the initial goal of the project. It can be very easy to chase rabbits when doing research. For example, you are working on a design about baby cloths, you see a cute baby you wind up looking instead at cabbage patch kide. Its very easy to do. Even the most organized researchers can wind up chasing rabbits. Thats why focus is a factor.
