Research Proposal (5a)

As an Interior and Environmental Designer it is important to consider many aspects when designing. With many factors contributing to the overall experience of a space, context and behaviour of humans play a crucial part in how we react in a specific area requiring extensive research when trying to understand this idea. Reviewing the work I completed in first semester which primarily stemmed from Gladwell (2000) The Power of Context (Part 1), it is important to understand how the methods I have learnt over the past year could be applied to gain a deeper understanding of the topic.

Observing people going about their everyday lives we can try and tap into what physical and social features act as stimuli in provoking a certain response. Factors such as location and tolerance levels play a central role in trying to understand how a community works. Whether you are located in a rural or city region, it will have affected certain aspects of your life. For example how might you respond to a situation, positively or negatively? Removing someone from a familiar context and placing them in an alien one can cause a dramatic change in mood, with people becoming nervous and feeling vulnerable. Trying to do this without anyone becoming suspicious is hard and people might not act naturally but it something that Bronfenbrenner (1979) feels is significant when arguing an individual’s reaction to different contexts. When studying an area it is important to listen to the locals. They live there all the time and know about occurrences in the area that you yourself might not pick up on. Using this technique when studying different areas, could allow you to compare the results and allow you to construct key questions that could be asked if interviewing people.

Interviewing people in different locations would either provide an honest response or a biased one. Careful consideration of questions that covered a broad area would narrow the chance for one sided views and with a certain wording could provoke a certain response from an individual. It would be important that a variation on the interviews took place, families, couples and singles as each group would have a different stance of the questions being asked. Asking people questions in groups could prove both advantageous and disadvantageous as there would be a danger that individuals could be influenced. Performing interviews on people with a mixture of ages would prove valuable to gaining an insight into a community from a wide scope of people as different age groups will have different opinions on the area and it is important to consider all angles of the argument. With age comes experience but this does not mean to say that young people should be disregarded, everyone in the community is interacting with the space at a different level. Similarly, this technique should be adhered to if you were to ever interview people from more than one neighbourhood. Taylor, R. B. (1996) suggests that we have to consider the different threats each area poses and when creating the questions a large variation has to exist to gain a maximum level of awareness.

Visual research can be very effective, especially as some people respond better to this technique. Asking people to look at pictures that have been picked specifically can allow you to understand how people see things in a community, e.g. pictures of graffiti, maintained gardens, thugs, tidy streets, which might stir personal responses from some participants. Again as mentioned in other researching methods a mixture of participants, age, sex and race, could all have a varying effect on the data obtained. Changing factors such as the way the images are presented to individuals and the order they are received should all be consider when analysing the results. The use of images is less intimidating than interviews and some people may find it easier to open up and discuss things more with sometimes images causing catalytic reactions. As Barthes argues “all images are polysemous” the danger that people would discuss different things could distract you from your original objective.

Making use of the visual side of the research, taking photographs of an area provides a still snapshot at that given time. Annotating these still frames can allow you to spot things over a certain period of time and with everything frozen it is easier to notice something than it would ever be when observing. With areas constantly changing, these images can be compared over a period of time and with change being such a visual element, it would be hard to distinguish these changes say from a piece of text or a recording. Likewise with video recordings, you could observe in a visual respect with the one difference being that you could see more of how people interact with the space. Stopping, rewinding, slowing down and watching repeatedly can allow you to spend as much time looking at the observations you have captured. Watching things repeatedly lets the observations made be more accurate, with a high chance of seeing something new everytime you can ‘wring’ the footage as much as possible. Conducting a meticulous study with similar aspects, Barker, R.G. & Wright, H. (1955) claim “…the behaviour setting provided information in which allowed explanations for the behaviour observed. Individuals move through a wide range of behaviour settings each day, and it is not personality traits which control behaviour”.

Using crime rates along with visual evidence of an area could provide a comparison method. Areas with high crime rates could be scanned for stereotypical features of a ‘bad’ neighbourhood such as graffiti, broken windows, etc but the only danger with this is that you may unintentionally look for these common traits rendering the findings a little inaccurate. Researching into some of the crime prevention schemes that run in certain areas might prove useful with one such scheme being introduced in Kent. Muir, H (2009) describes the scheme as “A pioneering drive by one of Britain's biggest police forces to tackle antisocial behaviour and low-level offending is being linked to a massive reduction in crime and people's fear of crime”, bearing this in mind, would the opinions of a community change if crime was reduced?

Bringing together all the research gathered, it is important to consider some factors when analysing the results; influences, individuals, location, age, personality, upbringing, etc as these will all have a bearing factor on how an individual has reacted. Other influential factors include home, school and neighbourhood which have shaped massively how we respond to something but by conducting a large number of experiments it would allow stronger conclusions to be drawn from results and allow points to be backed up with researched evidence. Although up-to-date sources like newspapers such as the Guardian and articles on the topic report facts the results that you will have collated are relevant to the area in which you want to specialise in.


Bibliography

Bronfenbrenner, U 1979, The ecology of human development, MA: Harvard University Press, Cambridge

Gladwell, M 2000, The Tipping Point, Little, Brown, Great Britain

Innis, R.E 1985, Semiotics: an introductory anthology, advances in semiotics, Bloomington Indianna University Press

Muir, H 2009, Kent police attribute massive reduction in crime to neighbourhood teams, The Guardian, viewed 22 March 2010, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/21/kent-police-crime-neighbourhood-teams>

Taylor, R. B. 1996, ‘Neighbourhood responses to disorder and local attachments: the systemic model of attachment, social disorganization, and neighbourhood use value’, Sociological Forum, vol. 11, no.1, pp. 41-74.

Review (5b)

New techniques that I have learnt over the past year have proven invaluable to my skill set and will prove useful in future projects. Integrating these additional primary and secondary research methods would have helped me undergo the brief in a slightly different way and revisiting the project, I can review the progress I made but also understand how I could have applied these new methods.

Sustainability project: Remodel a house incorporating a living and working space for client, Emma Fraser.

Initially sitting down with the client and discussing the brief would have allowed both of us to raise any concerns. Communicating with each other initially and understanding Emma’s needs would have created a strong relationship that would have proven beneficial for the duration of the project and allowed me to clearly grasp the client’s requirements. Failing to discuss the brief with Emma, I interpreted things differently to how they were implied which had implications on my final solution; I learnt the hard way that asking lots of questions at this stage is crucial!

Researching for the project, I tended to stick to one or two sources affecting how I intended to design the house (Moskow, K. (2008) Sustainable facilities. United States of America:McGraw-Hill companies ltd and Hadid, Z (2006) Zaha Hadid. Germany: Cantz). Obtaining research from different sources would have provided me with large amounts of inspiration and reading relevant accounts of previous renovation projects would have proven useful in understanding common problems. In my opinion there can never be too much research and preparation is the key when trying to consider creative solutions to a brief.
Gathering up-to-date inspiration from magazines and websites such as www.inhabitat.com, www.architectmagazine.com and www.deezen.com would have provided a varied degree of stimulating design and would have aided me in my thought process. Brainstorming with these images and adding text would allow me to annotate and expand on initial thoughts, making use of ‘buzzwords’ to trigger ideas, allowing me to develop and start thinking more creatively. Brainstorming with others would have also been beneficial, allowing us to work collaboratively, exploit skill sets, feed off each other’s ideas and consult with one another over common issues.
A weakness of mine is latching onto ideas that I think will be ‘perfect’ in my design but in the end results in me trying to connect a space that doesn’t want to be connected. Trying to think realistically and consider whether this type of design would fit into the building is just as important as if the client wants it. A solution to this problem would have been to show Emma pictures of different spaces and asked what she liked and disliked in the image.

Using observations as a research method would have let me fully understand my client right from the beginning and would have saved me a lot of time in the designing process. Observing Emma carrying out her everyday work would have allowed me to understand what her needs were. Making use of drawings, photographs and text, I would have been able to note any instant thoughts and visit these at later stages, adding in anything I missed primarily. Annotating pictures and visually analysing the space she currently occupied would convey tastes, preferences and her personality that could be incorporated into the new design. Some design solutions that I did come up with were not what the client wanted and I think if I had paid more attention to the brief in the first place and increased the consultation that took place between us more time would have been saved in the long run. Creating mood boards at various stages and visually proposing design ideas to the client would allow her to interject her thoughts, adding what she liked and disliked. With the client not only feeling involved in the design there would be less chance that I would steer away from what Emma actually needed.

Another form of observing, shadowing the client, would have given me an insight into how she reacted with a space, an understanding of preferences she had, etc. Stepping away from being an Interior designer and creating a new job title, detective, digging deep and uncovering what it is that she really needed I could intelligently design specifically for her. Proposing a creative solution bearing in mind everything I knew about Emma was always my aim but with the use of more observations I feel the design could have been more successful as I would have understood her better. One disadvantage with shadowing is the fact that it can be quite obtrusive and can make people react abnormally which renders the data useless. Photographs, in this case, would probably be more helpful as the space could be captured but it would be important to take these photographs myself as the client may try and tidy up, not giving a true representation.

Understanding the client is critical and interviewing them would allow you to delve deeply. Asking a few questions when I visited the client, I always felt that I was asking questions that did not seem relevant; Do you eat breakfast? Do you like having friends over? Soon realizing though that these sort of questions allowed the client to open up to me, I wish I had created more ‘odd’ questions that I could then collate the results into data that would help me design a space responsive to the client. It would have been pointless though trying to ask Emma direct or closed questions, making it hard to take anything away from these. Relying on these questions to reveal something that you might have missed from other meetings with the client it is important to ask relevant questions; what room do you spend the most time in? Is there anything that you would not want? Also asking more serious questions like whether she intended on having a family would allow me to design a house not just for the present but also for the future. Family, friends and co-workers could also prove invaluable if interviewed as they may have been able to reveal things that the client wasn’t aware of herself, aiding the design. With reference to the Johari window, (Esposito, R Mcadoo, H & Scher, L 1978: 80) the model aims to help us understand how humans interact and would be useful to refer to when talking about Emma’s personality.

When presenting the final concept it is important that the client not only likes it but understands it. Collaborating with Emma and gaining feedback throughout the project would help create a design that ticks all the correct boxes but also one that the client wants. Compiling 12 weeks work in the final presentation requires great skill and should not only display milestones in the design and the problems overcome but the innovative solution. Applying this new skill set would allow me to uncover a whole new chapter as a designer and instead of just limiting my research to one method, utilising as many as possible will be helpful in gaining meaningful research that in turn would render the final outcome.


Bibliograhpy

Esposito, R Mcadoo, H & Scher, L 1978, Journal of humanistic psychology, Sage, New York, vol. 18, pp. 79

Hadid, Z (2006) Zaha Hadid. Germany: Cantz

Moskow, K. (2008) Sustainable facilities. United States of America: McGraw-Hill companies ltd

www.architectmagazine.com

www.deezen.com

www.inhabitat.com