Research Plan

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Research Plan

Below is my research plan completed within the week 2 workshop; it contains information regarding target audience, primary research and secondary research.

Part 1 – Target Audience

In the context of the Problem you are trying to solve, what can you say about the target audience? Use the following attributes to inform your answer:

  • Behavioural
  • Environmental
  • Emotional
  • Background
  • Education

What do you know about the Target Audience?

  • My target audience are undergraduate students who do not exercise.
  • In most cases they will often go out to pubs, restaurants or carry out various social activities
  • Many students come from a working class backgrounds

What are your safe assumptions about the target audience?

  • I am unaware of sexual orientation/relationship status – i assume many students are in relationships
  • I am unaware of students specific hobbies and interests

What do you need to find out about the target audience? 

  • I need to find out my target audiences opinions and feeling towards exercise
  • I need to find out how educated my target audience are on the subject
  • I need to find out the levels of activity in my target audience

Who are the primary targets for audience research?

  • People to learn from: Undergraduate Students
  • Experts to speak too: Undergraduate students, people involved in organizing  activity based societies

Part 2 – Primary research plan 

  • Will a backup audience be required? (likely if the identified audience are inaccessible or likely to reply in a timely manner)
  • How are you going to analyse the data?
  • Which type of data are you collection for each of the questions above? (quantitative or qualitative)
  • A list of the questions you need to ask them (written appropriately)
  • If running a questionnaire or survey, how many sets of data do you require?
  • What method of data collection are you going to employ? (questionnaire, observation, survey, etc.)
  • Are they accessible?
  • How will you contact them? (email, in person, via social media, etc.)
  • Create a simple research plan for each of the identified targets above. Use the following criteria when writing your plan for each target:
  • Target audience – Undergraduate students
  • I will contact my target audience through the use of social media through the likes of Facebook where I have a large amount of accessible people that are undergraduate students. I can also post to university specific pages in order to get my research out to a larger amount of people. I am going to collect data using questionnaires, these will contain around 10 questions that will allow me to collect a variety of qualitative and quantitative data.
  • In order to carry out my questionnaires I will use ‘Google Forms’ as this will also allow my data to be analysed in a way that is easy for me to read and access.
  • As my audience seems very accessible i think it ensure a high level of response; however, in case it doesn’t work out then my back up plan will be to directly send questionnaires to people and really encourage them to answer and if possible I can ask people who have already answered to send it to other people that they know fit the demographic.
  • Questions that I will use in the questionnaire:
  1. What year of study are you in?
  2. Outside of university, do you exercise?
  3.  If you do not exercise, why is this?
  4. If yes, what do you do?
  5. Why do you personally exercise?
  6. Outside of university, how much exercise do you participate in per week?
  7.  Do you have an accurate way of monitoring your progress during/after exercise?
  8.  If you answered Yes, how do you monitor it?
  9. If you answered no, is it something you would be interested in?
  10. What would encourage you to do more exercise
  • My questions all (apart from question 8) will all help me obtain quantitative data; this is an intentional move as I want to look for any patterns and trends between responses – allowing me to highlight any potential correlation that could help me learn more about my audience.

Part 3 – Secondary Research Sources 

While you are waiting for responses from Primary Research, you should be conducting a range of Secondary Research activities.

This type of research is easier to conduct because information is usually quick to locate. You might even stumble across someone else’s Primary Research that you can learn from and reference. However, the insight you can get from Primary Research is far more impactful when generating a unique and innovative solution to a problem. That said, you can establish a vast portfolio of very useful information, inspiration and data from conducting Secondary Research. That is what this section of the Plan is all about:

What data and information do you need to understand about the problem? – Discover and list industry/expert sources to help understand/clarify your problem.

  • LiveStrong  – Industry that provides a lot of information regarding young people and exercise/lifestyle – often discusses the latest trends and statistics
  • British Heart Foundation – Will have a lot of information regarding specific statistics and different physical issues associated with lack of exercise
  • Exercise and Sports Science Australia – informative website about the science behind the implications of engaging and disengaging in exercise.

Are there are other services, products or experiences that are attempting to solve the same Problem?

Identify any competitors. They might be working in a different format to you (i.e. film, non-digital, physical products, exhibitions, spaces). They also might be working on a different aspect of the same problem. You will need this information to perform analysis next week. Performing this type of research easily on helps ensure originality.

  • MDPI – International journal of environmental research and public health – Non digital approach to fixing the subject, aimed mainly towards school curriculum
  • NHS Podcasts ‘Couch to 5K’ ‘Strength and Flex’ – motivational pocasts aimed at people of all ages
  • NHS Fitness Studio – Variety of short exercise videos on the NHS website that people can follow along too
  • WiiFit – Engages people in exercise and allows them to track calorie loss etc.
  • My FitnessPal – mainly focused on food’s impact on physical well-being; but does encourage people of all ages to have a healthier lifestyle.

What are the services, products or experiences that might inspire aspects of your response to the problem? (Aesthetically, functionality, creativity or emotionally)

  • NHS Website –  Clear and concise way of breaking down information
  • My FitnessPal – Functionality in how it approaches different aspects of healthy lifestyle – subcategories
  • Instagram – Simplistic layout design; very easy to navigate on phone
  • Twitter/Facebook – Aesthetics and colour scheme – gender neutral, not too over-powering but still has impact.

Are there any industries or fields that have an approach to their products/services that might work to help solve your Problem?

This is known Analogous Research and is all about repurposing a solution from a different field to the one you are working on. This type of research isn’t as essential as the rest, and you might not actually find something to fit this description, but if you can, it is a powerful technique and can lead to a quick and easy response to your problem.

  • My FitnessPal – using an app to input data and allow people to track it
  • NHS Fitness studio – using videos to encourage and educate people on the types of exercise they can do