Week 2 Workshop – Proposal and Research Plan
In this week’s workshop the focus was on completing the proposal for our projects; I finalized ‘Healthy Lifestyle’ as my topic alongside the question ‘ How can we educate undergraduate students from the University of Lincoln on the benefits of exercise and encourage them to participate in it?’. As can be seen in the posted proposal, I have decided to focus my problem on undergraduate students between the ages of 18-21 at the University of Lincoln as opposed to my initial idea of it being aimed towards ‘young adults’. In making this decision, it decreases the scope I want to work with and therefore allows obtaining research to be easier as these are individuals I have readily available contact with in order to get feedback etc.
During the workshop I had my proposal peer-assessed where I was told the proposal was clear and understandable; it was suggested that I made the target audience 18-21 in order to narrow the scope down. My peer also suggested I could incorporate idea’s about healthy diet and the impact that has on lifestyle and exercise, alongside my original idea. I may incorporate this idea on a more subtle level within the final project as opposed to making it a main priority, my reason for this is that I want the primary focus to be on exercise and the physical impact that has, if I bring diet into it also then it could become too over-bearing and having so much information at once could loose interest of my target audience.
It was also in this workshop that we came up with our research plans regarding obtaining information about our target audiences. The first part of this research plan was stating information that we already knew/could assume about our audience – I have that my target group are undergraduate students aged 18-21 at the University Of Lincoln. I then wrote about their interests/backgrounds. From writing the information I knew about them , I could then pin-point what information I still needed to discover in order to impact the direction of my media product. It was then that i decided a questionnaire would be a suitable method for obtaining the information I wanted to know as much of it is qualitative data which can be easily obtained from simple questions and will allow me to identify any patterns/trends within the answers, as well as filling in the blanks of my own research about the target audience.
The final stage in the research plan is regarding secondary research, in summary I have decided that I am going to look into industries/approaches to the subject from places such as ‘LiveStrong’, ‘the British Heart Foundation’ and ‘The NHS Website’ alongside products that are already on the market that may influence me in terms of functionality as well as aesthetically. By carrying out this secondary research it is going to allow me to gain a broader understanding on the problem at hand and how other companies have tried to resolve it, and how I can incorporate their information/approaches into my own final product.
What I will do next:
The next stage is going to be carrying out my questionnaire using google forums – I can then send this out to the desired target audience and gain data to analyse. During this process I will also be starting my secondary information and gaining a variety of quantitative and qualitative information that is going to influence my final approach to the subject.