HDG500-501 Group meeting: 23/08/09 Wk2

HDG500-501 Group meeting: 23/08/09 Wk2

Location: RMIT Library

Attendees: Daniella, Jen, John, Kelly, Rachel

Preliminary research review:
(We had identified a list of keywords for each member to research at the first group based class on the previous Thursday, this preliminary research was aimed at informing the direction and focus of our more detailed research for the Lit Rev.)

Daniella: Customer/public interaction information found

Jen: Melbourne guides relevant to art and other cultural areas found and shown to group, way-finding literature

John: Journal articles relating to interaction with technology, city navigation and pedestrian navigation.

Kelly: Details of galleries and locations, identifying search methods and search durations to locate relevant information

Rachel: Information display and interaction research
Discussion:

We discussed narrowing our research to the most relevant areas.
We wanted to be sure our research could be linked into our design goal and into a cohesive argument.

We discussed our project statement and decided to define it at this stage to inform our research and as we all felt comfortable with how far our discussions and research had progressed.

Project Statement:
We have identified the need for a simple and efficient system for our target market (considering age, gender and culture)to locate and navigate a range of art sites within a defined area of Melbourne, considering their interests and possible time constraints.

We decided on 4 focused areas of research that were relevant to our project that we felt could be linked to provide fertile grounds for a literature review on our subject. We also identified several variables that would be less likely to be informed by a literary review and more likely informed by secondary research.
 
These 4 areas are:
Information gathering, processing and outputting (interface)
physical manifestation of the system (hub) > <
user navigation maps (outputs)
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user experience and feed back (usability of navigation info)


We realised that these areas overlap considerably so research will not be clearly divided between the groups, but rather we decided to allocate research topics by analysing the overlap between the topics to ensure we played to our strengths and created a cohesive document. We also decided on one of the team members being the collator of all documentation.

 
We listed definite research topics to ensure we were not trying to investigate too many disparate areas. The results of this discussion are shown below and research areas are listed by name.

 
To keep in mind the design goals of the project and to prepare for the design class Monday night, we developed a list of design limitations to align with our project statement and research topics

These covered the ‘who, what, where and when’ details that are required in a design sense to steer the project through the research phase and the beginnings of the design phase.

We ensured we retained several variables to be informed by secondary research, as we are wary of over-prescribing the design outcome at this early phase.
The details of this discussion are detailed below.


We had the following action points from our meeting to be completed by class Thursday:
• Gather literature relating to each topic that has been assigned (including a minimum of 2 Peer reviewed articles).
• Write a summary and analysis of each article gathered.
o Summary:
List main arguments in point form
Re-order arguments in order of importance
Re-write in brief essay form in own words
o Analysis:
Analysis of arguments
Is evidence strong or weak?
Do we agree with arguments?
If not, where do our considerations differ and why, what evidence do we have to the contrary.
• Compare papers in each area if possible:
o Compare summary points
o Are the arguments the same
o Which is stronger?
o Which are emphasised?
o List agreements, and disagreements
o Which is more current or relevant?