Speaker 1: Today's video is going to be one especially for people studying design or a similar creative field. We're going to talk about doing a design thesis or research project. The way a design thesis works is going to differ depending on what university you go to but I do have some advice to share on choosing a topic and doing the research that's fairly general and I hope you'll find it useful or at least just interesting. For the sake of context, in my last year of university is when we did our research project and it was called a major project and it basically consumed our whole year. In the first half of the year we spent the first semester researching a topic and then in the second half of the year is when you actually make something from that research. If you're interested to know what I actually did for my major project then I do have a video with a show and tell about that so that'll be linked there and also down below you can go have a look. For now though let's get into some advice. So choosing the topic for your research project can be really scary because it feels like you're committing to the one thing that's going to consume your brain and your life for the whole rest of the year and that can be really difficult. Sometimes your university might give you a set of guidelines that you should use to choose your topic. Mine did, we had like some key words which I can't for the life of me remember what they were now but I do remember that it helped us a starting point to start thinking from. After all, constraints breed creativity and you cannot think outside of the box if you've not got a box to start with. I think my best advice for choosing a topic would be to look at your own life and keep an eye out for any problems that you or your friends and family experience that could be interesting to start researching and looking into why and how they occur. Because after all, good design solves problems so it could be the start of a great project if you identify a problem in your life or people close to you that you could look into. And picking something that has some sort of relation or impact on your own life is going to be a good thing because it's going to mean you're more passionate about it which will hopefully mean you'll work harder on it and maybe that will be the thing that pushes you through when you're hitting, you know, the walls that you will hit throughout your research project because it is a big thing and it's a big thing to work on and so that's going to be expected. So the more passionate you are about your topic, the more inclined you will be to push through that and keep going. Your topic will likely evolve over time so please don't worry about picking the exact perfect thing to start with, the sooner you pick something the better because then your research is going to be more focused and you can dig deep with it rather than exploring several different options and just sort of skimming the surface level of each. With my topic for example, when I started out I was just sort of researching how people use the internet because I'm a nerd and that is what I'm passionate about but as I went on and dug deeper I decided to focus my research more on how to be a good digital citizen using Twitter. That sounds really confusing but it will make more sense if you've seen my video about my project so again that will be linked down below. But the point is that even though researching is technically the next step, you will need to do some research to refine and choose your topic. So when you have an idea that you think might be good, start doing a bit of like Googling and article reading, talk to people about it, you basically just want to make sure there's enough depth there to really dig into and make a good project from so if you start looking into your topic and it just raises even more questions then that is definitely a good thing. Right, researching. Researching can be a bit of a beast, especially when you're used to doing assignments that are more about making things than they are about reading things. My university really encouraged us to do a bunch of different kinds of research because that helps you to look at your topic from a bunch of different angles. So do the usual article reading and like fact based research but then also do things like interviewing people and collecting imagery to do with your topic and looking for themes in it. Try and do some user testing, observing people interacting or encountering the problem that your topic is focused on. Even do some qualitative research on yourself and your own experiences, there's something called auto-ethnographic research that might come in handy here that I did a lot of during my project and I'll link down below to some more information about that that'll explain it much better than I can. Are there any particular sounds that relate to your project? Are there certain words that you keep finding always being used when people talk about it or you read about it? Pull them out and explore why they're used all the time. My point is there are many different ways to research and you should try as many of them as possible to try and look at your topic from as many angles as possible because it's all gonna come in handy. Researching will consume your life, that is to be expected. You'll find yourself following little tangents of interesting bits and pieces and I would definitely recommend going down them and just seeing where they lead. By the end of the research period you will feel like you know your topic inside and out and yet you will also feel like there is a lot more to learn and that is completely normal. It's really important to be open minded when you're doing your research and I would recommend not thinking too much about what you're actually going to design from all of this because that could influence your research and it could close your mind to certain things like you know subconsciously. So don't worry about that just yet because what you design is meant to come from your research so it will happen naturally with the more research that you do. So when it comes to designing, generally for people who don't know yet, the brief for major projects you know research projects are generally pretty open. It's not prescriptive about what exactly you should design and that is because it's your research that should inform what you're going to design. So when you're going through the research stage when you come to the end of it you will find that when you look at your research you get plenty of ideas of what things you could make that goes along with this topic or solves this problem and it is the point of the research to inform the design so it won't just be random. Obviously it will likely be something that relates to your skills because you are getting a degree in this thing after all but it is good to use it as a chance to try something new as well. So for mine I learned how to hand print a newspaper using a Terps transfer method, that's not something you'd ever thought I'd be doing but it was pretty fun, if slightly stressful. Try and use your research to inform every single part of your project as much as possible. So for mine for example the typeface that I used was Georgia because that is the typeface that Twitter used at the time and I also used Twitter blue as my main colour because that fitted as well. Just let yourself be really inspired by the research, try not to use your own personal preferences or outside influences affect what you make and what it looks like. The more research you do the easier this will be to just get your head into your topic and your project and it will all come from there. I know if you haven't embarked on this design research project yet that all might sound really vague but I promise it will make sense as you get into it more, at least I hope it will. So that's all I have to say for now but if you've been through a design research project as well and you've got any extra advice that you want to share it would be really great if you could leave it down below in the comments for anyone watching this video. And if you've got any questions, if you haven't embarked on the research project yet then please feel free to leave them down below and I will do my best to answer them. You can watch the video about my thesis project, link down there as well and also on a card up there. Please give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and hit the subscribe button if you are new to my channel and haven't already that way you can be told when I make new videos which will happen every Saturday and Tuesday. So I will see you in the next one and good luck for your research project, bye.