Design Research Methodology : E-Portfolio
SUNG J XIN/ 0370139/ Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
RES 60603 Design Research Methodology
Final Report
Experience
Task 1
At the beginning of the module, we are required to search for a topic that interests us, with various sources that are related to it, whether it is directly related or mentioned somewhere else. A topic came to mind about minimal illustrations because I had been looking at some minimal designs prior to the start of the semester, so I decided to base my topic around it.
It was a bit difficult to think of the research questions and research objectives that aren’t too basic and easy to answer. I came up with some and received feedback from Miss Jinchi to improve the research questions and research objectives to make them more interesting.
I wrote down the problem statement using paraphrased sentences from existing sources and shortened it more to make it more easy to read and less messy. After I had completed all that was needed along with some reference links, I was done with Task 1.
Task 2
The next task was a bit challenging because I needed to look for some research papers that were written between 2020-2025 for relevance and accuracy for recent times. I was able to look for some papers that were somewhat related to my topic and decided on which one I wanted to keep for the moment, and then discard the rest and look for a better paper with more relevance to my topic. After I finally found my 3 research papers, I began writing the review for each of them.
Summarising each of these papers was more difficult than in task 1 because I needed to find some actually relevant lines to put in my document, after some minor changes to make it look a bit different from the original paper. I was afraid of the discussion section for each paper to be too long so I kept shortening them until they’re at a decent amount of words each, which are not too much and not too little.
I could only find a few strengths and weaknesses for each paper but I tried to write more about it to make it a bit more detailed. My conclusions were mostly similar to the author because I agreed with most of what they wrote. After all that was done, I moved on to Task 3.
Task 3
The documenting part of this task was manageable as I needed some bit of research to determine my research method, which was an online questionnaire or survey. I was able to write what was needed before I moved on to my survey section.
Coming up with questions related to my topic was a bit difficult because I needed to find questions that even the general audience can answer with the lack of familiarity with minimal illustrations, while also diving deep into the topic. Miss Jinchi also suggested I add in some image prompts as another section for my survey for respondents to evaluate how they see these illustrated images. I had to look for good examples for that part as well.
I was satisfied with the survey questions I came up with and had some sources to justify each of them for their credibility and reason to be part of the survey. After some feedback from Miss Jinchi, I was allowed to send my survey out.
Since at that time, the deadline for Task 3 was in 3 days, I managed to gather 10 responses to put in a simple data analysis because of a lack of responses at that moment for submission. I would update the data analysis with more responses in Task 4.
Task 4
Most of this task was taking previous tasks and placing them in here for the final report. The only difference is that I needed to update my data analysis with the many responses I had since the submission of Task 3. To make things easier, I linked the survey with a Google spreadsheet so my responses would look more organised and easy to compile. I decided to use the pie chart from there to use to update my data analysis.
Writing the data analysis for the close-ended questions was easy as I can just look at the percentages and come to a conclusion by looking at the answer that most of the respondents chose. Even with some mixed opinions, it was easy to split them up by looking at the percentages.
For the open-ended questions, some respondents gave short and simple answers, while some gave insightful and detailed answers, and I needed to find a common ground between these answers to come to a conclusion.
Observations
While waiting for survey responses, I noticed how most of the respondents can judge a minimal illustration based on its visual elements even without knowing much about the design principles at all. While they can’t fully explain it, some of them can still form an emotional connection with minimal illustrations.
I also noticed how, for the open-ended questions, some respondents were very detailed in their answer, which shows that they have been aware of minimal illustrations for a while which makes them able to write how they feel about them, as compared to a lot of the answers which were mostly short and vague.
Findings
To answer some of my research questions, specific design elements in minimal illustration contribute in making a design convey a message by incorporating a stark contrast in the colour in the design to pull in the user, along with some visual elements of different shapes and sizes to make the design more fun and interesting even with the lack of details, can make it memorable to look back on.
Context does not necessarily make a minimal illustration better than detailed ones because even some detailed illustrations can be better than minimal illustrations because they give out more nuanced details that can easily be seen, and the message can be conveyed from it, which is different from minimal illustrations.
The general user perception about minimal and detailed illustrations is that one is not better than the other, and that both can be effective in conveying a message based on how they are portrayed. Both can coexist in the same space and still be viewed as illustrative art. User preferences may change based on context, but it’s no doubt that minimal illustrations can be great on its own.
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