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Researching your innovation case study

To prepare an effective innovation case study you need to conduct thorough research. In this tutorial, you will find advice and information about:

Work through the tutorials related to the innovation case study presented on this site and you should develop a sound understanding of what is expected in an innovation case study.

Outcomes

This material addresses aspects of the following syllabus outcome:

H5.2 The student selects and uses appropriate research methods and communication techniques.

Source: Board of Studies NSW, Stage 6 Design and Technology Syllabus, Preliminary and HSC Courses (1999)

What do you need to do to research, that is, get information on or about something?

Before you can research anything you need to understand what researching is and how you can go about it.

Research covers many things and is done in many different ways, depending upon what needs to be investigated. The first thing that many people think of, when the word research is mentioned, is conducting a survey. This is fine if you want to find out people's opinions but that isn't always the case.

Sometimes you just need to get information about a topic or an item. The most obvious form of research in this case would be library research or to use the Internet.

How can you make research more effective?

What is listed below is not a finite list, it is simply a list of where to start researching. You may need to use all of them or you may need to use some of them.

At the library

Apart from looking at the catalogues, which allow you to locate books and journals which might contain the required information that you need, you can go to the pamphlet files and magazines. These are more likely to contain recent information, which is more topical, whereas books may not necessarily be recent publications, and, as such, may contain older information which could give you either dated opinions or information.

This is not necessarily bad. You may want to know what has been done in the past and they may give you some historical insight. Remember that the history of what we are researching, may not span that many years, for example, mobile phones. In other cases we may find that something has been around for a lot longer than we thought, for example, computers.

Ensure you record the reference details for any information you gather. See the example below:
Author (date) Book title, Publisher, City, page numbers.

Garner, P. (1990) The contemporary decorative arts, Park Lane, London, pp. 89­92.

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Using the Internet

Be creative with your search terms. Innovation on its own may not provide anything useful, but innovative furniture or new inventions might prove more beneficial.

The Internet is an invaluable tool which can give you so much information, but you need to be careful when you quote or use this, as you don't really know the source that it has come from. It may be someone's assignment or it may only be an opinion and not necessarily fact.

There are many different search engines that you can use such as:

Different search engines will give different results. Make sure that you book mark or write down the web site so that you can go to it again if necessary. Also ensure that you add it to your bibliography.

For example:
Author (date) Article title, publication, date accessed, web address, page number.

Brady, T. V. (1998) "The IDENT system: Putting structure to the chaos of the border", National Institute of Justice Journal, 237, 27th October 1998, www.ncjrs.org.txtfiles/jr000237.txt, pp 2­4.

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Go to the shops

See what is on the market. What do the products look like? How similar or different are they? Is there a clear design leader? If so, see what information there is on the packaging to contact them. You could then search the Internet, write to them or even ring them to get further information. You never know what you might find out.

Go to the company

Use the phone book to find relevant companies. If there is a local firm, you will be able to contact the company directly to get information. If a product is truly innovative, they will be only too pleased to help with information.

Go to the newsagent

Look at magazines and buy some that are suitable (or find a friendly neighbour or relative who already buys these kinds of magazines). There seems to be a magazine on every topic these days. In the magazines will be various articles but also there are advertisements that could be useful to you. Contact these companies. There is more than likely to be a web site to go to for more information and you may even be able to contact the journalists or the editor for further contacts.

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