Design Studies: Creating The Questions

For our second last design studies assignment of the year (*tear*) we had the pretty cringy task of interviewing people.

Dealing with drunk strangers from the other side of the bar at work - no problem. Asking for assistance in a shop - no problem. Phoning up a call centre about something (albeit a tedious task) - is also no problem. Standing in the street like some sort of person you'd expect to be wearing a bib with "Greenpeace" or "Amnesty International" on it, no so easy. Watch as the people avoid you like you are some kind of Moses, parting the seas of people by your mere existence. Embarrassing.

So, myself and Kirsty from Jewellery (JMD) decided to tackle this assignment together, as we had both derived similar topics from The Tipping Point in first semester. I had covered a derivative of the Airwalk Case Study, where alternative advertising was discussed, and Kirsty had researched semiotics in advertising from The Stickiness Factor. As we had slightly different areas covered, we aimed to do two things: create a set of questions that suited both of our needs, as well as educate each other about the slightly different path from our own. Win, win really.

Below is the mind map we created in order to generate our questions. We were careful not to create closed questions - a question that can be answered by a simple "yes" or "no" - as less can be learnt from these. We tried to consider how to reveal the questions to the participant, so that there was a mix of content shown before an answer and vice versa where an answer to the question was given, then the content be shown.

click to enlarge

Our final questions are as follows:

General topic to pursue: "Does alternative advertising increase your knowledge of a product, and/or make it more memorable? Does this then lead to possible purchase of said product?"

Tell the participants the following:

Viral advertising is when a product is advertised through a “gimmick” that may or may not be related to the product itself. These are often released online, but can also be seen on TV. 

Questions for Assignment 4

1. Below are three adverts. How many, if any, are successful “viral” adverts?

2. After seeing the following popular advert(s), how were you left feeling?

3. Why do you think companies chose to use adverts that do not seem to connect with the product? 

4. Can you remember what music is used in any of the following adverts? 

5. Who is your mobile phone service provider?

6. Can you summarise what the advert(s) for Windows 7 are? Can you also tell me the tagline used throughout?

7. Listening to the short sound clip only, can you tell me what product this advert was for?

After creating our list of questions, we created our consent form for

participants to sign prior to interview. These allowed us to use their information during our write up.

Finally, we had a set of questions to use. As our questions required video footage, we decided to use Kirsty's iPad for this, to make it simple and easy for participants. 

And also cause I wanted to play with it.