Research Plan
Competitor Research
In order to substantiate my main concept, I will perform in-depth analyses of existing services aimed at providing recipe ideas for students. I am initially trying to discover what services are available; whether they meet the same criteria I am proposing and whether they do this well. This analysis will take two forms. Firstly, I will perform textual analyses of the websites and seek to find out what technical aspects of the websites both help and hinder the success of the service. As a result of this type of examination, I will be able to draw conclusions about what makes a (technically) successful student recipes website and what does not. Alongside this, I will be in a position to decide whether to include/adapt any of the particularly well-considered technical aspects into my own project. Secondly, I will aim to organise a series of focus groups intended on discovering what potential users of the website feel towards the existing options available. This will prove invaluable to the design of the website both visually and architecturally because what my potential like/dislike with regards to the competition will enable me to formulate a final product that meets their needs successfully.
Consumer Research
As previously mentioned, there will be focus groups organised to gain insights into the target market of the proposed website. Alongside the technical and visual aspects of competitors, I will also look to find out certain habits that the student population have. This is with regards to their shopping and dietary habits as well as their awareness of current available services. As the website will provide recipes with different amounts/types of ingredients, it will be interesting to find out what students currently endeavour to purchase from the supermarket and what levels of spending there are.
Academic Research
The academic research undertaken will provide a necessary framework for the display of information on the website, as well as giving research studies into the themes I will be covering in my focus groups. This will provide me with substantially richer data than if the focus group were to be used alone. The academic research will be carried out into themes such as: existing student dietary trends (what are students eating?), student awareness of health and dietary guidelines in general and the differences (if there are any) in students and non-student eating habits.
Technical Research
This theme will be running throughout the project, as it is potentially the most important piece of research. The main reason for this is my lack of experience in the field of database driven websites. Although I have completed tasks, which do integrate such technical aspects, I have yet to do so with the language PHP. The reason for choosing to code the website in this language is simply down to industry standards and what is most recognised in the field. The research therefore for this aspect will be mainly learning the specific syntax that PHP entails and applying this to the successful completion of the project. If I am presented with potential barriers within the coding sense, I will seek out relevant tutorials or books which will aid my understanding of the problem and provide a way of managing and completing the task.
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