Research Changes

After my alternative supervision meeting with Chris, we established that perhaps there were some different avenues that I should be pursuing with my research. The following is the conclusions:

I think you have a good idea and should concentrate on getting people into the kitchen and cooking and eating better food. You are right to discount the nutritional information angle.

In your research I should try and find out:

-What student cooking habits are (how often they cook, how long they spend cooking, types of meals – possibly classify?)
-Barriers to cooking (cost, time, effort, knowledge, ingredients, equipment, etc)
-Useful resources they would like (easy recipes, ingredient suggestions, quick recipes, etc)

How to get your product into use:
-How to reach students
-How to get their interest, how to tailor the site to them (interface, media, mobile) – could look at services in other sectors for examples (i.e. other services targeted at students for example clothes stores, gyms, motor services)

The research could be done using a variety of methods e.g. focus groups (most likely for user/interface testing) or questionnaires and also online and literature research into strategies of other companies. 

Content - What will be put on the site and where will it come from? If users are adding content, how can I make sure it is successful?



As a result of this, I am going to pursue the avenue of questionnaires for the initial consumer research and look at the following: Current student habits, barrier (if any) to cooking, any useful resources that the consumer feels would aid them. I will now formulate a sample questionnaire which will be marketed online, send this onto Helen for a secon opinion/refinement of questions and then roll it out.

Content Strategy 1st Draft

The fourth sheet that must go into the appendices is the 'Content Strategy' in tabled form.

Here is my attempt at the first draft:

Budget Framework

After viewing the template provided by atsf, I have modified it to suit my project. This involved taking out any elements/tasks that weren't relevant to me such as video production.

Here it is (unpopulated):

Gantt Chart 2nd Draft

Here is my updated Gantt chart. The progress that I have made is by including the technical aspects of the project in the fourth image, adding additional mini targets on certain headings and spanning the whole Gantt chart along 24 weeks instead of 12.

Gantt Chart 1st Draft

I have attempted to plan the first 12 weeks of the project for a few of the categories of research that I will be carrying out:

Research Plan

After speaking with my supervisor, we decided that my initial aims are not what I am now working towards.

I now aim to (by means of easy to cook recipes) get more students in the kitchen. This, at the moment, sounds more like a marketing concept than a final year website one so I will need to discover what it is that I actually aim to achieve and complete with regards to the new aim.

As a result of this, my research plan will now have to be updated.

Official Research Plan - 1st draft

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.