Audience & Context (Part 1)
INTRODUCTION
This module provides a fundamental introduction to audience related issues and the relationship that the designer has when designing for a specified audience. It will demonstrate the importance of understanding who you are designing for through lecture based presentations and studio practice. The importance of primary field research and the opportunities that it provides for a designer will be addressed in detail with regard to specific audiences and the contexts they are in.
WORK STAGES
Stage 1 : Site Analysis / Feasibility study – Building Analysis
We were required to choose one shopping mall that located in Malaysia as the building site for the retail we're going to design. In this project, I chose Sunway Pyramid which I'm familiar with as I often come to enjoy the shopping experience thus one of the most famous in this country. Moreover, it's convenient location that near where I'm living cause an easier approachment to respond the site.
Stage 2 : - Questionare Tabulation
The tip of Questionnaire witing are as follow:
-Decide what you would like to learn from your questionnaire.
-Start writing out questions that can help you reach your goals.
-Design your questionnaire based on the method in which it will be delivered.
-Ask questions that are very similar but worded differently.
-Order the questions so that if a person says yes or no to a certain question, they bypass any questions that don't apply to them.
-Test your questionnaire before you begin surveying people; friends, employees and family can be good testers.
Meanwhile, the questionnaire has to cover:
- Personal Profile
- Existing Design Criteria
- Provision of Facilities
- Provision of Accessibility towards your site
- Design Intent
Stage 3 : Selection of the Retail Outlet Brand and provisions of Significance of study of the proposal
Retail design serves many functions but as diverse as effective designs can be, they all share one common purpose; to provide the consumer easy access to goods in an environment that offers efficient service and transaction processing. Therefore, students have to understand the importance of design proposal for their retail project. Significance of study has to be inter-related to the info gathered during your site analysis, survey, and building analysis stage.
Commonly, Significance of proposal will consists of 3 main principles:
- community - economic sector - Design Industry
During site visitation, i notice a small booth at the Ground Floor under Benefit Cosmetics brand built no crowed. It literally sat at the middle alley surrounded by (most of them) fashion retail.
As shown at the picture above, Benefit definitely at the opposite zone with other cosmetics retail. Not to mention the booth itself didn't offer much space and luxury whilst most of the time customers intended to spend quiet time to test and examine products before purchasing. Compared to other cosmetics retail that offer more, I believe one of the factors that Benefit lacks of.
BRAND STUDIES
To further understand about the brand, I spare extra time to understand the company history, status, and identities. On the other hand, I find it quiet important to compare Benefit Cosmetics with other cosmetics retail from different brand that is doing a well-done job to study more on importance of identities. Therefore, I chose a retail which based in Europe that hasn't expand yet to Asia.
Hoping to understand more about identities and trademark, we elaborate the identities into simple homepage of web design.
Stage 4: Scope of Project – Preliminary Spaces
The items below need to be considered in your scope of project:
- Storefront design, windows and signage
- Interior layout including placement of the counters, dressing rooms, window display, fixtures and more.
- Specification and design of display fixtures and equipment
- Colors and finishes including paint, flooring, ceilings and wall and fixture materials
- Lighting plans for the retail area, dressing rooms and back room
- Traffic flow analysis tied to merchandise planning
- Video and audio plans including computer related interactive merchandising
- In store graphics and brand development
