Nichola's Blog: 2008

What problem did you identify?

The confusion over Christmas trees - Natural or Artificial?

What evidence did you find to support your decisions?

When talking to the general public of Leeds we found that people were unsure about which tree to buy to best suit their needs.

What methods did you use to gather your evidence and what forms did it take?

We gathered secondary research from the Internet about all the variations of Christmas trees and which type of tree is more popular (which also falls into qualitative data). From this we found quantitative data, such as surveys and statistics comparing the natural and artificial trees and their pros and cons. Here are some facts we found:

We also gathered primary research by asking people to fill out a questionnaire (like the one below). Out of 20 people, 12 preferred the natural and only 8 preferred the artificial. From this quantitative data it is obvious that many people choose that certain type for very similar reasons, as we asked them 'when purchasing a tree, what aspects do you consider?' and the majority of those who chose the natural said it was because of the smell, appearance, size, shape and authenticity. In terms of people who preferred the artificial tree, they said it was because there's no hassle, no 'mess', and all of them stored it away and saved it for next year.

With this research we originally wanted to find out which people preferred, weigh up the pros and cons for both types of tree and decide which one is the best to be able to promote it. This would have informed the public by showing facts and opinions about each, being bias towards the favourite. In terms of people, and what they agree on, even though more people preferred the tradition of the natural tree, we came to the conclusion that an artificial is better due to the price, easy mobility, lack of mess and the fact that it can be re-used year after year. However, in terms of what's better for the environment, we found more negative facts for the artificial (PVC is poisonous) and more positives for the natural. They can be re-planted or recycled and if cut down more are grown in their place.

Therefore, we decided to not prove which one is better ('natural - vs - man-made') but inform the public and recommend what we think best suits them individually ('Which tree are you?')

From this we thought about making it into a small information/guide book, but due to lack of time we didn't want to over-complicate our idea so decided to design our recommendations on postcards. To research this idea and look at different styles and themes we found a book:

'1000 GREETINGS creative correspondence designed for all occasions - Peter King and Company'

We thought about having a Christmas theme but keeping it minimal and simple so decided to choose the colours red, black and white. After discussing what will look more effective we decided to choose red for the background of the cards, white outline tree illustrations and black type.

(Inspiration taken from Peter King's book)

Here are some of our original ideas for the illustrations, designed by Jonny and Sam. These were then put on Illustrator and perfected.

I had the job of adding a paragraph of text to the design informing the shopper about each variation of tree, e.g. If they picked up the Are you 'Electric'? card it would say:

"A fibre-optic tree can tick all the boxes for this style. It's aesthetically pleasing with its bright range of colours and it's not time consuming with an easy to set up simple structure."

We used a typeface called junior&stinky (found on dafont.com) for the title 'Which tree are you?'

Here are my original versions using that type, but on the subheadings:

Finally (after producing our resolutions) I used primary evidence to show what the postcards would look like in the public domain and where they are most likely be found, e.g. in gift shops, on counters, and acting as an advertising campaign around stores and next to the actual trees for sale. These photographs can be found in a later blog post named 'which tree are you?'

Here are some of the places we looked at for displaying our postcards:

What methods did you find useful and why?

The questionnaire was definitely the most useful, as we based our 'Which tree are you?' styles on the results. The secondary research about the pros and cons facts about trees also helped us move on from trying to define whether natural or man-made is better and think about purely informing the public and helping them, instead of persuading them to all choose one style.

How did these inform your response to the problem?

As explained earlier, the results helped us come to the conclusion of solving the problem by recommending which tree people should buy depending on what is most important to them as an individual. We decided to use the themes and styles of trees; 'Traditional' (natural), 'Contemporary' (artificial), 'Electric' (artificial fibre-optic), 'Different' (upside down artificial tree), 'Cheap' (artificial/natural tree small in size or in sale), and 'Minimal' (artificial sculpture or wire structure). All of these incorporated what people looked for when buying a Christmas tree:

Price
Recycling
Mobility
Mess
Disposability
Size
Authenticity
Appearance
Shape
Other

What methods did you find problematic?

We didn't really encounter any major problems, but the primary research proved to be the most difficult as nobody in our group was particularly confident about approaching the public in the city centre and getting them to answer our questionnaires, so unfortunately our results were largely from people of all ages within our college premises. I also took photographs by myself of the final resolutions in shops, which I wasn't confident about doing either as I expected shop owners to not want their premises photographed.

How did you overcome this? How will you address these issues in future?

Obviously, we ended up asking people that were easier to approach within college to get our results, but in future we just need to be more confident, and come up with polite and useful tactics when speaking to people. As for the documented evidence, it proved to not really be a problem in the end - the shop workers didn't mind me using their premises at all.

What research didn't you carry out that would have proved useful?

I think more primary research would have been more effective. We could have asked more people to get a wider range of data and we could have presented our quantitative results in charts/graphs.

What five things would you do differently next time?

Think about the research and the various methods we could use, instead of settling with the results we found and jumping straight into the ideas stage.
Be more confident to get better results.
Perhaps have a stronger original problem to solve that had more evidence behind it proving its existence.
Think about presenting research in different ways (tally charts, graphs etc) to make conclusions clearer.
Find more secondary research (facts, statistics etc.) to prove the problem exists.

Five things that you feel you have learned about the design process over the past 2 weeks:

That projects aren't just driven by ideas, they can be solely research based.
Not to be afraid of research! It offers help and evidence as well as problems.
That there is more to research than simply photographs and Internet search engines.
The full understanding of Primary, Secondary, Qualitative and Quantitative research.
That group work can be successful!

Here are our final 6 resolutions: