Week 2: Design Requirements Gathering

Welcome back to week 2 of the course.

Design Requirements

This week’s topic is design requirements and how to gather them. It is usually the first step in any design process after the initial realisation that something needs to be changed or made. It involved understanding the problem and what the user needs in order to design a solution that addresses the problem accurately and will actually solve the initial issue. It is a crucial step and should not be skipped.

Memos

In research, it is common to take memos. Memos are little snippets of the researchers thoughts. You might be thinking about the problem under the shower and come up with an interesting idea or realisation or maybe you are currently reviewing material related to the system you are trying to built. Either way, memos are a useful method to write down notes to retrieve them later.

Often, we include such memos in the analysis. We might have noticed patterns when analysing data, but don't have enough data to confirm it yet or we have realised that there is a connection between two data points. Writing such notes as memos can help us add depth to our research and understanding of our users.

Methods for Design Requirement Gathering

We have already presented a couple of methods for design requirement gathering in the design requirement overview video. The following videos will present more methods in more detail as you might want to use them in coursework 1 or in your final projects. In the first coursework, you will be asked to work as a team with personas and take memos.