Speaking from experience: Primary Research

As the target audience for this brief are new students to the course, and thats what we were at the beginning of the year, our group is the target audience, so we can use each other for research. I made this simple questionnaire and posted it on our groups Facebook page to get some responses.

Questions

Before starting, did you
1) attend an open day?
2) attend the degree show?
3) look at the yearbooks?
4) use the Leeds College of Art website?
5) If so, did you find these resources useful?
Which one was the most useful?
6) Did you lack motivation with the Summer task?
7) Would you have liked to have seen more examples of first years work before you started?

Responses

My own response 1. Yes 2. Yes 3. Yes 4. No 5. Yes, especially Fred's presentation at the open day. 6. Yes, I didn't really know what standard was expected and was scared as I wanted to make a good impression 7. Yes, this would have been very useful

‎Charlie Crosby 1. yes 2. no 3. yes 4. no 5. the open day was useful but long 6. yes i also had a lot of other things that i was doing over summer though like working full time running a kitchen, training, leeds festival and a girlfriend 7. i dint think about it much but reckon that could be helpful to see the standard of work that is expected from 1st years instead of seeing how crisp and immaculate the 3rd years work is that have been on the course so much longer

‎Max Gregory 1) yes, 2) no, 3) yes, 4) no, 5) open days were really useful, sold the college a treat. 6) very much so, was doing it the first few days of college. 7) yes think it would have been good to see what was going on
Sarah Roberts 1) no 2) no 3) yes 4) yes 5) the best bit was the interviews with tutors on website 6) yes - left it the end 7) yes i would, it would help more as we compare ourselves to third years

Kirsty Alderson yes, no, yes, yes, yes - the yearbook because it told me things about the course, the open day because it meant i could tell whether the college was for me or not and meet the staff and also the website because it had loads of relevant information. Yes - i hadn't designed anything for a while when i started on the summer task so i got really stuck sometimes. I thought i saw enough work to understand the course :) i thought the open day was most useful.

Lisa Whitaker ‎1. Yes, 2. No, 3. Yes, 4. Yes 5. Struggled to find much GD work on the Leeds College of Art website. The open day was useful just seeing how driven Fred was! 6. Yes but really got into it in the end. 7. Yes would have been good to get a flavour of what was to come. x

Sophie Wilson 1. yes 2. no (scandal!) 3. yes- they were pretty scrumptious 4. yes 5. i found the yearbook was most useful- it gave me a real motivation and sense of what the course was about, and what i could expect- it also showed a lot of th...e great work that have been produced, and what i could aspire to! :) 6. hah, no! i was working at it like a mad thing...my first all-nighter was due to the summer project ;) 7. yes, definitely! i dont think we got a great insight into the 2nd years work...i still don't really know much about them or their work, probably due to my own fault, but it wouldve been nice to gauge a sense of who they are a little more! xx

Kirsty Cave erm i didnt do any i dont think lol apart from look at the prospectus.i liked looking at the work in the prospectus :) i was really stressing about the summer task and didnt do it till near the deadline because i couldnt think of an idea......when i did think of one i thought it wouldn't be good enough compared to other peoples...but it was all good in the end. i think maybe it would have been good to look through the 2nd yr (then first years) work because we would know what standard to had to level with but at the same time i didn't want to see it incase my work wasn't good enough...you should never compare your work to others! :)

Baljeet Kaur Samra ‎1. yes. 2. yes. 3. yes. 4. yes. Open day was the best made me realise how much better the course was than other places. the degree show was amazing! got a real flavour of the course. 6. yes. 7. yeah would have been good :D

Joe Warburton ‎1) no, 2) no, 3) yes, 4) yes. 5) Yeah definitely.. I liked looking at past students work in the yearbook cos it gave me insight into what outcomes they produce and to what standard, just showed how top notch the course was really. 6) Kinda, it was left pretty much to the last minute. 7) Yeah

Sarah Pritchard 1) yes 2) yes 3) yes 4) yes 5) I think to an extent they are all useful. The one I personally found most useful was the open day. Hearing all about the course from Fred who is so enthusiastic about it all really helped to get a good idea of wh...at the course was like and after I attended the first one (I went to about 3) I instantly knew this was where I wanted to go.
6) I did actually over the summer, but towards the end when the beginning of the course was fast approaching I soon got into it.
7) I think from the website/yearbook/open day you do see a whole lot of work produced from the course, but out of it all there was only like 1 or 2 pieces that were actually first years, so yeah I do think maybe include a few more examples somewhere in there, or maybe send out links to the blogs or something to have a look through before starting.

Matt Tucker 1.no 2.no 3.yes 4.no 5.yearbook 6.yes 7.yes

Chris Van Niekerk 1. yes, 2. no, 3. yes, 4. yes, 5. the year book and the website was alright, 6. yes cause it was summer, 7. maybe.

Simon Cherry 1. no  2.no  3.no 4.yes 5.Yes. They gave me an idea of how the course is structured 6.Yes. 7. Yes

Kirsty Fruin yes, no, yes, no, no, no, yes

Dom Rugman no, no, yeah, no, no, yes, yes

Luis Bachini 1.No 2.no 3.yes 4.yes 5.yes 6.yes 7.yes

James Michael Mooney no, no, no, no, no, yes, yes

Tally of results
Q1. Yes [10] No [8]

Q2. Yes [3] No [15]

Q3. Yes [15] No [3]

Q4. Yes [10] No [8]

Q5. Yes [15] No [3]

Q5b. Yearbook [5] Open day [6] Website [2] Prospectus [1]

Q6. Yes [16] No [2]

Q7. Yes [16] Not Bothered [2]

What these results mean... Most people lacked motivation with the summer task, and would have liked to have seen more examples of first year work before they started. I feel that if they had seen this work, they would have had more motivation to complete the task. The resources that people found the most useful were the yearbook and the open days, so these are things that I can look at when thinking about what my website would need to be useful. I believe my results back up my answer to the problem that we do not see much work other than third years final pieces before we start.