In the working world, designing is often a way to make a product more attractive to the consumers. It could be additional functions, attractiveness, sophistications... It can also be reduction in manufacturing costs, spaces, time. Sometimes it can be fun(Video on Piano Stairs). It can also be very meaningful for people whom we neglect.(QDrum - Design for poor people).
If you are working in a mobile phone company, most probably you will only be designing mobile phones and its accessories. This is the difference: In doing your coursework, you are not working for any company. As such, your ideas and problems are not restricted to one area. You can choose any problem, define any problem for any target group that you want to work on. It all depends on how you identify your problem. And, one important aspect of this is: you need to convince others(for example, your teacher) that your problem is meaningful to work on. And, to do that, you need to justify your problem/s with research/es that you gather.
The expectation of the coursework is for you to identify a critical need. In order to do that these are the things that you can/may/might do to give you a start:
(1) Theme Analysis (Understanding the theme)
(2) Identifying Design Opportunities:
(2.1) Mindmapping pp35-36(Listing out opporunities)
(2.2) Image boards and Mood Boards pp34(Inspiration may come after seeing many pictures...)
(2.3) Brainstorming pp35
(2.4) Talking to related people
(2.5) PIES Approach pp33
(3) Design Situation
(3.1) Explain the situation/s
*(3.2) Do research on the problem/s to justify that it is real (talking to people affected, do surveys, product analysis on existing solutions, find pictures pp40)
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