Research is one of the steps in the design process where you gather and analyse information in relation to your project. Without research, you can’t make informed design decisions or justify why your decision is a good one. By undertaking research from different angles, you can demonstrate the depth of understanding you have. Below are some recommendations for the research methods & techniques:

• Mind map is one of the most commonly used components in a student’s folio. Although there’s an idea that there is a ‘correct’ way of mind mapping, I think there are so many ways to do so, in terms of the way you link ideas depending on what you want to get out of it.

• Mood board or collage is a composition of images often used to represent the demographics of target audience. It is aimed to give you a better understanding of who you’re designing for.

• Analyse existing works by other designers where you may be sourcing inspirations from. It’s not about showing pretty pictures of those works, but it’s about describing & analysing (you don’t need to have all of them for each).

Generation of ideas is the stage where you let your creative juice flow out of your mind! Come up with as many ideas as possible so that you can filter them to determine key ideas to further develop in the development. There’s no right or wrong ideas, I’d recommend draw anything you think may have potentials. You can then annotate which one is more successful than others. Here are some techniques you can use to show a diversity of design approaches in your folio:

• Brain dumping is about setting time (for example, 10 minutes) to concentrate on generating ideas. This method forces you to simply ‘dump’ ideas on the paper, resulting in getting more ideas efficiently.

• SCAMPER is a framework to extend your ideas and stands for 'Substitute, Combine , Adapt , Modify , Put to Another Use, Eliminate , Reverse'

Development of concepts is the stage where you further explore the possibilities of selected concepts. Now you’re narrowing down key ideas and pushing how they can better respond to the brief. In development of concepts, you should apply a range of methods, materials, media, design elements, design principles and presentation formats to create 2D & 3D visual communications. You’ve got a small number of ideas that were stronger than the rest that you explored in the Generation of ideas. Now you’re testing out potentials of each idea, so that you can subsequently make a decision as to which one to proceed with.

• SWOT stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat. SWOT analysis is a critical thinking tool that is useful for analyzing the concepts you want to select for the Development of concepts

• POOCH is a reflective thinking tool that stands for Problem, Options, Outcomes and CHoice. When you use POOCH for the beginning of the Development of concepts, it allows you to reflect on what brief is, concepts you selected from Generation of ideas, their pros & cons and how you develop those concepts.

Refinement is where you modify the concept you selected in response to feedback and evaluation against the brief. This is when the production of the final visual communications is undertaken. It is very important that you document how you produce the final visual communications, including:

• any adjustments to the visual communications

• step-by-step production process

• any challenges, failures and solutions

• One of the ways you can refine ideas is to complete a PMI chart. PMI stands for Plus, Minus and Interesting.

Refining ideas allows you to polish up your design – it’s the opportunity to get the details right!