About

We do desk research to learn about a design topic. To research is to study something to learn about it. Desk research is study that you can do from your desk. Imagine if you decided to study primates. At the beginning it would be much easier to learn about primates from encyclopedias, textbooks, and even wildlife documentaries. There is an enormous amount of information on primates that can be found to satisfy your interest in the subject. The point is that you can learn a lot more and a lot faster from your desk or a library, than you could if you travelled to a forest in Africa in the hopes of learning about primates. Still, you can’t learn everything from your desk, and scientists do venture out into nature to discover things that nobody ever knew. For example, scientists will trek into forests to learn more about primates. That is called field research. Note that researching takes place throughout a design project. You will have new questions needing answers throughout a design project, and you will learn and discover new things right until the very end.

What you need

• A good library with ever-helpful librarians.
• A notepad and pen.
• Or, you can do desk research from a computer that is connected to the internet.
• One or two days to complete desk research on a design topic.

How it’s done

• Draw a Mind Map (III) to plan your desk research.
  • Draw a mind map of the design topic, even if you are designing individually, or in a group.
  • Write down what you do and don’t know, and what you understand or don’t understand about the design topic.
  • Write a list of questions that you have about your design topic.
  • Think about how you will find answers to your questions. Ask your teacher for help.
  • The library and the internet are two important places to find answers to your questions.
  • As you research, take notes, or make photocopies, or printouts and attach them to your notepad.
• Use your library
  • Ask your librarian how to find answers to your questions about the design topic.
  • Libraries are organised into fiction and non-fiction. If you are designing something, you will most likely use the non-fiction section.
  • Search a library computer catalogue or card catalogue for your design topic. Library books are classified (or sorted) into their subjects, such as history, geography, or mathematics. One classification system is called ‘Dewey.’ The Dewey Classification System sorts all books into ten groups with numbers. For example, general-knowledge books like dictionaries and encyclopaedias are numbers 000–099, science and mathematics books are numbers 500–599, and technology books are numbers 600–699, and so on.
  • Search a dictionary to look up words about the design topic.
  • Search an encyclopaedia for more information about the design topic.
  • A telephone directory or yellow pages will list local companies that have something to do with the design topic, if you want to ask them something. Speak to your teacher before calling a company.
• Internet search
  • Search using Internet search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yandex, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, and Ask.com or a search engine that is popular in your country.
  • Image search engines can find pictures or photographs about the design topic.
  • Wikipedia is the best internet encyclopedia in English, and it is free. It is an excellent place to learn about most design topics.

Tips

Here are some tips for searching the internet:

• Start with a list of questions about your design topic.
• Type a short search phrase into the search box.
• Use the correct words when you are searching for your design topic.
• Try other words or synonyms until you get useful search results.
• Google has topics and filters that appear at the top of the search results to narrow them down.
• Google Image has topics and filters too.
• You can use search operators to get better results. Learn how to use them. For example, inverted commas, “home irrigator” will find that exact phrase. You can search a website like this: “irrigation site:wikipedia.org” to search about irrigation in the Wikipedia website.