Research Strategy

Last Tuesday we had to do another 5' presentation for the Research Class, this time about the Research Strategy we use. My minimalistic approach was this presentation:

* Research Strategy (pdf) *

The point was to be clear about my strategy and stay under 5' according to the informal brief we had. We didn't receive our feedback yet, but I thought it went well.. we'll see.

Now that I made up my mind about the concept of my final project, I will make use of this strategy for my research on the use of new media in the museums.

New Media and Nike - Final presentation

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I managed to do a kind-of literature review in a small scale since we had only 5' to present our work. All the stuff I found with my literature review is contained in my presentation. Please download:

The use of New Media by Nike for Advertising

* The narration is in the Notes section of each slide. *

In the presentation I followed the Pecha Kucha style as we were encouraged to do, by using only images, no bullets or text. This is a slide of the presentation:

Outcome
The outcome of this project is that I feel a little bit closer to my still undefined dream job; I used to like the new media alone, while now I like the commercial use of the new media ! That's a major step for me, since I have set a deadline to myself by the end of this academic year, to define exsactly  what is it, that I really like ?

Literature Review Project - New Media and Nike, approved

Approval
A couple of days ago I contacted Mr. Mark asking him if the subject I had chosen for my literature review (The use of new media by Nike and its reflect on Nike's profile and profits.) was acceptable. The answer was that it is a very good place to start from, while he also suggested to look at the counter arguments and include branding and brand identity literature in my review.

The sources
The sources I will use for my literature review are firstly the library of Ravensbourne College and then websites such as: Google Books, which contains published books in digital form, Scribd.com, which is a similar service, and of course the Google itself, since its arguably THE most powerful search engine as this post is written.

I will also try the library of City University of London, taking advantage of the fact that our course is verified by City University, giving to all the MA students of Ravensbourne the advantage of using their library. I already checked the Library of London, which doesn't contain any book refering to Nike as the world-brand and not as the Greek =) ancient godess.

Coming next

For Tuesday (when we were asked to "mind-map" the sources we will use) I will firstly try to list all the sources (books, articles, etc.) which will be contained in my literature review and then find the each-other relations. The counter arguments which I will try to find, following Mr. Mark's guidance, should also be shown in the mind-map.

Literature Review Project - Getting started

Assignment

On Tuesday at the Research class we were assigned to do a literature review on a subject of our own interest and prepare a 5' presentation of our project for the 20th of October. As a first step, we were asked for the next Tuesday (13/10/'09) to show a diagram which contains the resources we are planning to use and how they relate to eachother.

What is a literature review?

A literature review, according to Mr. Mark's lecture, is an account of what has been published on a topic by accredited scholars and researchers. Specificly, it lists a number of resources which contain information about the subject of the literature review, with a description and an evaluation for each one of them. The literature review usually precedes the research on the subject defined, and its value is significant since it:

1. ensures that a research on the chosen subject hasn't already been done
2. justifies the research (why it is worthy a research on this subject to be done?)
3. provides context for the research

Begining the project

The first step of a literature review, is to specify the subject of the research which would follow the review. I have been thinking about it since Tuesday and I thought of the following:

The use of new media by Nike and its reflect on Nike's profile and profits.

Since I am not really sure if this could be the subject of a research, it might change in the next days.

Why new media and Nike?

The reasons I chose this subject are the following:

1. Nike is a world-known sportswear brand, which from its begining had an elegant and meticulous profile reflected on its products, stores and advertising campaigns.
2. Nike is one of the first companies which realized the power of new media and took advantage of them since their very begining (websites, installations etc.). A representative example is the Human Race which will take place at the 24th of October '09.
3. As strange as it might sound, NikeTown is a source of inspiration for me.

To-do

The next step is, firstly to ensure this could be an acceptable subject of a research and if so (crossing fingers) I will search for resources on the subject and start analysing them according to the methods Mr. Mark showed and "e-mail"ed us.