Job Roles - Researcher

In pre-production of planning a product the job role of the researcher is to gather information about the market, target audience and infomation on what they purchase along with their likes and dislikes and what will draw them in to want to buy a product. They will have the knowledge of existing products and competitiors. They know how and why the product works. They must be able to woek inderpendantly but then also contribute to the team. The reasearch they do will influence the content and design of the product. If the product that is being created needs to have information gathered for it, such as a rode safety game, the researcher would have to find relevent information that they could use to make said product educational and informative.

They will mainly do secondary research such as looking on specific websites on the internet in order to gather informations, they may also look at books, magazines, TV documentary, film adver or any exsisting product. The secondary research must be reliable, this can be through looking at something that has been written by a professional. If it is a webiste we know that it is reliable if it ends in .gov, .edu. The implications of not using reliable research is that if not, the research done will be invalid.

Researches roles in different scenarios.

Educational game for school children on healty eating
The researcher would need to find information of different food group and the impacts of these in persons diet. The research would to include the daily sugar allowance for a child due to the target audience of the game and how this would differ to that of an adults allowance. This could be found on the NHS website or change for life. They could also look at books such as those written by a chef like Jamie Oliver.  
They would need to work with the graphic designer in order to create appropriate characters for the game, they would need to have a healthy body image and not give a bad example for children. They would also work together in the different levels such as going to a supermarket with a parent and buying food, having to make a balanced meal and deciding what is and isnt healthy. 

Social media app for 16+ 
The researcher may do some market research by looking at exisiting social media apps and competitors. They can look at competitors and get audience feedback to learn their likes and dislikes. They can also look at the demographics of different apps and see what their audience use most and find likes as to why this is the case. They can also look at gaps in the market and view housestyle, branding and layouts. 
A researcher would need to work with the coder to work out the navigation of the game. They would research the navigation of other games and then the coder would create the game based on the research. 

Promotional video for the launch of new swimwear aimed for paralympians
The market is very niche so a researcher will research different sports brands that create swimwear like nike. They may also contact paralympians to ask what they would want in a product so then they know how to use it. Research on representations of disabilities as well as looking at case studies and finding knowledge of the actual swimwear.
Working with the camera person or storyboarder to plan effective locations, shot types and angles to film the video, basedon what the researcher has seen as a part of existing promotional videos that they have looked at and researched. 

We need a researcher as they effect the content and design of a product. The infomation they research must be accurate and reliable.