Research

The media industry can be very profitable especially for highly skilled web designers who may charge anywhere from between £35-70 per hour for their services, as a student the most I would likely make would be about £5-10 an hour.

However ethical issues could arise from students working for such low charges an hour as companies could target students to design their products and this could damage the professionals businesses by taking business away from them and having to lower their rates per hour to compete with the students.

However although the work seems glamorous  as such high pay rates you could lose all your reputation if you fail to meet a deadline, especially when taking on a job from a large company such as Shady records who could lose millions if you fail to deliver your product on time.

Although you should always negotiate on pricing to get the best deal for you as well as helping to protect the high pay of the industry, if you struggle with a job bring someone else in the business in to help you complete the job before the deadline.

2nd year of college

i have begun the 2nd year of college on interactive media level 2, the first assignment is a drag and drop game, let the fun begin

privacy laws

Privacy

In recent years there have been many concerns about how much private information people post on to websites like facebook.com and internet delivery companies like play.com

Facebook.com has been heavily criticised over the last few years for its privacy settings or as some see it as lack of or interest to even protect their users from others online.

One way in which facebook.com has been criticized is the way that all default profiles are set to allow anyone to view content on them even if they weren’t friends with that person, there was also criticism over the way that it seemed facebook.com had made it difficult for users to change their privacy settings.

Facebook.com was also slated for putting in its term &conditions that any information you post onto facebook.com they own, this wasn’t highlighted until a family in the north of England found their family photo being used to advertise the BNP and when going to law enforcements facebook.com solicitors just told the families solicitor ‘did you not read the terms and conditions?’

In the United Kingdom the Data protection act of 1988 was designed to protect users at home and in the work place where it enforces employers to inform employees if emails and other forms of communication are being monitored, it’s the same for everyone any company that has your information has to inform you if they want to do anything with it e.g. sell to advertisers so they can make money off you, although companies are crafty about getting away with it.

Other ways companies have to inform you is if you telephone them up and they try monitoring phone calls for training purposes you must be informed.

There are also privacy laws to protect criminals from vigilantes when they are released although some people are against these laws because they feel it will put their children in danger if a paedophile is allowed to live in their town unknown of his past crimes and with a new identity what is there to stop him or her reoffending.

Although some people support the law saying people should be allowed a second chance and everyone has the right to privacy.

Other privacy laws when it comes to information point out that for any information gathered there must be an outlined reason for its use e.g. asking for a telephone number when no contact through telephone is going to be made.

Data must be deleted when it is no longer needed.

There is also the law that some data is too sensitive to be asked unless under extreme circumstances e.g. a rape victim being interviewed by police about his or hers ordeal.

National Readership Survey

The National Readership Survey (NRS) are an organisation founded in the UK who monitors newspapers and consumer magazines to see which people read which, they use surveys which cover who 250 magazines and newspapers as well as using calculated estimates to work out which people read which newspapers.

To perform this the NRS survey roughly 36,000 people a year age 15 and above, they go to the person taking part in the surveys house and interview them for, on average, 25 minutes.

This is their first question as sourced from their free to download questionnaire off their website:

I usually read or look at this topic when reading magazines or newspapers:

1 YES

2 NO

· SPORT

· CARS/MOTORING

· FOOD AND DRINK

· HOME IDEAS, DIY

· GARDENING

· FASHION/CLOTHES

· FILM AND VIDEO

· CLASSICAL MUSIC

· ROCK/POP/DANCE MUSIC  

They also ask questions about people future plans such as:

About you and your household’s future plans. Which of these activities do

you or any household member expect to happen over the next 6 months?

1 GET MARRIED

2 HAVE A BABY/ANOTHER BABY

3 RETIRE PERMANENTLY FROM FULL TIME WORK

4 MOVE PERMANENTLY FROM THIS ADDRESS

5 CHANGE JOB

6 OBTAIN A BRAND NEW CAR

7 SPEND £500 OR MORE ON BUILDING, DECORATING OR

HOME IMPROVEMENTS

8 NONE OF THESE

To help them group people into classes they developed their own class system called the NRS social grade:

Their grading system was originally designed to help them understand which groups of people read which types of newspaper but have since been used by many other organisations including government officials and have become the foundation class rating system for market research as well as Their definition is now maintained by the Market Research Society.

Quantitative And Qualitative Research

Quantitative And Qualitative Research

Researching consumers is very important to companies as it allows companies to learn what consumers think about sorts of things the companies deems important enough to be researched.

For example a media company might be interested in what media services consumers use, to do this they may send out researchers on to the street to ask people walking by or if they are targeting a specific audience such as teenagers they may send researchers to places where they will find teenagers such as skate parks youth clubs and or schools. They will normally gather this research in the form of a tally and then present the results in a table, for example;

What Media Service do You use most?
Facebook	21
Bebo	8
YouTube	7
Teen comedies (e.g. Inbetweeners)	7
magazines	0

This is called quantitative research as it deals with numbers and statistics. There are two main types of research quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative research is research that can be counted and is in the form of numbers and or statistics.

Qualitative data is about opinions and can be in many forms, for example a qualitative research may sit with a focus group and ask them for all their different opinions from the design of the product, how they feel about the way the product functions, if they would purchase the product and most importantly to the research anything they disliked about the project as well as other questions, the researcher will write down their feedback and later write it up into a report to hand to his or hers superior, who will then decide of what is of value and have the product changed to fit the focus groups research better.

Quantitative research shows companies the figures straight and nothing else, this type of research is useful companies as they can ask any question such as ‘Do you prefer diet or normal coke?’ survey 100 people or more or less and work out the percentage so for example 69 people may say normal and 7 may say neither or no opinion and 24 will say diet, so 69% prefer normal to 7% who don’t mind or don’t like coke. This research shows a company like Coca Cola that their normal coke is more preferred to their diet and that they should advertise more heavily on normal coke in their adverts instead of diet coke.

Other questions companies may ask is which products you prefer so for example Coca Cola researchers would draw up a tally with the leading drinks brands or other types of drinks that coca cola offers, e.g. Coca Cola, Fanta, Iron bru and Pepsi. Ask people for their opinion and they would find which of their rivals e.g. Pepsi is doing better than them and or if other products are more popular with consumers than Coca Cola.

The problem with Quantitative is that it offers no real feedback to companies it only shows what consumers preferred compared to other products for example someone asked if they prefer Iron bru or Coca Cola may say Iron bru but actually never really buy either drinks because they prefer other drinks products like Pepsi.

Qualitative research can give great feedback to companies as well as other consumers for example sites like amazon.com and play.com allow people who have purchased items to review the product and rate it out of 5 stars, amazon.com also allows users to rate peoples reviews asking them ‘Was this review helpful?’ and answering with yes or no.

The way this research is useful is that it can offer great constructive criticism to companies for example the star rating gives a quick overview of whether the product is liked or hated and the actual review shows the companies which parts of the product they like and or what they would have liked to have seen more of. Reviews can also work as good advertising for companies as it allows consumers to get an honest opinion of a product.

Focus groups are one of qualitative researcher’s favourite research methods as it allows them to sit down with a group of people who are the products target audience. The researcher will normally give the group some time to review the product on their own before sitting down with them and asking their opinions on the product getting some good feedback. The only problem with focus groups is that the researcher may accidentally or intentionally lead the group to answers for example the researcher may ask ‘do you like the colour scheme?’ of the product to which the group would reply no and then the researcher may ask ‘would you prefer it if the colour scheme was red and black?’

To really benefit from doing consumer research companies have to perform both quantitative as well as qualitative to understand consumers and receive the information that they want because both types of research offer good valuable information to companies as well as letting them see how people see their company whether it’s in a positive or negative way.

CV

Zachary David Hill-Walsh

2 Chestnut Place, Roman Road

Weymouth, Dorset

DT3 5HP

 Mobile: 07854326017

 Home: 01305 455812 

 Email: Zacsback@Hotmail.co.uk

Personal Statement:

As a keen designer I focused mostly on design aspects within my projects at college as well as partnering my design skills with coding in flash to create good professional standard projects from the beginning of the course.

During my school career I spent I.T lessons studying different types of design software such as serif Drawplus. I am keen to gain a job on a design team as a junior to an experienced designer who has valuable knowledge of design as well as experience from the media industry.

Education:

BTEC level 3 Interactive Media covering the following units (2010-2011):

1: Pre-production Techniques
2: Communication Skills for Creative Media
3: Research Techniques

12: Understanding the Interactive Media Industry

54: Digital Graphics

56: Digital Communication

59: Web Authoring

62: Video Production for Interactive Media

All Saints CoE Secondary School (2005-2010):

C English

C Maths

C History

C R.E

C Geography

B Science

C Science (Double Award)

Attended St. Johns Primary School (1998_2005).

Work Experience:

 12^th – 26^th July 2009 worked at Abbotsbury Swannery.

August 2009 began working at Sea Chef Restaurant and takeaway.

My work experiences have all involved working with a team of mixed ages and races, e.g. at the swannery I was the youngest person their by about 6 years where as at the Sea Chef the majority of the team are within a close age range to my own.

Working well with the team has been essential to me to provide a good high standard expected of customers of my employments. As well as socialising well within the team to make work more enjoyable.

Main duties as a kitchen manager is to ensure everything is clean, tidy and stock is all filled ready for service, as well as making sure everything is switched off and cleaned appropriately within the kitchen at night.

Interests

Music

One of my favourite things is music which has come across a lot in previous projects I have worked on e.g. I created a music application to allow users remix their songs on GLbasic as well as inventing a concert event with unique logos created in illustrator for the event back in my first year of college.

One of my favourite things is attending festivals like ‘bestival’ with my friends when I can afford it and organise enough people to attend with me.

Sport

My favourite sport when I was growing up was to play football supporting Manchester united since I can remember, my favourite part of football is giving the other team a bit banter when we win, my least favourite is receiving banter from the lads when we lose. but as I got older I found myself drawn more towards tennis down at my local sports centre  where I met and played with a lot of new people and have since focused tennis more into my personal life because I enjoy the sport a lot.

Living Life

Probably my favourite part of life is going out to parties and out on nights with my friends for a good night every now and then as my dad always used to say ‘you only live once, so get out there and live’.

Gaming

Since about age five I have been interested in video games, ever since the original game boy design, graphical content and storyline have always been important to me in this field today I focus mainly on online gaming such as Xbox live and the features they allow you to use to compare games and communicate with friends via the technology.

My favourite types of games for online have been FPS games while strategy games like the age of empires series.

Other games like the Sim series have always been a big hit with me also.

Skills

Computing:

Excels in Photoshop as well as being well skilled in flash, illustrator premiere pro and sound booth, as well as being skilled in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and publisher.

Language:

Good extensive vocabulary of English language and literature.

Driving:

Have provisional licence, currently learning to drive. 

Interactive Media Jobs

Interactive media Jobs

There are many different fields and companies to work for in the media industry offering different roles experience and most importantly different amounts of pay. Below is a list of jobs i looked at whist surfing the web. 

Programmer for tamba internet:(£35000-£40000) excellent programming skills in AS3, PHP, After Effects and Flash Media Server. Html5 considered a bonus.

Software Developer for BBC worldwide: (£30000-£45000) providing technical solutions, designs and implementations for new and ongoing software development projects. Rapid prototyping tools and techniques

Experience of working within an Agile software development environment.

Experience in carrying out quality reviews of other developers’ code.                                     

Knowledge of configuring and deploying applications to web application containers.          

Experience of new web technologies such as AJAX.                                                                

Flexibility in thinking, with the ability to embrace changes in the business.                                

 Proven organisational and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple tasks and changing priorities to meet deadline. Excellent interpersonal and relationship building skills, with an ability to influence and drive other team members where required.                        

Strong problem solving, conceptual and analytical skills. Passion for quality assurance in a technology environment.

Digital Solution Architect for executive recruitment services (£43000-£70000)

detailed understanding of web analytics, Web 2.0 technologies, will have development experience with .NET, J2EE.Java, SQL, XML, HTML/DHTML, have experience with enterprise software (e.g. WebSphere, WebLogic, Oracle, MS Solutions) and or open source technologies, and have data and object modelling, design patterns, relational database and web technology experience.