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Preliminary investigation (Mickey A. Palmer)
Phases of documentation (Nigel Cross and Robin Roy)

 

 

Preliminary investigation

[1981] Mickey A. Palmer, The Architect's Guide to Facility Programming
“Background research helps to:
-  define data needs and programming tasks
-  identify sources of information."
“There are three principal activities involved in preliminary investigation:
-  exploratory observation
-  unstructured interviews
-  literature and records search.”
(Chapter 3, pp. 53- 54)

 

Phases of documentation

[1975] Nigel Cross and Robin Roy, Design Methods Manual
(1) Identify and list the questions to be answered by the information sought (be precise about what you don’t know).
(2) Identify the roughest level of answer that you need in order to continue your project with an acceptable degree of confidence.
(3) Make a checklist of likely sources of reliable answers to the question posed. Rank your sources according to their ease of access.
(4) Keep control over your information search by :
(a)  setting time limits and deadlines beyond which to stop searching (there is a powerful law of diminishing returns in information searching);
(b)  using expert opinions (review articles, experts, etc.) and expert literature searchers (librarians) to identify the most promising sources; 
(c)  stopping as soon as you have enough information to proceed;
(d)  keeping accurate references to relevant documents.
(from "Information Search", p. 37)

 

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