Question: What do you do when your doing research?

Gemma Singer answered on 4 Jun 2021:

Hi 🙂

When I’m doing research for a project I use lots of different ways to find information.

Sometimes what I’m researching has been studied before, and so I will use the internet or the library to find published journal articles on the topic I’m interested in.

Other times what I need to know is very specific and I might need to design an experiment to find out what I need to know. This might involve prototyping a design and running some tests. For example, I might want to know how long a medical device is going to last before it breaks down and I will ‘life test’ it. This usually involves using it and cleaning it hundreds of times to make sure that it doesn’t break! This is very important when it comes to medical devices to make sure that the device is super safe and isn’t going to fail unexpectedly and put someone at risk of harm.