Research process - NathanNeelis/frontend-data GitHub Wiki

Research concept 1

In my first concept I wanted to create a graphical map where I provided information about the train stations and the parking areas. In the information for the parking areas I wanted to inform the reader also about the amount of electric charging spaces and disabled car spaces.

But I got really discouraged somehow, and I didn't think the Volkskrant would be interested in this information. Also, the feedback from the teachers was that a lot of people were doing research on electric charge spaces and/or disabled parking spots. Also, there are too many students creating a geographical map as visualization. This got me thinking... And that's where it started to go the wrong way.

I though about a new concept:

Research concept 2

As I was not happy about my first concept, I started looking at the data I had available. I already loaded in some API data from the NS and found there was a lot of information about P+R parking spots. This is where I build my second concept on.
My research questions where:

Main research question: Are at some cities the P+R parking area's more often paid services than in other cities?
Sub question 1: Are there more free P+R parking services outside of the Randstad?
Sub question 2: Are there more paid P+R parking services inside the Randstad than free P+R services?
Sub question 3: Are there more P+R parking area's near cities in the Randstad then there are P+R parking area's near cities outside the Randstad?
(Optional) Sub question 4: Which P+R is the best parking spot for visiting Amsterdam?
(Optional) Sub question 5: Are P+R parking area's often more paid services in cities where the income of citizens is higher?

And I wanted to create bar charts for the 9 Randstad cities and map out the differences in P+R and also for 9 other cities outside the Randstad. With a second visual a geographical map with the P+R data points if I needed more coding challenge.

But after getting feedback from Gijs, I noticed he was fairly positive about my first research and I think he didn't see my concept really in my second concept, although he didn't say it was bad. But it got me thinking again.. and I noticed that I was only using data from the NS API and not from the RDW data.. So once again not happy, I decided to switch back to concept 1 with the addition of maybe looking at more data at stations like the OV-fiets like Gijs suggested.

This has cost me way too much time pondering over which research I should be doing. I made my decision now, although it's already Friday and today are the feedback sessions of the first course.

Research concept 1.2

My final decision is that I am going to look at parking area's near train stations and see how they support electric charge and disabled parking spots. Also I am going to look at the distribution of the OV-Fiets at parking area's. Including the P+R parking area's from the NS API, that possibly do not have information about electric charging areas and disabled parking spots. I will visualize a geographical map with these datapoints in there.

Research concept 1.3

So after a talk with my teacher Laurens I decided to focus on the P+R parking areas. And I want to find out how many P+R parking facilities there are in the Randstad and outside of the Randstad. Maybe find out how many are paid and how many are free, and how much the paid P+R's actually cost. As a long stretch goal, it would be really awesome to visualize how long it takes to reach your destiny from a specific PR parking area. Below here are some of my sketches for my concept.

Research concept 1.4 after feedback Volkskrant

My presentation can be seen here
My feedback from Joris was that he was very satisfied with my concept, but out of a journalistic point of view, he would like to see my concept and research coming to a conclusion. So for example, city X is very hard to reach by using P+R parking facilities.

The feedback I got from Laurens was that it might be worth it to look for numbers for the total amount of parking spaces instead of just look at how many parking facilities.

So my concept has been adjusted to looking at total parking spaces and I am now looking for how well you can reach the city by using the P+R parking facilities by looking at how may parking spaces there are available for each city.