ANNEX 2 SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEW BRIEFING DOCUMENTS
Design at the Heart of House-building
Semi-structured interview question guide
Introduction
This research aims to highlight good practice at putting design at the centre of private sector house-building in Scotland. We are following up the questionnaire that firms responded to with an in-depth interview with firms selected on the basis of:
- The nature of their treatment of design (importance for firm, nature of design input);
- The different types of firms (location of HQ, volume of production, market focus);
- Geographic coverage (main location of operations).
The questionnaire asked you to consider how design is integrated into the housing development process. The aims of the interview are
- to get more detail on particular aspects of the process;
- to further our understanding of your firm's priorities regarding design;
- to discuss how design skills are made available to, and within, your firm; and
- to consider factors which you consider assist or constrain design quality.
These interviews will then be followed up by the development of a limited selection of case study examples across the interviewed firms, which will be highlighted in the course of the interview.
1. Can you elaborate on how you define design quality in relation to housing?
2. How does your organisation integrate design into the development process? For example, how and when are design staff involved in the overall process and what skills they need (and how these are acquired)?
- Prompts:
- expand on type of staff reported in email survey
- skills required
- training
3. What are your organisation's main priorities in terms of design?
- Prompts…
- customer feedback?
- do you analyse what type of design ethos sells to whom in terms of demographics from an economic viewpoint?
- how do you use standard house types?
- if you use standard house types, how do you respond to the specific site context in developing standard houses?
- do you see sustainability as a key priority in design? If so in what ways is this addressed?
- is the requirement to provide accessible housing a design driver?
- do you consider the urban design within the specific context as a key priority?
4. Can you expand on what you have noted as the main positive and/or negative influences on design quality?
- What would you see as key factors that could assist you in achieving greater design quality?
- How do you regard / make use of current policy/advisory documents eg Pan 67 / CABE / Modernising construction
5. Can you give some good practice examples from your firm of how design has been integrated in the process and as a result produced a better product in your opinion?
(or those you consider to be good examples in your region?)
Would you be happy to have these included in our report as good practice examples?
Who would we need to contact to gather further information if they were to be included?
6. Have you any further comments on how design can be placed at the heart of house-building in Scotland? And have you any questions for the interview team?
Design at the Heart of House-building: One off and standard designs
Semi-structured interview question guide
Introduction
There is a perception that one-off design might provide better quality housing, and this add-on research component to the wider Scottish-wide research into 'Design at the Heart of House-building' aims to discover whether this is a valid perception, and if so how the one-off design approach could be more integrated with mass production of housing.
In your responses to the general questionnaire you indicated you currently use ** standard designs types in Scotland - and this represents ** % of your output - and that these could be influenced by other 'one-off' designs. In this follow-up interview we would like to know more about why and how this takes place.
1. What sort of 'one-off' designs does your firm produce?
2. Do you consider these provide better quality housing, and if so in what way?
3. In what way have one-off designs influenced your standard designs?
4. Do you have particular developments where you feel this has been successful?
5. Would you want to increase the proportion of one-off designs in your production, or the influence these have on standard house types?
6. If so, what do you see as barriers or opportunities to this process widening the number of standard house types, or improving quality of housing developments?