How long does it take to think of a design

Question: How long does it take to think of a design
- Keywords:
  design
Asked by anon-286826 on 20 Mar 2021.
- Karen Burstow answered on 20 Mar 2021:
  
  I think this depends on how complex your design is. But there’s definitely lots of things you need to consider when designing an experiment, like what do you want to achieve, what steps to follow, researching similar experiments or asking for advice from colleagues/tutors, safety precautions, which chemicals or equipment you need and if you need to get any training on them. It’s important to know what you’re doing in the lab before you start working, so you can work safely and be more likely to have a successful experiment!
- Claire Price answered on 22 Mar 2021:
  
  It depends. Sometimes it is not thinking about the design is the longest part, it can be getting it to work just right. You change each part of the experiment in turn to try and get the best result. And this can take a very loooooooooooooong time
- Callum Thomas answered on 22 Mar 2021: last edited 22 Mar 2021 1:13 pm
  
  Hi Ayden, thanks for your question. It can take a while to think of a good design for an experiment. First you have to think about what you want to find and what result you expect, we call this a “hypothesis”. Usually you will have to read lots of papers that other scientists have written about the experiments they have done before to give you ideas on what you could try or include. It is also important to think of things that could impact or confuse your results and try and take steps to avoid these as much as possible, and it’s often a good idea to have a plan B ready if certain steps don’t work out. You also need to consider what kind of information or data the experiment will give you at the end and think in advance how you plan to analyse and interpret it. Finally you also have to think about the money and resources you have as well as how much time you have. You can come up with the best design ever but if it costs millions of dollars or will take you twenty years to finish it is probably not going to be possible! So in the end it can take months or even years to design a good experiment but it is worth it to make sure you are really confident that you trust the results you get.
- Tim Burrow answered on 23 Mar 2021:
  
  That is quite challenging, as it can be an instant idea where I think of a couple samples and think they would make a good experiment for reasons a, b, and c! It is after that point things become tricky and planning the experiment including the transport of my samples to running the experiment takes several months!
- Lizzie Pendlington answered on 23 Mar 2021:
  
  You should always give yourself enough time to design an experiment so you don’t rush into it and make lots of mistakes! But some experiments are more simpler and take less time to design. For the experiments I have done at university, it has probably taken a minimum of 2 weeks to come up with an idea and a design but it can take a lot longer than this.
- Jess Buddle answered on 23 Mar 2021:
  
  Sometimes it takes ages to think of the next step in research, sometimes if i know exactly what i need to do it doesnt take long at all!

Question: How long does it take to think of a design

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