Teamwork module

This team module was very thorough and insightful. By the first glance I found it excessive on a seemingly simple topic, but after looking up the whole content, it actually provided many useful information and even feedbacks on the problems regards of the teaming issue.

I have been through many teamwork projects during my study in university. While some of the experiences are pleasant, some are inevitably not much effective. By looking back at both these pleasant and unpleasant teamwork experiences, I could find some patterns on these opposite situations, which I would be identified later.

Personally, I found myself develop my skills during these process. On the first semester’s team project, I rarely interacted with other team members and just did what I was told without giving any opinion or suggestions. I think because of the communication barriers (language, culture, major expertise, etc.), I was diffident of the situation and did not think I was capable of giving any useful information. After the accumulation of my major knowledge and the improvement of my English speaking, I gradually gained confidence and eventually was able to lead the team project once. Therefore, I think it is important for a balanced team member contribution that every member had the same ability or different expertise. In other words, everyone could find a way to contribute or give opinions towards the ongoing project. Another situation I found myself in is that while the other team members are not that active and participating, some would be forced to take the leading role because of regarding the results of the project. I normally did not voluntarily choose to become a leader, but while the team formation made the final result be at risk, I would take the leading role to make sure the result did not become unacceptable. My most desired teamwork is that everyone could be actively participated into the process of project and there would not be a leader urging and supervising every detail during the process.

Last but not least, I would like to share my understanding of both effective teamwork and not-so-effective teamwork patterns.

Effective teamwork

• Everyone has same effort or different expertise to contribute to the project
• Everyone is actively involved in the process and constantly communicated with each other
• There is a clear record of the project process and an organised role before the implementing of the project

What I could do:

• Contributing my skills and giving opinions on the result of our combining efforts
• Follow the team schedule, attend the meeting, meet the deadline.
• Objectives are done progressively which permits adjustments and feedback from each member

Not-so-effective teamwork

• Most members are passively participated ad lack of required skills
• No team schedule and everything was dumped to the document a few days before the deadline
• Some members would be absent to the meetings and only showed up a few days before the deadline
• Lack of communication between the members

What I could do:

• Take the leading role if necessary
• Organising the steps of implementing the project and let others to pick their role and choose what to contribute

Group formed - Restoring the web

Based on the voting result earlier, the group was formed on the workshop. I chose and became one of the members of "Restoring the web". The other member includes Lyndon, Lilly and Rena. The first meeting was very efficient. We set up team blog, team Facebook page, and team GitHub community. 

Team role is listed below: 

Lilly - Co-ordinator

Lyndon - Back-end

                (e.g. scripting, API calls)

Felix - Front-end

                (e.g. HTML, CSS)

Rena - Design

                (e.g. wireframes, web design)

Team schedule: 

Weekly team meeting would be commenced during the Wednesday session and Thursday workshop during the class. 

The week 6 presentation: 

Overview of the concept ---  Lilly 

Details of screens and what's included  --- Rena 

Design walkthrough of user behaviour --- Felix  (Research required)

Technology/ APIs used --- Lyndon

Pre-project records

Week 3

5 ideas were brought to the workshop and discussed with the course colleagues.
(*5 ideas drafts are written on the notebook, would be uploaded a scanned version lately)

After sharing my ideas in two different groups, 2 of my 5 ideas were proved to be potentially interested to become an actual project. 2 ideas are "Find those birds" and "Fashion trend". 

I also found other member's interesting ideas, including detective games, recipe finder, a Jurassic Park related database, etc. Apart from focusing on the interesting elements,  everyone was also concerned about the feasibility of the idea, which is also the most-concerned question during the sharing of ideas. 

I determined my presented project to be "Find those birds", which was similar to the app done by previous groups "Natural disasters". The idea is to show the bird distribution on map within Australia and provide detailed information about each species, including images and videos. The information is expected to require from Trove and another ongoing nationwide bird observation project called "Atlas Birdata". Presented poster is shown as followed: 

Week 4

The idea showcase was held on the workshop this week. 

Every one was given three notes to vote for other projects as their preferred project. I really like the web validator idea on the aged website and also glad to see the idea with same direction as mine "Wrecked ship". 

I was distributed to the group doing idea "Restoring the web" based on my vote of preference. The team members are Lilly, Lyndon and Rena. After the efficient first meeting, we have set up team blogs, team Github and team Facebook group. I was in charge of the front end build-up and everyone was given a week to research regards of their role in the team. The plan is to find some existing website with html/css editor with the instant and live preview effects. 

Week2 session notes

On this session we started by having a series of ice-breaker games. I felt like I knew my colleagues better than before after that :D

The main practice for the session is to brainstorm some ideas of making an app or a game that uses the database of Trove. As one of the biggest online database in Australia, I was thrilled the information that was kept in the website. The sample works done by previous students were really inspirational. After examining each of them, our team of five come up with several interesting ideas. Following would present one of the best after we discussed.

Fashion Trend

This online educational game shows the different fashion trend in various timeline of the history in Australia.

The first part of the game is a showcase with two models (male and female) and a timeline above them. Users can drag a certain point on the timeline and in the meantime the clothes on both models would be changed based on where the point lays on the timeline. Words would be also shown below two models indicating the specific time of that point.
The second part of the game is where there actually be an interactive feature. As the model remain on the page, words would be shown indicating what social background and timeline are. Meanwhile there would be a selection of clothes beside the model, so the users need to choose and drag the right clothes based that social background and see if the result were right. Each choice of the selection would contain information that would be popped out while the mouse were hovering above it. After completing a series of games, users could upload their results to multiple social networks.

Other ideas by the groups

Course expectation

It feels great that my second semester as master of interaction design has already combined designing and programming into one single course. I can foresee that this course would be interesting but also giving me many challenges. Followings would be some of my expectations of taking this course

• I have already taken the design thinking course, and after the computing studio I hope that I could understand how to use the skill I learned from the previous courses into the designing of a program/game. 
• As graduated from a business degree, I am still polishing my skills on coding, which seems to be very handful to this course. I hope the group work could let me learn from the other that are more capable at coding.
• I do hope the our assignment project would be something interesting and actually useful (or entertaining). This might give me a chance to experience how it would be like to design a program. 
• Last but not least, I wish to make more friends who share the same interests :)