Week 5

Poster and Pitch.

What did I learn about our concept/ the project/ the brief/ the design process from the feedback received? From other teams concepts?
We received a fair amount of feedback on our concept. In particular, the most common feedback/problem that we may have is accurately making the location of the supernatural events. As the name suggests these are 'supernatural'/not real and therefore do not have any credible sources or data to verify any event other than common agreeance. In regards to utilising Trove, after a preliminary search, Trove  does not return the pinpoint address of events. Further discussion on this will be needed.

It was good being able to go around and view the concepts from other teams. Many quite well developed even at this stage of the project. A couple that stood out to me was the History Chains and the Natural Disaster Map. I though the History Chains Concept was quite a cool idea and I think could have a lot of potential of actually being a successful concept  in the real world. Natural Disaster Map also stood out to me because it fairly similar to our concept and was our initial concept. It was interesting to see the other group's take on the idea and further progress they had made from the initial base concept.

How have these realisations affected my/our own concept and process since?
Most of all, I think viewing all the other groups has made me realise that we as a group need to start getting a bit of move on. Many of the groups had very well developed ideas with solutions to complex problems. We are thinking of the complex problems but are no where near planning for solutions yet. I think our concept needs a bit more thought, and I still have my apprehensions that this idea is going to be too difficult to successfully implement due to the nature of the data surrounding the concept. I do think a final 'yey or ney' needs to be made soon though so we can all but as much effort into finishing it on time as possible. 

Change of topic

Remorsy came up with another idea which is similar to the disaster one we have but uses ghost and supernatural sightings instead of disasters. The rest of the group has decided that they think this idea will be better. Personally, I do not think it will as getting data/news articles about this on trove will be quite difficult and overall the idea only caters to a real specific target audience - being people who are into that thing. Whereas disasters could be beneficial to students, adults and trend analysts as well. The data required will also somehow have to be verified as many news articles are not specify on the exact location and source of these things.

So for the time being we are pursuing this idea, however I'm not sure whether we will stick with it.

We had our first group meeting yesterday and tried to get most of the information together about the new idea.

Week 4 - Studio

In our contact last week, we were required to bring 4 - 5 ideas which were presented to the rest of the contact group. From this we formed our project groups and decided to pursue a particular idea present in the contact.

The idea that we decided to pursue as a group was a map showing the occurrence of natural disasters aimed at high school students. The concept consisted of a map of the world/Australia with pins placed in the locations where natural disasters have occurred. The user will be able to pinpoint the exact location of significant events of the disaster by zooming in. When the pin is clicked on, more information will be available including stats, year it occurred as well as some newspaper articles relevant to that particular pin. The resource is targeted towards high school students (15-18yo) to give them a visual representation of natural disasters while still providing effective resources through newspaper articles.

Before this week's contact session we had to develop 3 of our concepts so members of the class could evaluate it through the '6 hats of thinking', in doing so identifying any strengths, weaknesses and improvements that could be made. Our 3 concepts were, Australian Natural Disaster Map, Celebrity Frequency and Guess the Year. Celebrity Frequency is a catalogue of Australian celebrities and provides various information about them such as; rises and falls, money earned, interesting facts, characteristics and others. Guess the year is an interactive game which a historical image of a famous Australian landmark (such as the opera house) is displayed and the user needs to select the correct year in which the photo was taken from 4 possible choices. Once an answer is pressed, information about the image is displayed. The faster the correct answer is pressed the more points the user gets and they are award no points if it is wrong.

A couple of us went around to different groups critiquing their ideas while others stayed and wrote down feedback from others about our concepts. I went to other groups and found some of the ideas very interesting and also gained some further ideas that we could use.
Here is some of the feedback that we got on our ideas:

Concept 1: Natural Disaster Map

Zoom In Functions -> To see more Pins, to be able to see more locations
If there are more than 1 disaster at a location, put like a directory to see if one they can choose
Link the newspaper/articles for more information
Audience: People who wants to travel?? (Could be too broad)
Changing the categories of natural disasters

Concept 2: Guess the Year

More like a guessing game than a learning
Spending little time on the game (How to keep user attracted)
Help people learn about discoveries
Its Okay but idea lacks depth
Just a guessing game
Have a blurb that is about something that happened in that year swell
Range the year
Dates of discoveries, Get dates from published articles , More information if needed

Concept 3: Celebrity Frequency
Heaps of digging for information
Initial Thinking: Its got potential, Alright
A lot of people can use this information, large audience
Would be interesting if this concept comes out
Comedic writing would be good for the rise and fall of celebrities
Take a lot of work to set up like too big for trove to automatically
Hard to pull out all Celebrities information (Narrow down to certain celebrities)
Leaderboard (for who has appeared in the most movies for actors/actresses)
Next Step: Research each point, if there is enough information on trove -> concept can be down

We decided on a time for group meetings will be meeting on Monday to discuss exactly what has to be done. The concept design document as been started and we also need to make a poster to present our idea next week to the contact.

Week 3

This week we formed groups of 4 - 5  members for our major project. During the contact many ideas for the project were brainstormed by the whole contact and we had the choice of choosing something that we had an interest in. I found this an effective method of idea generation and was a benefit for not only my specific group but the contact class as a whole, as by narrowing down possible ideas early, it prevents spending lots of time trying to come up with an effective idea as a small group. We all had an interest in pursuing our main concept about mapping Australian natural disasters. My team is made up of all first year students; Ian, Liam, Anthony and Remosy.

What did you learn about your attitudes to working in a team? Which Belbin roles did you identify with?

What I learned about my attitude to working in a team is that it can be just as, if not more effective 'breaking' from your usual methods and adapting to methods that other team members use. Overall, observing these methods and opinions of others which are different to the way you would have pursued it is a learning experience and can provide new outlets and methods in the future. In teams, generally when we find an effective method of completing something or meeting a goal we tend to reuse this in the future over and over again, rather than looking into other methods which for a particular project may be much more effective in reality.

Although I am quite an introverted person and don't mind working on my own, I enjoy working in teams as they provide an element of responsibility. This keeps you motivated to actually do what you should be doing and be effective at completing things by deadlines. Out of the Belbin roles, I identify myself as a monitor evaluator, teamworker and finisher the most.

Were you surprised by either your Leadership or Team Score following the first quiz? Why/why not? You don't need to specify the scores that you received - rather was it higher/lower than you expected.

I wasn't too surprised with my leadership or team score after working in many teams in the past through years of school. My team score said I was a very effective team person. The results did offer some things to improve on such as remembering to include all members of the team in decisions, ensuring everyone's voice is heard and to keep doing what I am doing.

Did you identify with any of the causes of conflict? Is it something you have a tendency to do or something you have experienced from previous team projects? How will you manage this if it occurs in this team project?

Conflicts always have the potential to be present in all groups and I think the most effective way of managing them is trying to prevent them before they arise or putting them to rest as soon as possible if they do arise. I think one of the main causes of conflict within a group is when there is no direction towards achieving the final goal. This generally stalls a lot of work and things continue to be backdated etc as the whole process has not been methodically (to a degree) thought out and discussed as a group when the project presents itself. Designating someone as a leader can give some some initial inspiration and everyone can focus on what they should be and thus giving good team dynamic when it is required. Any teams that I have worked on in the past have worked well and we didn't really have any major conflicts. We all knew our role and performed it as required and essentially worked as a 'team'. Any small conflicts that occurred were openly discussed with all members and everyone gave their opinion on what the outcome should be, while still keeping the final goals in mind.

What is important to you when working in a team?

When working in a team, I think the most important thing is to keep the process enjoyable for everyone. If people are interested and generally enjoy what they are doing (even if the project is boring but the team dynamic is enjoyed) then they are more likely to contribute more and 'want' what is best for the team. Keeping everyone happy gives motivation and is less likely to cause people to lose interest. Once interest is lost it is very hard to pick it back up again.

Contact 1

Last Tuesday was the first contact session. We completed some 'ice-breakers' and then went and brainstormed ideas that trove could be used for. By Tuesday, we need 5 individual ideas to bring to the team, which we will also be forming next week.
Pictures of brainstorming below (when uploaded from phone)

Post 1

Based on what I know of this course, I expect to be working amongst a team to create a web based application pertaining to the trove database this semester.
I want to learn/experience what it will be like working in a small team for technology projects to give a taste of how tech companies are run out in the real world.
I’m worried about coming up with an effective idea/concept reasonably quickly so the rest of the project can run smoothly.
I hope that I can take what I learn in this course (both good and bad experiences) away with me and give me some direction in future studio courses.
What are your expectations for this course? I think the 'core' of this course will run much like DECO1100 but our teams will be creating something that is not only relevant to our degree but potentially something of a standard that is perfectly applicable as a tool which could be used immediately after completion by someone on the web. I think the course will be interesting and give a good insight into how many tech companies in the real world operate and the many problems that are encountered on the way to creating a finished product.