This project in parts as been a struggle for me, due to various reasons such as health issues and time constraints/logistics through working full time. However I have enjoyed parts as well, and I feel I have developed and learn’t things from my colleagues over the last few months on this project. I think we have developed as a team a very usable prototype, through utilising our different skills and knowledge base, but also through good communication. The communication within the group as been very effective, especially as myself and Clive have been working remotely part of the time. We have also made good use of firstly the Group Wiki and then the Group Blog, which as helped the communication and design process, by being able to discuss and view ideas and visuals. Also good email and in parts skype / video conferencing. We have not always agreed on actions or decisions, but we have discussed most things and delegated work, participated in meetings and the decision making process. This as helped with the success of our Group Project, but also we all have a professional, concientious attitude which as helped. I think we have all shared tasks and helped to do a bit of everything in the scheme of things. Including playing to our individual strengths to a certain degree.
As a Graphic Designer I do understand the importance of team work and collaboration so to further and complete a project and more and more I feel creative people will utilise specialist skills from other areas so to break down barriers and so to create different ideas/solutions to design problems. In essence a team of people with different skills dropping in and out when needed to complete the task as needed. Muscians, artists, programmers, actors etc working together. I feel our team as worked in this way and we have employed good production methods so to meet the deadline and achieve. We have all taken control at certain parts and then stepped back to let others use their skills or expertise.
I have read in depth about this and one book ‘Marketing your creativity: New approaches to a changing industry’ as some fascinating findings about how some creative studios are working. Such as ‘Cake’ in London who are made up of about 30 different creative people who all possess very different skills and work in this exact way, coming in on a job when needed. I’m also interested in this approach in Education and I have been researching how Stanford Institute of Design (USA) are collaboratively working through the development of their D School. The idea being different departments staff, students sharing and collaborating so to push through innovation and solve challenging problems in all sorts of areas.
I think there are problems to overcome working in this way, mainly the feel of loss of ownership/authorship which is a ongoing debate in this field. So I think in any successful team you need a team leader to take responsibility and to make decisions. I dont think we have been that successful in this area, however luckily and also through this idea of being able to step back (which takes confidence and a strong personality) it as not been detrimental to our design. We made a good choice in choosing Clive’s Interface Design and helping him develop it and support it. There are real world examples where a lack of leadership or this design by committee approach produces awful, inappropriate, sterile solutions, highlighting this loss of ownership/art direction. I feel we have succeeded to a certain extent in not letting this happen. We have made good choices.
Myself, Penny and Mike started the ball rolling with a meeting and ideas session which to start with was slow and a bit edgy, but then Penny and Mike dicussed the music learning game idea and I thought that had potential so agreed to go for that. I think both Penny and Mike had very strong ideas and to help kick start the project over a few days I produced a lot of research and initial visuals/Interface Designs etc so to help really. They needed lots of development though, but I think it did help kick start the project in lots of ways (paper prototyping, usability, accessibility, understanding the age group and Interface design etc). Penny produced some good ideas and thumbnails and Mike set up the Group Wiki and got us all communicating and utilising web 2.0 items which as been great. Then Clive joined us and did a vast amount of research into games for this age group and Interface Design etc etc.
We then split up into doing certain tasks: Penny (the workings of the game and ideas), Clive (the Interface Design), Mike (the animations and sounds), and myself (Graphics/Interface Design). I feel its worked well. We have done well to stick with our original idea and developed it over many versions/variations and made it work, helping each other out along the way. Towards the end of the project we decided to choose Clives Interface Design which is very effective and he as produced a lot of work to refine and to get things working. We decided from the start to produce the prototype in Powerpoint (a smaller learning curve), however in the long run Flash would probabley been more effective. The Powerpoint prototype works though and is ideal as a demonstrator for this kind of initial game/prototype. Which is good working practice so not to waste time and money. This reminds me of how Nokia produce lo-fi, but effective prototypes for their products so to save time and money in the production process etc.
Both Penny and Mike have produced Usability tests with various versions of the game and this as helped in it’s development and I have produced Accessibility reports using the WC3 web guidelines so to improve the prototype in various ways. All of which you can view on this blog. All developed from theory learn’t in the sessions with Gordon, which I feel have been invaluable.
Overall we have produced a very viable project proposal and have acheived as a group to produce a good working prototype. We worked in a very democratic way, but we did share tasks and certain roles within the team, which I feel as mirrored certain professional practice. We have also overcome both creative difficulties/differences and technical difficulties in a mature and professional, helpful manner which is very important for the success of any team. We have completed most of the stages in a Multimedia Production Process, such as discussed in Martin’s Lecture:
“While any design process breaks into the three stages of concept, design and production, the initial design process can be broken down into six main elements:
1 Defining the product and audience
2 Organising the content
3 Designing the navigation, interaction and controls
4 Designing the layout and style
5 Prototyping and testing
6 Production ”
The use of the blog as helped us to document that process.
IMM Usability Group Project 