#projcomm

As people tend to say, time passes fast when you’re having fun. I wholeheartedly agree with this saying, although might I also add that time passes even faster when you’re in distress in getting all the assignments completed before the deadline! Just like this rollercoaster ride we have all been on, my experience is this; it felt like this ride took a split second to reach the end. One lesson I have learnt is not to underestimate the great experiences even the smallest amount of time can bring us.

A successful and enjoyable roller coaster ride is not just about how many loops or drops there are; it’s about the order of the ride, where the highs and lows are, and how they all flow together as one whole ride. This ensures the building up of excitement, the time it gives you to take in that last drop take a breath to soak in all the adrenaline, while the last and final obstacle before the end of the ride is to give you the last bit of excitement before you have to take in all the dizziness and stumble down the stairs.

This is process is just like how this project went. Although it seems as though time went by so fast, we started off by being slowly mounted onto the first drop, followed with more loops and obstacles to go through. Each obstacle represents the themes of each week. It felt like these themes were being thrown at us time after time, and barely did we feel like we had time to stop and take that breath. Of course, there are obstacles in the ride that tend to not give you that rush that you desire but yet you are forced to sit through it and make the best of it; in my case this would be the weeks in which the topics were of less ability to be of help to our NGO.  This doesn’t mean there was nothing to gain out of that week. Instead, it just challenged us to try think of that specific theme, in our case this would be crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, and see how we could look at it from a different perspective and change the context a bit for it to apply to our NGO. All in all, the order in which these themes were covered each helped us understand the following theme even better. Most importantly for our team, the most important one to us was our final theme of marketing. This enabled us to cleverly use of the things we learned from online communities in the past weeks to aid us in brainstorming marketing ideas for Carl-Peter.

Now we have finally reached the last part of this roller coaster ride. We have soaked in all the information, and have come up with some results. This is the time where we get off of this ride, stumble dizzily down the stairs towards the last destination of this ride: the picture booth. Now, the picture any ride will take captures the whole ride into a picture. Our final destination would be where everything we have learnt, captured into that one video. Although we are currently stressed about the creation of the video, where peoples minds are shaky from all the stress,  this is the time when asa team we would have to help and motivate each other. This is the time where I come back to my first blog and to show the team player I thrive to be; commitment to my team, to show team support, empathy to understand and motivate each one in their own unique ways, and lastly flexible, to helping each other out and having their backs when you expect it least and when they need it most.

I enjoyed this ride, and I hope you did too.

So, this roller coaster is closing in to its end. It’s not a surprise that this ride has almost reached it’s 80% mark; roller coasters usually go by fast and exciting. So far, this one has been one heck of a ride…with all the ups and downs, twists and turns; but the ride has got to have its unforgettable ending right? Well that is still to come.

We have come to the point where our vision for this project has changed so many times, that we have lost track of where our tracks’ destination lies. That is why this is the time where we are supposed to stand still, look at ourselves and our progress and question ourselves once again; it’s time to dig back to the roots of the course. What are the learning goals of this project? Of course, number one would be team work. As in the design world I feel like this is not the right place to work as a one man’s field. Like I mentioned over and over, this is one of the things I do feel strongly about. The next thing would be working with online communities. Why? Just like what Nancy said in our meeting, people tend to have a high degree of knowledge of social media for personal use, however, we have not have much experience with using them for professional purposes.

So reflecting on our project so far, are we right on track? I think we are headed the right direction, but because of some obstacles leaving us all with blurred visions, resulting in a bit of an off track course. But because our whole team has realized this, we sat down and discussed our goal once again. By doing this, our team created an time overview of how many week we have left, and what the eventual result is of what we would like to present to our NGO. We now have all divided the tasks, mainly focusing on how we could advise our NGO, with the help of online communities to improve his image and business. Not surprisingly, many of the courses we are currently taking in this module came up. This had a bit to do with personal branding, as we concluded that his image and brand does not specifically help and fulfill his wants and desires for his business; and also cultural differences, as his ideal target audience is the whole of Europe, where he has to rethink how cultural differences can influence what one things of his idea of morphological design and insulation being attractive and desirable.

Designing has a two sided purpose in my vision; one in which is the visual aspect of design, and the other to be designing as a part of the system to fulfill a function in the world. In our world today, the online network plays a great role in almost everything. To me, I feel like the online community is a space where designers can seek for help, support, ideas, and basically all they need for their concept creation or for its concept realization. Connecting this all to our project, I think the way that we have to make use of online communities for BouwQuest is for its marketing purposes. A group member explained how he had used social media sites to advertise his ‘company’, and just by putting it up for a couple of days the amount of views and likes that he has created is astonishing. This is where what I wrote as a response to my previous blog post comes in. Subliminal advertising. There has been many experiments done, showing us how our everyday interaction effects our actions and judgments subconsciously. One in which, is this video in the following link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i8N5SKzRtI&channel=UltimateMinds . In this video, it is shown to us how the interaction with the outside world could affect us. However, in today’s world, since the internet plays such a great role, and could be used specifically to target certain audiences, therefore, why not advertise these ideas and concepts online? Even if people would not consciously take in the information and ideas, there’s a chance they will subconsciously and this could help advertisers in a positive way.

After 7 weeks of exploring the online community, it has opened my eyes to how much more possibilities are out there than I had initially thought. I was aware of the online community for professional uses, however I was never fond of the idea, as I always had the idea that it was slightly unprofessional, as the online world was only used for personal uses in my world. That is not the case anymore. There is so much to not only learn, but also to give, and I would like to make full use of this in the future, as this is practically a gift to be living in this generation of technology. 

In short, this project has given me the technical adrenaline to continue on not only this roller coaster, but the many more to come, to utilize what technology beholds.

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"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog." - Jack London

We are getting closer to week 9 which is the final syllabus of this module and the presentation of the advises for our NGOs. This week unfortunately we were not able to contact Marteen and to schedule another meeting because he has been busy; although that, we have noted down the things that we'll put on the video for the final project.

What we did was summarising what we learnt from each syllabus from the first week until now, by that we were able to collect our thoughts for the video.

The power of teamwork!

(Source: hiremeimemployable)

I learnt a lot throughout the process, I didn't know that online communities play a big role for this project and for my future project with a client or clients. I would say that I was so simple minded before this. Online communities could help us in many different ways, some provide good informations such as their knowledges and experiences as professionals that can help other people; some provide a place for us to communicate with other people and we can ask them about their demands and what are they want to see from us designers.

Some sites like innonet even says, "Do you need new ways to plan and evaluate your programs? Do your grantees need to know how to build a logic model? How do you measure success for your program area? Are your goals aligned with your funder's goals?"

I think if the consumers show the designers what they want, designers sure can design the innovations they are requesting and everyone is happy.

(Source: Google/Tumblr)

Our biggest problem with our NGO is our NGO is so busy it's so hard to schedule a meeting or even contact him. But we figured out that assuming is the best way to get through this phase. We learnt that asking him directly "Is this what you want?" keeps us to remain going on this project.

It wasn't that hard to assume what does he want because we have informations about the project, about the NGO, and about the goal itself.

I would like to learn how the outside world works, such as how do companies make people buy their products and how do enterprises impact the world with their products. I'm always curious about how this works but the main reason I want to learn those is because at the end of the day I want to have a brand and a company; and in order to do that I need to know several things, I can't be ignorant.

"Always." - Severus Tobias Snape

(Source: Wordpress)

I'm already searching for it and reading about it online, I also would look for a book about how innovative designs' world works; and I hope I will learn it during the lesson in projcomm! :)

Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are two extraordinary and powerful tools on the web. It is amazing how it uses the crowd, thus ‘crowd’funding/sourcing, to gather information, intelligence, ideas, opinions, and even support. Crowdsourcing and funding is a great opportunity to designers out there. It is an opportunity for them to gather information and ideas, tips on their branding, and most importantly to test and to see if their product has a market. 

By going into depth and reading into articles related to these topics, there was constantly one thought in my mind: morphological design seems like a miniature version of crowdsourcing. Our NGO has previously asked us to promote the design process of morphological designs to more architects, increasing their acceptance to use this method of design. He explained to us the concept and process of this design method. He is basically collaborating with a small team, whom all are of a different field of expertise. In his case, this would be him, project manager, a contractor, an insulation man, etc. In relation to last week’s topic, he too works with a team sized to his perfection. By working with people with a different set of knowledge, his team can create something greater, and reduce the decision errors while moving forward in the project. You could see this clearly in the chart below, which was taken from one of his presentations given about passive house integrated design.

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While our NGO already uses the concept of sourcing information from other people, it still isn’t categorized as crowdsourcing. However, nor does my team think that this is needed. His projects and goals do not require this act of crowdsourcing and funding.

Having had a meeting with our NGO this week to clarify some questions we had about the goal of this project, it turned out that we are going to take another turn and loop around in this project. Having asked him to explain the results that he would want, we got a slightly different answer than what we had understood for the last couple of weeks. His process is morphological design, and his product is the passive housing, in which uses a well-insulated envelope for the house, while the interior could be split up into private and public domains. The issue here, is that businessmen see the opportunity in using renewable sources into saving money and resources; however, they are not attracted to the idea of creating a well insulated house, by using triple glass and a 1000W regular hair dryer as the heat supply. With this, he gave us the task of “Making insulation sexy”. And yes, those were his exact words; although, I don’t fully agree with his choice of words on the professional, as Nancy also mentioned, there are many assumptions that come with the word sexy. However, what is most important is that we understood immediately from his words what he wants. From this, we now have a set specific task that we are able to work on.

Up until now, this roller coaster journey has been very confusing. It went from the task being extremely clear, and us being satisfied with the task, to a level of confusion where we weren't sure where we were headed, and now in week 6 of the project it took a complete loop in another direction. This loop feels like it has come into the picture a little late in the ride, however my team is now determined to make good use of the remaining weeks to fulfil our goal. I think a factor that influenced this, is that we were unable to get in touch with our NGO. But thankfully, like mentioned in last weeks post, if one does not take action when a problem arises, the problem will never be solved. In our case, it was a great help that our team leader took the initiative to make this call to push for a meeting. 

The first time I read the word crowdsourcing I wasn't concentrating much so I read it crowdsurfing, which is pretty much the same if you think about it. (And it's a lot funner to say surfing rather than sourcing, am I right chaps?) :)

To understand why crowdsourcing and crowdsurfing is probably the same stuff, you need to know what the original word means. Crowdsourcing is, by definition:

The use of this word have risen since 2010, if you're curious about the history of this word, here you go: (what is crowdsourcing)

(Definition source: google)

I said earlier that the two words: crowdsourcing and crowdsurfing, are similar to each other anyway because it is about obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers. It's like going in and surf the crowd itself to obtain relevant ideas.

Right? Riteee?

(Source: kateordie)

Anyway, I'm feeling to talk about the question that popped inside of my head, "Is crowdsourcing necessary for designers and innovators?" and to answer that I need to list the good things crowdsourcing offers. First of all, crowds. The crowds would be willing to help us anytime they want, because there are a massively high number of people, so in other words they are available anytime. Crowds are like the main target in order to sell our innovations, by crowdsourcing, we'd build relationships with the community we are working with. Relationships lead to networks, networks are needed by professional selves, by having networks we are having people we can trust and having people who can help us promoting our works.

Lastly, it's cheaper. Of course it's cheaper to ask online communities to obtain informations for us instead of hiring professionals. I don't have to say much, the word cheaper is already powerful; plus, people usually expect foolish things if they feel like something is too expensive, so cheaper is better.

Yep.

(Source: plated-jeans)

I would say the reason some designers don't use this method is because of the cons of it. It doesn't matter how good somethings are, it'd still have flaws. The main disadvantage interestingly mirrors the main advantage (the cheap part): cheap labour results less credible product if compared to professionals, of course. Professionals have experiences, expertise, and they are dedicated; on the other hand, online communities do not have these things.

As I mentioned in the very beginning of this journey, teamwork is the thing that I see as most important. Looking at our team now, and reflecting on what our journey from the beginning till now, I think we have progressed significantly. 

As every group project that I have experienced up until now, I have been thrown in a random selection of people forming my team, just as I was in this project.

When this happened to start off this project, equality was the greatest amongst us as it could ever be. From that point on, we started to get to know each other, our strengths and weaknesses, and the equality will fade; we start to see where each individuals’ strengths and weaknesses lie, and we will each shine on our individual strengths. When we started off this project no one knew what our task was, what the journey would be like, but most importantly no one truly knew the people with whom we were going on this journey with.

We are a group of 7, with an extremely diverse culture. Cultural differences within the group can be both an asset and a liability. Looking at the Lewis triangle, each country has it’s own style of approaching a situation. Some may be reflective, relational or rational. I happen to be stuck between all three. Having grown up in the Netherlands, while brought up with an Asian culture, the culture grown upon me clashes between them both. As an inner personality, I match the Lewis’ triangle perfectly; I am reflective. However on the other hand, there is a clear trait of the Dutch relational and rational traits. This is only to be seen in me as an individual. Looking at my whole team, we come with a wide variety of working habits, ideas, visions and insights. This makes the whole team a lot richer. We are able to have insight in the blind spots of another. However, looking at the negative side of this is working with each other. There may be cultural clashes in which it is hard to get past. So far, we have been able to understand and compromise with each other’s way of working.

 It is now clear to us where everyone stands in our team situation, where our position in the team is. We are a team of 7, and as Christopher Allen had said, this forms the perfect team. His arguments for this is that there is always one leader, where as the rest of the group can be formed into smaller working groups. This does seem like an ideal idea, however with us, our working style is not as such. We do have an assigned team leader, and each have individual roles. I think that it is a great opportunity, having given that our team number is the same as life of alacrity’s perfect group, to make use of his style of working. So far, we have been assigning ourselves a lot of individual tasks. I think the reason here for, is that we are currently pretty lost in our goal for our NGO. There are so many aspects to his problem, which we have to do research on. Therefore, trying to cover as much ground as possible, we divided them into individual tasks. However, if we take another approach to this, splitting this into leader and pairs, being in pairs allows research to be done at a greater depth. So maybe we can give that a shot with our next challenge!

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Having your own online network today is like building train tracks with added height; roller coaster tracks. Without the ‘online’, it’ll be more like developing yourself in one plane, like a train on its grounds.

We’re living in the generation where all these online spaces developed from nothing to what it is now. Honestly speaking, I have many different accounts on many of these spaces without knowing what they are all about. Having open access to the internet before you clearly understand how to use it well and safely can result in this. Around a decade ago, that’s how it was with me; that is the reason why the young and ignorant me sought every opportunity to sign up for an account, putting my private information out there to the world.

That is clearly not the case anymore. The networks that I have which are primarily active all have a specific purpose of its own, and i am well aware of the information i give out to the public.

There are many small networks in which I am a part of. This includes forums, blogs, and memberships of pages where information is shared. The smaller spaces would be linked to my hobbies and interests. One example would be knitting on www.raverly.com. It is a space where patterns and ideas are shared, along with processes and tips, it is the space where i learn most from other peoples experiences.

Moving on to greater spaces, Linkedin is one that I created long ago, but have not kept up to date with as it was not an important space for myself personally during the previous years. Today, it has become of importance, as I am now more aware of my professional image and it may come to use in networking and creating professional connections.

Looking at the most obvious space, which is widely used today, is Facebook. This is the space where I use generally to connect with friends, family, location, and many more. Because this space allows for such extensive networks it can be subdivided into smaller specific networks. I can connect myself to my interests such as photography and crime, or be a part of a community such as the IDE open innovator. This space can be used for a wide variety of purposes, that could be part of both the professional or private world. Personally, however, I preferred to have it used as a private space. Although this clashes with certain communities i have on there, such as out IDE community. Because it is what our community happily uses, I will willingly use it. This, however, would be a call out to myself to recheck my privacy settings. As you are connecting your academic world with your private space, there may be things about you that may be inappropriate to the academic and professional space.

This is an important aspect that I find pretty serious in online networking: privacy. Knowing how young I had access to the internet, and especially the generation below us today, it is important to know what information to share and not to share with the world as many people can use these information for the wrong purposes. It was only as I grew older that I was more aware of this situation. It’s easy to educate people about this matter, however whether or not they take it into their own hands depends on the level of importance they see this at. 

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So, this roller coaster has reached its first obstacle towards its heights. Like I mentioned last time, teamwork is probably the most important thing to success. Of course not all teams start off with a turbo boost. Ours, for one, began with a slow and goalless glide. We show traits of commitment and team support; however, confusiasm had surpassed our team strengths.

Not knowing where the projects path leads to, tend to result with being unable to begin the project. The lesson learnt here was that in order to clarify and solve something faster, initiative and action must be taken. A spontaneous call from a teammate to our assigned NGO to set up a meeting rather than waiting another day to send a second reminder email was of great help to this project. It minimized the time wasted in waiting for responses, and also took away the risk of not getting a response for the coming days. 

Working with people in the professional world is challenging because there is never a guarantee for the time of their response. Although some things may be extremely urgent, there is still basic etiquette to be aware of when contacting the person of interest. You want to be respectful, but in a way where work can be completed. In this sense, you wouldn’t want to be portrayed as obnoxious or presumptuous. With our teammate taking the initiative of calling, it was not the intention to show these negative traits, but instead to speak directly with the person involved and to show our enthusiasm in beginning this project. 

This touches upon the issue of connections between the professional worlds. There are endless options of communication tools and platforms to chose from. The question here would be what would be the appropriate one? This would depend on context. Direct contact could use phones or emails, as these are usually more personal; making professional connections LinkedIn may be used whilst in social contexts social medias such as Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr could be used. It is up to the user and the context to determine what is most appropriate. Between group work, there are always many options where and how they could share information and communicate. It is likely that not many people are familiar with the tool, however, if it is an appropriate platform to be used, why not learn and broaden your experiences? One of the traits I metioned to be important is flexibility, and in this case it should be used in order to cooperate and help each other out. Helping each other out, isn’t that what a technology steward is meant to do?

If one has knowledge the other does not, and vice versa, sharing it would just make both twice as knowledgeable. 

Photograph credits: sezer66