Future Collaborations

Research on use of digital tools to support international collaboration by observing the case study of collaboration 'The Super Sentient City' between MA Texile Futures of Central Saint Martins College, U.K. and M.I.T., U.S.A. 2012. The research team comprises Caroline Truyol, Khin Tye, Marie James, Ruby Shih of MA Innovation Management, C.S.M.

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My Digital Life is a year-long project that seeks to improve students’ engagement with UAL’s digital projects, such as the transition from Blackboard to Moodle. The project is funded by UAL’s Digital Life programme, which coordinates digital initiatives at the University and provides strategic direction. We want to ensure that students are involved in the planning of digital projects, and that they are able to give feedback about the University’s digital environment. Importantly, we want to improve how student feedback is acted on.

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Thanks to Emile and Dawn (MA Textile Futures, Central Saint Martins College, London) and Sam (M.I.T. Boston) . Through your conversations, we have clearly identified some insights from your transatlantic digital collaboration. Thank you again!

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We are going to present our insights at Central Saint Martins at My Digital Life Workshop on 26th February 2013.

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FINAL GROUP SKYPE: Our first research-activity was to observe the final skype session with MA Textile Future, CSM and MIT to showcase their outcomes. These are some of the moments we observed. The drawing tries to highlight the feelings of the skype session; the different perspectives of the meeting and the audio environment.

Overall both teams handled the meeting very well. There were several interruptions because of poor skype performance but the mediators from both sides tackled those moments quickly. During the meeting several files were sent from both sides to share the final presentations (mostly digitally).

In our video some of the interviewees refer to this skype session and give their own view on it (see the video).

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LEGACY, THE THEREAFTER: Leaving a heritage of the collaboration is a beautiful way to complete the project and relationships.

Keep a physical object, and also a digital image of anything physically created. Share that across the collaboration, and keep it in the archive and catalogue.

Celebrate together digitally or physically in a final exhibition of your work together.

just get together one last time!

Click on image for another project of the CSM-MIT collaboration.

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FRAMEWORK - THE RULES STUFF: We don't like rules generally BUT in a collaboration when you can't see each other much, we need some structure to maintain and develop this delicate relationship.

Highly recommended to have a mediator, aka communication liaison on each side of the collaboration.

Keep participants motivated with incentives to contribute regularly e.g. funny prizes, credit points or food, that always works.

Mutually agree on working times and communication principles.

Set a common theme for the collaboration and mutually a name for the theme to tie people together.

The project used a QUESTION to have  be answered on each side to get a sense of how each side would think of things.

A higher up sponsor for the project might be good to give acknowledgement and help to move things along (sometimes).

Click on link to see another project in the CSM-MIT collaboration.

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CONTENT SHARING AND ARCHIVING: Sharing content in a digital collaboration is to find a balance between not overloading and allowing greater intimacy and sharing of research, insights, and inspiration.

use images that show your partner what you are doing or thinking about

chat for a to-and-from communication to maintain the relationships, keep it frequent and regular

use videos to show insights, to transmit the emotions, sounds, beyond the two-dimensional words and images.

allow some form of exchange of a tangible outcome, even if it is at the end. Something final and physical. If it cannot be mailed physically, find a creative way eg notes on how to reconstruct it at the other end...

create a catalogue where anyone can find the records, the outcomes, the trail of communications afterwards

Click on image to see what will happen if you don't follow the insights above (see caption!)

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OPENNESS AND EASE OF USE: Selecting the right digital tools for collaboration is like real-life, you want to use tools that are open, easy, and probably something that you are already using. For our groups, there were

Tumblr for exchange of images

Emails for important messages, reminders

Google video-hangout for conferences

Skype for final group presentations

Facebook Groups for quick blogging

Doodle for scheduling meetings

Drop box, internally for our team to share files

Google docs, for our team internally to share and edit files simultaneously

Click on image to see a presentation on a CSM-MIT collaboration project.

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PERSONALITIES AND RELATIONSHIPS: Starting up and maintaining a collaborative digital relationship is a delicate process that needs personal commitment and responsibility. 

Give some time in the beginning to get to know each other. MIT used a creative way showing personal possessions to show their personalities.

Allow free time for REAL life, its not 24X7 availability just because its digital. There are birthdays, public holidays, etc

Be aware of different time zones, sometimes it can be good when one posts and the other wakes up to reply the next day.

Click on the image to see one of the CSM-MIT projects in the collaboration. Thank you for their wonderful piece of art, a co-creation of knitting using binary-code programming as inspiration.

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Key areas in collaborations using digital tools

Here are the main areas of the common observations in interviewing 3 project members.

1. Personalities and Relationships

2. Openness and ease of use

3. Content sharing and archiving

4. Framework - the Rules stuff

5. Legacy, and thereafter

 Our posts hereafter will describe each area with more details.

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How can digital tools support collaborations?