The cards for play project was the first group project given to us and with that came a lot of opportunities to make mistakes and learn from them. Our task was to create a deck of cards which facilitated play, which was a very vague brief. When reading through this brief the choice of creating a card game becomes very tempting as the word “Play” is always associated with games. However, in an attempt to stray away from the majority of our class and make something a little more risky and different we decided to go for a deck of cards which rose awareness about color blindness. With a group of 5 and each of us possessing a unique set of talents we all generally thought it could be fairly easy to divide up labour between the 5 of us and get an idea fairly quickly during the first week. Very quickly we realised it wasn't as easy as it seemed to come up with a solid idea, we found ourselves going through many many concepts and limiting our ideas to ones that were still different to other groups to try bring a little diversity to our cards. By the end of the project we had rushed our final cards as we tried so many concepts and had to produce something in time for the due date.
Transitioning straight from highschool into university was one of the first obstacles I faced as it was strange during the first few weeks being somewhat independent and not having a teacher observe everything you do. This did lead to some procrastination within the group for the first week or so as I feel like we all settled on one idea too quick and then brushed the project away thinking we would be fine, but as time went on we kept having to change ideas and in the end we didn't produce the exact project we wanted to produce. We were told our cards had great potential but by the end of the project we had failed on so many concepts that our final product was extremely rushed and wasn’t the way we wanted it. This was a result of poor time management on our behalf. I feel as though we didn't put in enough work during after class hours which could have been spent doing more prototypes and figuring out our final concept much earlier on. ‘While there are many ways to organize time, the fundamental basis for any time management process is linked to the planning process. In setting individual and organizational priorities, the vision and goal of the organization will assist employees in determining their work and what is most important to accomplish. Maggie Farell (2017), “Time Management”. I feel as though during the planning stages we were too laid back and allowed only one or two people mainly take charge.
Another issue I think we faced was a lack of communication with one another regarding sharing ideas which lead to no one willing to criticise the ideas that were being thrown around during the planning stages of the project. During this time we just said yes to any and every idea being said and we went for an option without reading too much into HOW we could actually pull the idea off in time for the due date which lead to the unpolished final product. Most of the time it would be one or two members of the group primarily giving us ideas and the rest of us would say whether we liked the idea or not. I feel like we became too comfortable with this and it wasn't until later on where the rest of us where actually forced into giving more ideas as we tried to find an idea that would work in time. ‘Communication is the recognition of some behaviour that is meaningful to one or more participants of the group’ Thomas E Harris, John C Sherblom (2011). I think that during the planning stages I should have tried to engage more and contributed more ideas for our group as there can never be too many ideas. The more ideas we produced the closer we get to solidifying a concept.
When looking back on this project I think that there are a lot of things that i’ve learnt and this being my first group project in university I expected to make some mistakes. I think overall we did the best we could with the concept that we had we tried to go for too many reckless ideas without knowing how much time it would take to prototype these ideas.
This project has taught me to make good use of the planning stages and not treat it as a less important part of the design process. Going forward when doing anything design related I feel as though the planning is probably the most important part and especially when working with a team it's important to share ideas regardless of whether they are good or bad in order to form a strong final idea. This has carried on to the data objects as during the first few weeks we had a much more solid idea due to the fact that we shared many ideas with each other. Another thing i can take away from this project is the importance of time management when it comes to university projects in contrast with highschool work, it is much more self driven and no one will tell you whether you have done enough work or not. Cards for play was probably the best example of that as we rushed everything last minute in order to have something to present in time. This experience will help me in the future as time management skills can be applied in pretty much everything.
The cards for play project will probably be one of the most beneficial projects only due to the fact that it was our first project and there's so much to learn from your first university projects. Going forward I know what to expect from these assignments and will be able to carry myself much better in the team.
Maggie Farell (2017), “Time Management”, https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/doi/full/10.1080/01930826.2017.1281666?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Thomas E Harris, John C Sherblom (2011) “Small Group and Team Communication” https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tdpdDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=team+communication+advantages&ots=GNZIL92zz5&sig=YGMsWn9XNYemGG4ods6ARwTzBag&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
