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Personal Blog Reflection week 8

What are your design principles for designing and fostering online communities or networks based on your experience in this course and your project? 

The topic of this week is about what are my design principles and how to foster online tools and networks. From what I have learnt form PJ, I think my principle is just a way to facilitate online communities, they are mutual beneficial.

Based on my experience, a good principle for my designing is using networks and getting involved in online communities. On the other hand, to foster online communities and networks is letting more and more people to participate.

Now, at the end of the Project Community class, I knew lots of online communities already. Through practicing and learning during the past 8 weeks, I found out that being good at using online tools is one of the most important factors to make you become an open innovator.

About how I developed the principle, the topic of week7 was a good example to explain it. If I had a design challenge, I would like to join and participate in those online communities to get inspirations. Also, if I have good ideas, which can help other people, I will share them. Furthermore, I love sharing with friends when I found something interesting on a website or other platforms. It is also a better way to spread those online communities and good ideas. So, taking initiative to join in online communities, not only benefit my design but also foster those communities and networks.

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personal blog week7

If you had a design challenge, would you join and participate in one of the types of online communities we’ve been researching? Why or why not?

The answer is definitely yes. To Join and participate in online communities is a good way to get inspirations when met a design challenge. Actually, I did it quite often. I will seek for help online if I get stuck in any cases, like, exhaust brainstorming new items for visualization sketching or lack of ideas for a text report.

The tools I used to tackle the obstacles in designing are Facebook, some specific online forums，and something like Yahoo Answers. Those are all really useful for me. During the process, I can always get benefits. Even though, sometimes you don’ t get stuck, just share the good ideas you have with other people, then you can also get improvements from others’ feedbacks.

In addition, after you got a good idea, there are still some challenges, like how to make it happen? How to let people aware of it? I think one of the best solutions is that utilizing those online fundraising websites which we researched a lot during past 7 weeks.

Overall, I think participate in online communities is helpful for me to tackle design challenges.

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Evaluations & Contributions

Looking back the last six weeks, there are some apparent changes happened. For instance, at first I wasted too much time to think about how to write my personal blog, how to do it in a right way? and looked at the introductions over and over, because I couldn't get the point immediately. I had no experiences of  posting blogs online before, so, posting blog every week was a challenge for me at first. But now, everything goes quite influent . I knew the purpose of the class and the goals of the group work. I think the evaluation of my study is successful. Because, now I knew more online communication tools and also learnt how to use them.

About the learning of my team, quite nice actually. We are getting better step by step. Comparing with the beginning of our group formed, we all not that clear about what to do. But now, it is different, members get involved in the group activities actively and can finish the teamwork in time.

Speaking of the learning of the whole class, we tried many ways in the project community class which adding more fun for learning. I can see many students enjoy in it.

When it comes to the contributions to the group project, in term of my group, I think everyone fulfilled their responsibilities. Although sometimes we had confusions, we discussed and finally we could always get the whole process on the right track. In terms of me, I confused at first,  now I am willing to share anything I got. I hope I can make more contributions for our group project.

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Personal Blog Reflection week5:

During the past five weeks, that was a brand new experience that I never had before. I think everything goes well so far. Of course, at first I confused about the class, like what’s the purpose of it? What this class expect from me? Step by step, I am quit clear what's going on right now. The combinative way that Project community class used is helpful for facilitating my learning.

In terms of the teamwork, we divided our role clearly; everything is on the right track. I think the facilitator in my group is our team leader who always give us direction about our group work and make the working process smoothly. In addition, the tutors are also involving in both online and offline communications. Like, on our group platform (FB), not only the students here, also Shahab and Nancy are included, they are definitely good facilitators for the community.

I found out that it is useful to have both synchronous and asynchronous communications for PC study. At the end of every week, we post reflection blog, then, we comment on others’ reflections and also get feedback. What else, the video upload every week for previewing the class, these communication styles belong to asynchronous side. During the class, we use synchronous ways, we work with people face-to-face collaboratively, and we can ask questions we had and get answer immediately. I think this is a really good combination between synchronous and asynchronous communications, which facilitate the whole learning process.

To being a peer facilitator, I think what I should do is participate actively and share more with others. It is impossible to keep the entire group motivated by a single person. To my opinion, the key for facilitating each other is that everybody hold active attitude to involve in.

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How much does your personal preference drive your tool choices? What if everyone else in your group had different preferences? How would you proceed as you steward the technology? Does looking at others’ preferences and perspectives change your view as a tech steward? Challenge you?

For my own preference, I tend to like those “old-fashion” tools, like face-to-face meeting, E-mail or discussion boards. I do not prefer synchronous interactions which using videoconference or teleconference. Sometimes, because of the bad connections which always make me cannot focus on the topic anymore. I think some text things are really important, like the meeting note we used in the PC class which is clear and time-saving. Also, as English is my second language, text things can help me work more fluent. Of course, my personal preference is also depend on what project we do and what suit the whole group best.

  Normally, there must have different preference about choosing tools between members. I think this problem is easy to cope with. For instance, we can use more than one tool. Still, like the ways we used with Nancy, skype, meeting notes and blog posting etc. So, everyone can use the way they like while experience others’ preferences.

  To proceed being a technology steward, first of all is accumulate experience through group working. Learning other members’ preferences and exploring new things.  Finally, being aware of the needs and trying to address the needs.

  Obviously, there are a wide range tools for people to choose. Everyone has their own preferences and I think others’ preferences definitely have influences on me. Because, I don’t know that much online tools, from others’ choices I can notice more practical tools, then if I find out some tools suit me, I will change my preference.

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my experiences of project community

During the third PC class, we looked back to the last two weeks, surmised what we did so far. As the individual blog for this week, I want to make a small conclusion about my experiences of Project Community. At the first week, I had totally no idea about this class. Because, it was the first time that I knew those kinds of online communities, like Kickstarters,https://angel.co/, etc. And at the same time, I needed to join the discussionimmediately. So, that would be a challenge for me to blend into the class and the group work in time. At the second week, I was on the right track, starting to enjoy the group work. I can say that I like working in a group, I love to listen others’opinions. It is obvious that there is difference in the way people treat problems, so that I can get ideas in various angles from others. Besides, I can also gain improvements when I am sharing my thoughts. In the past three weeks’ teamwork, I think the working atmosphere in my group was nice. Everything goes well, the tasks were divided to group members in a reasonable way that everyone knew what they should do easily. So, we could finish our group work efficiently. For the coming weeks, I am going to do more research about the online communities with innovation design, try to be more open-minded and sharemore ideas with group members. Plus, I missed to read the announcements for this week. So, I will get prepare everything for next week. 发自我的 iPad

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my own networks

Networks are a part of my daily life, communicating with families and friends, watching the news all around world, etc. I am habituated to gather information through the internet when I met problems. Mostly, networks can help me out or give me a direction about my problems. I appreciate the conveniences that networks and online communities brought to me.

But, I still tend to use online tools more individually. As some defined groups and social networks, I may be interested in the contents people talk about, but I may not join the group, expect some working groups or studying groups. Like those social tools, such as Facebook, sometimes I would like to know what are people around me doing, but I just feel uncomfortable to share many things  there. That is my type.

I think the new way of involving in the network that I want to experiment with is being more interactive. During the observing, more or less, I can get improvements from others’ opinion. I think it is time to participate and share.

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What do you/we need and want to learn as you/we explore the application of online communities and networks to open innovation design?

The topic we discussed in the class is fund, fun, support-raising. I actually got fun from this class and  some new thoughts, which took me to a new world of design.

Coming up with good ideas is essential for a designer. But, the most important thing is how to make it happen. There is a definite link between network and innovation design. To be honest, I just realized the existenceof those support-raising websites. The websites (like kickstarter,https://angel.co/) provide designers a platform to show their ideas. Meanwhile, investors can also find what they want to satisfy their needs. Kickstarter including 13 categories and 36 subcategories creative projects.

Here are some of the most successful projects:

(from Wikipedia)

Online communities opened a door for innovation design. Stimulating people being more creative. People all around the world not only can share and communicate their ideas together, but also can get more chance to market their ideas and make them alive.

The class makes people more open-minded. I think that is what I need. Cultivating a brand-new perspective to embrace the new settings, new ideas for design. There are some expectations about this class. At the end of the class, I hope my teamwork and communication skills can be improved. What is more, I expect that through exploring those online communities, I can get enough information about this field and figure out how those communities work exactly for a designer. I believe those useful tools will finally benefit my design in the future.