#projcom

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WEEK 8

Looking back at all themes that we have discussed and discovered, I can tell, that when it goes to online communities and using them in innovative designing, I have learnt a lot.

First of all, I got to know how they work and how useful it is to be a part of an online community. When you 'belong' to one, your life and work as a designer, can be easier and more efficient. You can get many information, help and support. People, who are interested in the same subject that you are, are part of the community you belong to, are willing to help, share their knowledge and experience, which may help you in creating very innovative designs.

I was really surprised by the fact, that so many people use online communities and networks to improve their work. Even simple research or asking a few question to right people can give you many insights and ameliorate your design. They also help you to start with the project, to know what are your 'ideal clients' expectations and needs. I think that if you want your design to be succesful, it is really important to be aware of existing online communities, how important they are in innovative design and how can you use those making your designs.

When it goes to design principles and adapting them to online communities, I think that the most important is to make the design simple, easy in use and nice for the eye. If the design itself has to many 'options' and 'possibilities' it may become too complicated to use, which may couse people's aversion and they may not be willing to use those. That is why, I think that combining simple but effective project with elegant appearance is the most important.

To the next year students:

The course itself may teach you a lot. You will probably feel confused for first 4 weeks, but do not worry, it has happened before. During project community classes, you will learn how to work for a real client, how to create and design the solutions that he/she needs, but first of all you will learn how to start all that procces. What is also very important, you will be forced to work in teams, which is something, that shows how important is that you have people around you, who have the same goals but may have different ideas.It teaches you how to work not by your own, but with others, how to share ideas, agree or disagree with them, argument your rights, divide your work into every members of team, do assignments on time, be responsible for all team, not only for yourself. And that is what I will 'take with me' as the course ends. I am really happy that I have learnt so much and I am proud of my team and my teammates as we are getting our project done.

Advices:

Do not waste your time on doing nothing, trust me, start doing things, as early as possible and do not wait for answers from your client (assuming you have some) because it may never come and the project has to be done anyway. I will also focus more on the teamwork itself, at the beginning of the  project, not at the end, as we have done this year.

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Project Communities: Accomplishment

This is our last week of Project Communities and we are currently working on production of the video for our NGO. We are going to present our advice and explain our points visually. We have to work really carefully to transfer our thoughts in a presentative way so that our client will be consulted properly and satisfied with the designed solutions.

There is also another thing... What I think that is important about using online communities and networks in innovative design. WIth the advent of the Internet, the way people work has changed cardinally. All new features allow to implement the plans easier so they leave more time for us to analyze and come up with new ideas. And one more point... the most essential tip for any kind of the project you carry out - finding the appropriate and convenient online tool for your specific strategy. Personally I've learnt a lot from our Monday classes and team work throughout the whole process. To be brief, they are collaboration skills, Project Management attainments and Online Update. It used to seem to me that I have a complete picture about how Social Network works. However, I have been wrong because after this course I've found out to myself that is a way more global and vast community with more opportunities to be united and also realize your business purposes. Facing everything I have been gaining during these weeks I can point out the most important Design Principle is

Good design is innovative

Regarding Vitsœ’s Good Design Principles, the possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology, and can never be an end in itself. So even if we are talking about Project for our NGO, what they have been lack of is innovation. That is what we are going to upgrade Gogorobi Foundation with. 

For those who are going to study this course next year, I would say that it is mistaken to be afraid of it in the beginning and find it confusing. Keep in mind that it is all about communication, teamwork and brainstorming and you will do it successfully. A one really good tip I would mention is team's collaboration organizing. It would be better to decide on the style of the way your group will work and split the roles from the outset. Be more dynamic!

Project Communities course has attracted me to cooperation which is definitely going to help me with my path through IDE Program.

Thank you for reading!

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WEEK 7

Looking into themes which we were discovering, getting to know and discussing, I think that the one, which could help us (our NGO) the most, would be crowdsourcing.

As the challenge is to improve the platform which they are using to exchange information, experiences and knowledge, between those ten centres all over the world, I think that crowdsourcing could be very helpful to us.

First reason, why I chose crowdsourcing is that it allows to collect information, ideas from others and may be used via internet. If we want our project to target some specific group, or if we have to solve some of problems that community has, crowdsourcing can be used. It gives us opportunity to get to know what the problem is, how it should be solved and what are people's expectations and actual needs.

Second one, is that, by crowdsourcing we can get needed services. In our case, the platform which NGO is using, has been already stated and created. But if we had to decide on our own and actually create one, I think that we could always turn to (for example) some online community, which would like to helps us in creating one.In that way, we could get a service done by people who care about the project and have needen knowledge and experience.

Third one, may be fact that crowdsourcing also helps to 'start' companies or charities, in that case NGO. You can get information about what is needed, what and how  should be done. Let's say that somewhere in the world, there is a problem with (again, for example) supply chains, people do not have money, knowledge and resources to produce those in the sustainable way, but have good conditions to do so. By crowdsourcing, you can get to know, that the problem exists, find people who the problem concerns and also those, who want to change the situation. In that way a large community can be established and even  an organization willing to 'fight' with the problem.

Starting the project, the most important thing for us was to get answers to our questions, which we had to the NGO itself. We wanted to know, how the system of communication works now, what are their main problems, what works well, what should be improved etc. We needed information to know exactly how the result of the project should look like, what we are expected to do. We did not have enough time to 'crowdsource' all the information on our own, so we decided to ask Maarten, but we still have not recived the answers, so we simply based our work on assumptions that we have done.

Our solution to the problems they have will be a project of the platform, proposition of how it should look like, what options it should have, what type of information would it give, how could people find what they need or want to find, also how, where they can add things that they have done (experiences and knowledge). We decided that this is the best way to have the assignment done. As we had to face with problems like lack of communication, user's friendliness and user's experience, we think that giving them a design of platform which is esay to use, simple but professional will be the best option. We will also do a report (essay) giving the information why and how we decided to do things in that particular way, and what influenced our decisions.

There is some time left. so we are still working on it and improving, to make it the best :).

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WEEK 6 GROUP WORK

This is our group work, that we have done during classes on Monday.

http://www.crowdfunder.com/ The Crowdfunding site is one of the biggest crowdfunding spaces available for companies. This traffic allows for a higher probability that a given project will get funded. However, the success of the campaign is not dependent solely on the size of the platform, but how you utilize the community that already supports your cause. Tackling the issues of intranet implementation is one of our key goals (refer to the spider diagram for the importance and relevance of the aspects of this challenge). Another factor with crowdfunder, is the system of failure and success. Failed projects return the money and this could be seen as a waste of time attemped vs the eventual offset return of just investing in the project internally. The intranet system is for the company and although it will help the company communicate and improve the efficiency, we don’t foresee this being a good motivator for people to invest in soildaridad. http://www.indiegogo.com/ The site has categories for different project you can fund, including food, environment and health. This targeting will help Solidaridad attract specific donors who are simply passionate about the cause. Indiegogo also has a great reputation and a number of success stories that make it a trustworthy site. Indiegogo does a better job with ecological and sustainable projects. Sections under food - for example - raise money towards a peanut butter brand which with every pot purchased, a permanent amount goes towards aid packets in developing countries. This sort of system could work very well for Soildaridad in more regional based projects, however, after reviewing these sites, our group has decided that these sites are fairly irrelevant to the challenge define, as not many will be willing to donate towards making a companies inner working more efficient. However, they could be used by Solidaridad to aid their future goals of sustainability and proper business practice by 2050.

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Crowdsourcing&Crowdfunding

It is not the first time, that I heard terms 'crowdsourcing' and 'crowdfunding', but I must say that this is the first time, when I actually took some time to get to know and explore what they exactly mean. We have done that during our group work and I have also looked for some information about it on my own. That research helped me in making conclusions.

I think that crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are important, not only if it goes to designs, but it can also be very helpuf in getting any kind of information or dividing work (by finding people who really want to do this).

The main pros of crowdsuorcing is fact, that you can get a lot of help and feedback from people. Of course, the process doesn't have to occur online, but it is very easy and fast way to find the information, that we are looking for. For example if you have an idea, you want to design something, but you have some hesitations, you can always turn to other people, who are interested in that, particular subject, have knowledge or experience in that field, or are people who you are aiming your project to. Crowdsourcing gives opportunity to obtain needed services, ideas or content. You can get to know what is needed (in what form your design may be used), what are the demands.

Crowdfunding also is helpful in bringing your design to life. It is an often situation, that somebody has an idea, but doesn't have money to realize it. Crowdfunding lets us find a large group of people, who are interested in supporting our idea. You don't have to go to bank and ask for a loan or a credit. You can find financial support, searching for people who are interested in that specific field and consider your idea and design as worth investing. It works for no only for individuals, but also for companies and NGOs.

I think that if you want to be a successful innovator, you should not do everything on your own. It is impossible to have and know all the things that are needed to invent something and put it into our life (come up with an idea, design, money and everything else). Even if you do have all of those, looking for a feedback is also important. It can show that there's an audience and market for the project and it also engages audience into your design, even into every stage of it.

Cons of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding may be facts that somebody may steal your idea while presenting it to people. Or you can fail while meeting campaign goals, people may get to know about it and be affraid to trust you. You may also feel overwhelmed if you realise, that there is so many things that you still have to find out, information to collect, research to do, financial support to find etc.

However, I think that it is worth trying. If you believe in yourself, you'll become very successful and crowdfunding and crowdsourcing surely will help you in that.

:)

[yannomanno]

The flu finally got me. As usual one of the last and having the worst of it during the weekend. But, i've done all the work for tomorrow, all I can remember that is. I'll just drug up tomorrow and be there. Speaking of the flu. I'm pretty sure I caught it during a good, albeit smoky, meeting with projcomm 7 last wednesday when the university was shut down to sympathise with the US citizens. During this meeting I sensed another virus catching on: they are actually getting it. Good insights, good sharing, yay! The next day I sensed The same in group 6, although they were still having some attendance issues. If this virus continues, i'll be a very happy tutor at the end. If I survive this week.

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Insight Of Collaboration

We've been working together already for a few weeks so by now we've managed to find out what is going well in our team and what should be improved. As I see it, a small fail of our group in the start of this project was uncertainty and lack of determination.

This Monday's meeting was a way better because we have finally found a right approach to our goal and started to communicate with each other more effectively. Now I can say that our team is collaboration and that's what is working well. For instance, we have decided on each member's role in the group (patience was a great value) and now we cooperate a lot using our online meeting points. I've found it pretty useful to read some chapters from "Project Management. A practical approach" to understand how to use your team-working skills so that the project can evolve and develop (would like to thank Patryk, our idea developer, for reminding me about this course book).

 We'll have to keep working on finding solutions for our NGO, organizing our information and advice, create a presentation and video. But another important target - teamwork excellence. That's challenging.

It's the fact that productivity of any group working on the joint project depends upon an aspect as size of the team. We are 8 and we faced with a problem of thoroughness of our work until we began to share the tasks out. This way we divided our group into 2 to work on Spider diagram and Research at the same time. That is also what we made for "Me, We, Network" and Crowdsourcing task. To sum up, I can say that working in a group of 4 people is more certain and brings more accomplishments. We are from different countries and it means that every one has different cultural background. However, it doesn't prevent us from matching each other at all. We can explain it by the impact of globalization process which unites the whole world.

Our task is getting more and more clear and this is what we need to catch up with what we missed and reach our objectives.

In the coming weeks I will try to be more decisive. This includes bringing out more convenient ideas and offers. I'd like to be a more helpful and desired team member and this is what i will work on. I think I can reach it by becoming more ambitious and following the advice that Nancy's made during the hangout: - have a plan - surface assumptions - check in frequently - have a visual way to track tasks - don't work when hungry - watch out for English language misinterpretation

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WORK TEAMS-week 5 assignment

Working in teams, from definition, should be better and easier than working as an individual.

Work, that has to be done, can be divided into  members of group, so  everybody is responsible for some part of the challenge. If somebody has problems with fulfilling the assignment, can always get help and support from colleagues. Also, if everybody focuses on one part of assignment (of course having in mind the group outcome of a project), can go deeper into specific field, research it better, get more information and gain knowledge, which can be shared with others. Working in group gives us more possibilities, more ideas, more conclusions and makes the work easier, as one person doesn't have to do everything on his/her own. Moreover, if you face the challenge in group, you can always get a feedback, you learn a lot by cooperation and you are responsible as a group, not as an individual.

I don't have much experience in beeing a part of group and making projects together, but I am very glad, that I will have a chance to learn the procces and to get to know how it works, as becoming successful desinger and innovator goes together with working in teams, not as an individual.

We didn't choose our teammates on our own, so I was a bit anxious, if we are going to get along with each other. But, I must say, that this is one of things that works for me the best as for now. I like people, who I am working with. I know, what they do best, what are their good sides and what they may have problems with.

The assignment itself is challenging me. We have a lot to do, we are running out of time, as the deadline is in 4 weeks, or even 3 now, and we had some problems to face as a team. The main one, is our problem with communication. When we have meetings, there is never whole team present, also, nobody knows, what they are supposed to do and what others are doing. Our group consists of 7 people, so I don't think it's because there is too many of us, I don't also blame anybody, as I said, it is just a luck of communication. Of course if we were working in 2, the communication would be better for sure, but the more people in the group, the more ideas.

But this Monday, we decided to divide into 3 groups of 2 people and each of those is responsibile for some part of assignment (after fulfilling one part of work, we will share it with team mates, and add it to our project-try to put it as a part of final outcome), of course the roles will change depending on what we will have to do particular week. There is also a leader, who is supposed to 'control' our work, help us in case of any problems and contact with Maarten (NGO). The roles are still being discussed, as the problem with communication is. We have meeting tommorow, we hope that everybody will show up, so we can set tho rules, roles and solve our problems.

I think we have to face some problems, because we do not have much experience in working in teams. We all are still a bit confused, we don't know what we should actually do (besides the every week assignments). But as i said, during Monday's meeting, we made a progress, we talked about our problems, set the roles and decided who does what. And I hope, that starting from there, our team work will improve and the problems will disappear.