There have been several opportunities to work within a team during this module. I initially felt worried when a group activity was mentioned as I was concerned that I would let members of the group down due to my lack of design experience and knowledge of the software. Regardless of my worries, each teamwork activity has had a significant learning outcome. In this post I will be using the Rolfe et al. reflective writing framework to reflect upon these outcomes.
What?
The first task given in the teamwork challenges was to create an app or website targeted towards teenagers to promote sustainable gaming. Based on the UX/UI module carried out last academic year our team decided to define the problem space, research the stakeholders and target audience, look at branding for environmental campaigns targeted towards teenagers and carry out competitor research. We split these tasks up amongst the group and created a mind map of ideas, with a list of outcomes at the bottom, please see below:
During this activity my aim was to show that I could make a useful contribution to the team. I have experience of working as part of a team through my career, so I decided to take the lead. I assigned tasks to each member; we all communicated our different ideas and design thoughts throughout the task. I ensured that we came together before we presented our findings for one last recap. I feel it is important for everyone to feel included and listened to. I made sure that everyone had the opportunity to share their opinions and collated these into bullet points that I shared with the class.
Working in this group was good because everyone brought a different strength, from people who were eager to jump straight into the design element, to people like me who were happier to research thoroughly and spent most of the allocated time finding useful information and coming up with creative ideas on how we could effectively appeal to a teenage audience.
So what?
Whilst the group carried out research, I got distracted by members coming forward with ideas and could have improved by taking some time away to independently research without distractions. This would allow me to form a better understanding of the problem space. Which in turn would lead to me having a greater contribution to the team by providing more knowledgeable, research backed ideas. Another improvement I could make when working as part of a team is to have more confidence, there were multiple ideas that I held back, which in turn could hold the team back. Whilst the ideas I didn’t share were not all good, they could spark inspiration or be used as a foundation for better ideas.
Now what?
An aspect I will take away is having the confidence to take the lead when others are less confident in doing so. Additionally, in future teamwork tasks I will continue to make it a priority that everyone involved has their say.
Throughout the group activities my confidence grew, I was less worried to hold back my ideas and in the final group task in which we created a social media post for the Graphic Design department I felt able to ask colleagues for help and opinions on my design.
During the group work, I felt that the process of researching and putting forward ideas evolved to become more streamlined by using Padlet. During the next post I will include a couple of the Padlets made during the other team activities, along with a Padlet of interesting websites and web trends.