This past summer I worked on a research project in a group of eight. It involved coming up with ideas about how to help people reminisce (through literature review), interviewing people to find out what they valued about reminiscing, and building a web application that attempted to meet as many requirements (derived from the literature review and interviews) as possible.
Skill sets and backgrounds varied greatly. This allowed people to do what they were good at, but also learn about other areas as well. For example, three people specialized in programming. One team member was a Landscape Architect, who provided many creative ideas that we would not have thought of. One team member was a neuro-aesthetics major, who settled design disputes based on her knowledge.
Some people had worked together before, which probably helped because those people knew each other's strengths and weaknesses but they weren't too familiar to feel pressure to conform. In order to stimulate social interactions and a feeling of belonging, we scheduled regular social activities outside of work. On McGrath's Task Circumplex, when we were brainstorming ideas we would have been in the Generate area (Creative). When we had to come up with requirements for our system, we would have been in the Choose area (Decision Making).
Our project required that our time be split between solitary activities and group activities. For example, the programmers spent a lot of time building prototypes, which were then presented to other members of the group for critiques. Our faculty advisor oversaw all of the individual processes, lead group meetings and made sure our group never got stuck on a problem for too long.
We did complete our task successfully - we pulled requirements from interview data and the literature review and we built a web application that fosters reminiscing. Everybody got what they wanted out of the project - anyone who wanted pay received it, and people got to do what they were best at while learning new skills. Overall, I think we'd be happy working together again.
Although in general we all worked within 20 feet of each other, at the end of the summer a few people in the group went home, so it became difficult to wrap up our analysis. We tried accomplishing this through email, but it was so asynchronous that we eventually decided to delay future work until we all returned to campus.
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Did you try to complete the analysis through a method other than e-mail (chat, video conferencing, phone conferencing, etc)? I ask this because you mentioned that the e-mail method was too asynchronous, and that was the reason you gave up. I wonder if you would have had better success completing the analysis if you worked through a synchronous medium. While these methods do not share all of the benefits of face-to-face, they do require a quick response time from all members.
ReplyDeleteYour post showed me something that I hadn't thought of before. By assembling a team with a diverse knowledge base and skill set, your professor prevented frequent territorial conflicts from arising. When everyone knows pretty much the same thing, it is hard to assert dominance over a particular area, and people tend to step on each others' toes much more frequently. In your group, your neuro-aesthetics major, who knew far more about her field than anyone else, was able to settle disputes quickly. By having the group defer to her in her field, she prevented territorial conflict that could have otherwise arisen.
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