So it's week 5 already. Well, almost week 6, but there's always the one-post-a-week thing that I'm trying to keep up with. Time flies really fast when you don't know what you're really up to.
This week, we had this final project pitching session that was at this new place in BIZ (LT19 was it?) Thought some of the projects were worth doing, but most of them, I realise I'm nowhere near capable to do them.
Many of the presentations did not capture most of our attention. I'm going to be rather direct here... Like after 1 week, most of the topics have already left my mind. Except for a few, like the CELC presentation which was done in a very surprising way and rightaway caught our attention, which seemed worthwhile doing. Others somehow seem to be rather mundane and non-world-changing.
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In any case, we have been brainstorming for ideas for assignment 3. One of the major items we had to fulfill was to do an app that NEEDS to be done on a mobile device (so to me it implies we have to utilize something that is "first-class" on mobile phones). Since I'm still carrying a nokia, I haven't really experienced what it is like to carry a smartphone daily, so the "mobile experience" is rather lost on me. Out of so many features that a smartphone has, what is it that is a "first-class" feature on phones?
Our group settled on an app that somehow should link to the camera that is built in to almost every smartphone nowadays. Wonder how we are going to build it actually...
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Random reflections.
Somehow I've realised that I've a "laser-like" focus on my ideas so far, in the brainstorming phase. It seems to be both helpful, yet crippling at times.
Usually when you try to brainstorm to get ideas for an app, or to flesh out the features of an app, you tend to go off in different kinds of scenarios, some doable, some far-fetched. For assignment 1, when we were thinking about Let's Goal (we didn't call it that yet), we had some epic features (to me) that we thought about. However, I sort of went in to the google doc and started to wonder if those features were really necessary, and started to "kill" them off. Even before we thought through them and possibly analyze the impact of their directions.
So what really happened was, I came up with this thing called a "mission statement" for the app. I tried to make sure that every feature followed the "mission statement", so that we don't stretch ourselves too far, doing things that don't even value add to our app. Also the saying "do one thing only and do it well" somehow stuck in my head, so every feature that we suggested, went through this culling process.
Why was this not good? Probably because of conflict avoidance, if someone comes up with a great idea, but it doesn't help our core, then it may be hard for the person to take it when we reject it when we have a huge pool of directions to go for, and we have to start cutting features. This person might be anyone, even me. And I'm rather emotional when under stress, so yea it was sort of an agreement, a contract with the group and myself.
However, idealistic intentions aside, I never really put this through to the UI/UX design. We had a clearly defined mission statement, with the words "do one thing and do it well" next to it. But somehow along the way, as we got into development, that went into the back of my mind (I blame myself since I pushed for this). And the flow was done based on features and program structure, and not more on a seamless user experience.
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So why do I bring this up now? For Assignment 3, I realise I'm starting along the same track. I've countered an idea before I completely heard it out, and that's really not good for team dynamics. There's the other extreme, when everyone hears everything out, and decide to include everything in the app (from booking plane tickets to making a simulator), because everything sounds wonderful.
Where do we draw the line? And who can tell me what features are really good for our apps? I have no idea...
I think it's okay to cut out features as long as you think it is not essential or not doable within the time limit. For me, I usually try to make the project very doable (we did end up cutting a lot of our features for our first assignment, even at the very start, like the private versus public goals one). I think features can be added later on in any case.
ReplyDeleteFor me, even though I reject people's ideas, I'll end up thinking about it when I have the time. That's why I thought of adapting your idea for a communication thing between users and experts for the final project. (But def. not forum-ish k xD) I think it's okay to counter ideas, but counter them with reasons. And sometimes, what is said might not be what the person intends, so you may have to think about what the other person is actually saying.
Actually that's where Scrum principles are quite useful. You can put down all of the features, then rank them by priority. It's easy to convince someone to reduce the priority on an idea than to throw it out altogether.
ReplyDeleteAfter that you divide it into sprints. The advantage now is that you will have a fully working product, and there's still a chance that the feature the person wanted gets done if the earlier features get done faster than expected.
Incidentally there's a case study on Group Dynamics coming up on Monday. :)
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