So Much Feedback – Week 6 Blog Entry
Firstly, I think I got my weeks confused with these blogs post, as I wrote one a week ago but called it Week 4…hmm not sure what happened. Anyway, this week consisted mainly of two things: the prototype, and feedback. On Monday we got time to truly express how we felt about each member of our group, whether it be about effort, attitude, problem solving approaches, etc, and I found it extremely helpful. I heard encouraging words from teammates that motivated me to keep actively contributing and working toward the common goal. We also talked about each of our strengths and weaknesses with regards to the 5 P’s, which was very helpful in editing our collective team goal and individualized goals. The open environment this feedback exercise created allowed me to communicate any disagreements or arguments I have had with teammates, and now I feel like we are a more cohesive unit because the information we shared. We talked as a group about emotional intelligence, and noted that in order to be productive we must first be emotionally stable and level-headed. Appealing to our audience’s emotions is a crucial aspect of our proposal and eventual final presentation, so we must first stabilize the emotions within our group before looking to pass them onto the audience.
On Wednesday we ran our prototype, and simply put; it was a success. We did a sample scavenger hunt, with two clues, written in half chinese and half english. That is, the first portion in english, the second portion in Chinese. Not some crazy English/Chinese hybrid language. Our subjects were two classmates, Joey and Sally, Joey is a domestic student, Sally is an international student. We videotaped the whole thing via iphone, and interviewed each of them afterward as a group, sans Jared, who was participating in another group’s prototype. The feedback we got them afterward was perhaps even more beneficial than the experience and video evidence, as they made suggestions and alterations to our general idea that will really help us in the long term. They successfully completed the scavenger hunt, one student figuring out each clue. One clue threw them off slightly, but they recovered and figured out as a team where to go. This was a much less hectic week than last, and our general group consensus about our problem and solution are very strong.