Week 1: Getting Started

Fig1. Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

It’s hard to believe I have already completed three modules of the Masters programme, and I’m now starting my fourth! After a few weeks of rest and recuperation, and really positive feedback from my previous module assignments, I am ready to approach this module with a renewed vigour.

My previous blog posts reflect on my learnings, processes and individual task management throughout the weekly challenges and module assignments, however this module is ‘Co-Creative Design and Development Practice for which I am required to actively participate within a group for the entire duration. My observations will still be viewed through the self-reflective lens, however will focus on teamwork and collaboration, as this is the emphasis of the module.

As this is now the fourth module, I naturally have made alliances with other members of the cohort, and so forming a group was relatively easy, and for this I’m thankful as we were able to bond very quickly. We decided to form a mixed cohort group, with two from the User Experience (Hanni and I) and two from Indie Games Development (Anouk and Rob). I was really keen to push myself out of my comfort zone, to work not only with another UXer but also with game developers. In real world settings, we will work alongside many different skill sets, and so I felt this was good practice.

We came together for our first meeting as a group very quickly, all of us aware how fast the time goes and how crucial it is to push in those first few weeks to understand our brief, utilise rapid ideation tools to generate concepts, and decide on the best direction.

I knew that I wanted to be an active team member, but not necessarily the leader. I knew my team all worked in the UX and game development industry, and I knew this was a perfect opportunity to learn from their experience.

We assigned Anouk as the team leader, as her personality type suited that role, and she very quickly created an agenda for our first meeting. Agendas help us to focus on topics to discuss and drive conversation, particularly in those first few meetings.

Forming

We began our first meeting with each of us introducing ourselves, highlighting our interests, our intentions and work background. It felt like we all had something we could individually bring to the group. We decided early that we would follow the ‘Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing’ project management model (Tuckman, 1965). This is a path with clearly defined stages that allows a team to gel and nurtures high performance. This initial meeting marked the beginning of our forming stage, and it felt easy for us to feel comfortable with each other, and pre-conceived anxieties about what our role in the team would be were quickly resolved.

Storming

We had already decided that we would follow the IDG brief, to create a game prototype with a highly replayable core loop, and so following our first meeting we began our Storming stage. We took part in a Figjam, using rapid ideation tools such as Crazy 8’s to each generate game ideas. As I don’t personally come from a game background, I was initially concerned about what ideas I could offer, as I was unaware at this stage of the constraints and capabilities of the IGD members. I was quickly assured that it was actually a benefit as I may offer ‘outside the box’ ideas that may not have been considered otherwise.

Over the next few nights we each carried out our rapid ideation, and decided by the next meeting we would have used stamp tools to either love, like or be unsure about each others ideas. We would discuss each members top ideas at the next meeting, with a view to carrying out further mind-mapping and mood-boarding to further explore the top suggestions.

SMART goals

We felt that it was a good idea to create some SMART goals at the beginning of this module, to focus our minds on what we individually want to achieve and how we go about doing that. Whilst it’s a group challenge module, it is us as individuals that are taking part in this course, and it is important to keep focus on our learning objectives.

Fig 2. SMART goals for this module (created on Figma).

References

Tuckman, B.W. (1965). 'Developmental Sequence in Small Groups,' Psychological Bulletin, 63(6).