Problems, challenges and dependencies

The main question at the start of my internship at Greenhouse Group, was to create an installation, based on a chatbot, which shows on the outside what happens on the inside. Greenhouse Group got the opportunity to perform on Glow in November 2018. To accomplish this, we needed to form a multidisciplinary team, which has the task to build the Glowie installation. This turned out to be complicated because of the new and challenging aspects of this project, because there were a lot of dependencies within the team. Every category needed to be adjust to eachother. The dependency on the designs were the technical team members and Stakeholder X. The decisions I made had to match with their knowledge and decisions. The challenge for the whole team was to create a reliable installation in just 10 weeks. The first weeks were needed to get a good understanding of the company and the subject matter.

Because of this, our artistic freedom was somewhat restricted as part of our process. At one moment, every design needed to be revised because of Stakeholder X’s direct instructions. New designs were made based on their wishes, instead on the research I’ve done about how certain emotions are expressed. The results were shown during the Glow festival. Another dependency was the delivery time of multiple orders, like the TV-screens. This took such a long time, that the screens and mounts were delivered only one day before the Dutch Design Week began. This caused a serious delay in testing the visuals and the development of the design of the installation.

During Glow, the Chinese delegation came to visit the Glow festival. My task was to make it possible to ship the installation to the light festival in Nanjing in China. To accomplish that, I have hosted the Chinese delegation and convinced them to let Glowie perform at their light festival.

Conclusion

Together with the whole team, we all worked to a goal; a working chatbot in an installation which connects emotions with the motion-designs and its users. The users are; people who are talking to the chatbot, and visitors who see the visuals at the installation on the outside. To accomplish this, equipment was needed;

To get visuals which represents emotions, research was needed. The wheel of emotions was a fundamental base for using colors to represent emotions. The shapes are researched, but there are more possibilities to create visuals representing emotions for a next iteration.

Reflection

Judgement

At the start of the internship I’ve set up a project document with assignment-based head- and sub questions. I approached these questions, aimed on a new and experimental implementation. I focused on the UX-design of the whole installation. Because this was an experimental based assignment, I putted my focus on the UX design of the installation. Because this subject had such experimental character, I noticed less on the pre-set head and sub questions, but with these questions in my mind, I worked with the DOT-framework technique. The next time I would bring the research questions to the front, so I can reflect better on these. This provides better insight of the steps I need to make as a media designer. This improvement would make that colleagues and myself see clearer what the steps are I made.

Communication

During the development of Glowie, I wrote clearly my tasks on post-its during scrum-sessions. With every daily stand-up I gave the team an update of the tasks I’ve done for the project. At these stand-ups I was the only designer within this multi-disciplinary team. Being the only designer in this team, I often felt mis-understanding for my type of field as a designer. The communication between me and the technical boys wasn’t great because of that. Because of the loss of my mother earlier this year, I couldn’t give extra strength onto this, so the problems could stay small and between limits. Despites disrespectful jokes, I stayed calm and tried to make the best out of it. However, I learned a lot despite of that it was a heavy period for me. It was better if I told my story in the beginning of the collaboration, so co-workers could take note with it. I thought I handled right, by keeping personal stuff separate, but in the end, it turned out it was better to express this. The next time I pass through a heavy circumstance, I will talk about it, so I will come to different insights and can act to that. This ensures that my way of communication will stay open, what is necessary in a good way of collaboration.

The communication with Jo-An, my supervisor, was very clear and mainly went by mail. I made a few appointments as well for receiving of feedback about my progress and my portfolio. The communication with Bas was clear, especially when I revealed what happened in my life in 2018.

The communication between me and the Glow organization was very clear, and it was a very pleasant collaboration. With the Glow organization, I may receive and host the Chinese delegation. This went very well. Besides that, I gave the Chinese delegation a VIP-tour and I was the contact person to them whereby I by showing Glowie actively, I convinced them to let Glowie perform in China.

Learning ability

At the end of my study ICT & Media Design, I’m able to say that my experience and skills are grown in the past 4 years. I’ve grown in this wide field, where User Experience is always the central point. I’m capable of making websites, set up a media campaign, carry out diverse design assignments and I’m even able to program an Arduino, which I work on in the last couple of weeks of my graduation internship and I learned to program in the language C for Arduino. During my study I may have performed on Glow 2 times, where I’m very proud of, because the specific field of light art is a field where my passion is, and I want to grow even more in that field.