Vis Studio Weeks 4 & 5

Visualization Studio Journal Weeks 4 & 5.

Our fourth week in class, the peacekeepers came. It was a man and wife team who were interested in teaching us about communication and problem solving in a group setting. It was interesting. I wasn’t much in the mood for the exercises when they happened but they went well. Our problem solver welled up about some conflict he had with his daughter, and you could tell he took his techniques very seriously. I thought about it a lot in the following days. I’ve been really trying to pay attention to how I visually appear as a listener, and also if I’m consistently attempting to keep open body language. I made some “I feel” statements with a friend, which mostly led to ridicule, but I can see how sticking to that format can solve some communication problems. For example, “I feel” that it does not point fingers, and it ensures that words are carefully chosen before they are spoken. After our class period our group hid in the depths of the library, worked on our proposal, and divided into research areas. I found the meeting successful.

In between our fourth and fifth week, we met on Monday at 2:30, to further work on our proposal and our work breakdown structure. I thought this also went well, but we didn’t finish our proposal as hoped. It was much more time consuming that I had originally planned for.

Our fifth week in class, we enjoyed more team-building instruction from two grown men with a set of tinker toys for each team. The exercise was, once again, in communication and role-play. I found the exercises entertaining, but scarcely educational. This would have been more useful to me in the beginning of the semester, I think. It did; however, seem to really affect some of the other groups that were, perhaps, still forming groups and teams. I feel fortunate to have Krista as our advisor, because she had worked to solve these issues for us very early on. After the tinkering was finished, we returned to our corner of the library, and watched the rainfall. I was very stressed out, and was not much of a leader on this day. I apologize profusely to my teammates, and promise to be better rested for our next time together. There had been confusion in our deadline, and so we rushed to meet it. We had thought we were just handing in our draft proposal, not a client-ready copy, and so that is where this group-stress came from. Through a little bit of unhappiness, quick thinking, teamwork, and hitting the grindstone we got our proposal in the next day. I wish we could have waited to hand in our proposal, because we did not even receive a response from our client yet. Ben and I were going to speak with Brett after our class on Friday, but did not. It escaped my mind that I should have spoken with him. I attempted to set up a meeting to go over the proposal with them this next coming Tuesday, but I still have not received a response. Tomorrow, when the group meets at 2:30, I’d like to get a hold of them.

-Paige