Collaboration Design

A Collaboration design Approach: Designing Based On Collaboration

We know from our F2F work that collaboration is a powerful agent for getting things done. For creating change and for extending resources to their farthest imaginable limits, these experiences have been mostly in the non-profit, volunteer and community spheres. In all cases, joint purpose and a general lack of resources individually drove collaborations to success.

The design process arts by analyzing the collaboration, with a specific focus on group dynamics. This analysis forms a starting point to establish requirements on the design.

Challenges

However teamwork is not an easy way of working. Miscommunication frequently occurs, even when team members are collocated. When these team members have backgrounds in different disciplines are distributed and have to rely on technology to work together, reaching shared understanding is not trivial.

DustBean©, get a literal thrill out of a successful collaboration, a rush from the connections between people, organizations, talent and RESULTS. Almost as good as chocolate. We love connections. And we love the kismet of seemingly random connections that bring new mixes of people, talents and ideas to one table.

Flexibility

There are some critical aspects when working in the virtual environment, our mindset must shift or be flexible in order to be effective in contemporary organization. Managing a virtual team meeting is unlike managing a face to face team meeting: fruitful experience doesn't happen by chance. There's been a lot of excitement about potential online networks that provide new environments for teams, communities of practice and learning.

Initial regular online interactions with members of social communities have led us to migrate to communities more focused on issues, topics or projects. We spent time online "getting to know" many of these people, developing relationships, and, more importantly, cultivating mutual trust. Soon we find ourselves turning to these people individually as collaborators, subcontractors and project partners, mirroring business relationship patterns with the geographical market.

Conclusion

Thinking outside the usual scope encourages the team to think beyond their normal work practices. It stimulates the design team to establish a common language and profound insight to support the collaboration.