5. Group dynamics and final project#

This module is about the group dynamics session we had and the final project theme definition.

Project Analysis and Design#

For the first part of this module, I made a problems and solutions tree based on the past year’s project about a fraying machine. This project ended up being quite close to my final project, but the trees I made at the beginnning of the course are the following:

Problem tree Solution tree

The community in this case was the people at Green Fabrics who want to recycle fabrics, who are also the experts.

Group formation and brainstorming on social issues#

The object I chose was my crochet tools. In my experience, crafts like crochet have united people together. I have participated in crochet and knitting clubs and I have taught all my closest friends to make things using these tools. I brought these tools with the idea to recycle and reuse fabrics to make new things.

Meeting with people during the class, I found projects that were similar to mine. Some were related to recycling other products, like electronic waste and plastics. And some were also about uniting people, trying to find out how people share within a community. Some ideas of projects I had:

  • How to recycle fibers from second hand sweaters to make crochet yarn?

  • How to teach people the basics of crochet to encourage reusing textiles?

I enjoyed the discussion with the people whose objects were similar to mine. We had fun, while still talking about how our ideas were related. While this was sometimes difficult, we found that we could always find common ground.

Within the group the questions we came up with were: * Can everything be recycled?

  • What is the limit of recycling?

  • How to teach people about consumerism?

  • Does recycling push people to overconsume?

  • How to make techniques more accessible?

  • How to unite people on one common subject?

  • How to share new techniques?

Group dynamics#

During this session, we learnt valuable team dynamic tools that we have used since then:

Meeting roles#

There are various roles in team meetings that can rotate between people. The most important ones are:

  • a meeting leader, who will regulate the discussion to stay on topic

  • a time keeper, who will keep track of how much time is left in the allocated time for one specific subject

  • a note taker, who will document everything that is said in a conscise way, which helps to have a documentation of everything that was discussed There are many others after this, but these are the ones we have found the most useful in our group.

Counting fingers#

This works like a rating system in real time. This is used when making quick decisions. For each subject, every person holds out a hand with a number from 1 to 5. The point is to gauge people’s feelings on a subject. If one person holds out a 1 and another a 5, then there is a disconnect between people in the group that needs to be addressed.

Organising future meetings#

Making plans for what we want to discuss in next meetings is vital to staying on track in the progression of a project. We wanted to use this tool to set goals for what we wanted to do between meetings and make sure we meet objectives regularly.