Report: Multicultural Competence, Group Dynamics And Project Reflections
As an introduction, it would be relevant to present the team members, in order to have a better understanding of the cultures represented in the team and the underlying dynamics. The team is composed of two Indians: Praveen and Vijay, one Chinese: Shiyuan, one Pakistani: Waqas, one Swedish: Mohsen, and one French: Vincent. Thanks to the presentations we had concerning multicultural team management, we were all willing to compromise and work for the team from the get-go. This helped us to focus on efficiency, but it didn’t prevent us from being more than just work colleagues.
Overall, we tried to keep it professional when addressing some issues, but we found some sort of balance, so we were not too harsh on each other mistakes. We even had a contract that everyone had to agree on, stating that we should give our best for the team. Indeed, the environment was suitable for work. As for communication issues, because of the accents, talking speeds and vocabulary of each other we weren’t always able to understand each other as fast as we would’ve liked to. We had to make sure everyone got the point before continuing as it was necessary that everyone was one the same page. So, we would often talk to each other, explaining what we really mean and hoping everyone would understand it. The only issue we had was meeting/class attendance, we would try to arrange meetings that everyone could attend but we sometimes had to wait up to an hour for everyone to be there. We worked around it and tried to tell the latecomers to be on time next time, explaining it could slow the team down. Overall we tried not to focus too much on these issues because we were told during the lectures that everyone has their own vision of time. Concerning the diversity in the fields of study, we lacked an industrial designer, but we made up for it and tried to compensate by focusing during the ID lectures and seminars, and split the workload among the team. To conclude, these 5 weeks have been rewarding for all of us, everyone learned to be more open about things and we were able to work in good conditions thanks to the efforts of everyone.
Project Report
The subject for our project is smart lighting for residential purpose, which is fairly common right now. The challenging part was to come up with a viable product idea that would be aesthetically feasible and at the same time be cost efficient. The starting concept was to go ahead with smart light bulb, on which we did some research on to find the viable options. But after countless hours of extensive searching we came up with a different idea as to use light strips instead of bulbs. After finalizing on the core concept all different options and viewpoints of all members were taken into account and discussed. The rough ideas were converted to concepts theories and finally into a product through effective collaboration. All throughout the project duration it was made sure that all team members understood the concept and were on page with it.
The understanding of language was not a he issue as all team members were patient with each other and made sure that all understood what they were trying to convey. While working there has been differences in ideas for the final product and these hindrances allowed me acquire a new skill and hone my other problem solving skills. I took into account of even the lucrative ideas to have a new perspective. This helped my team in refining product type end customers and evaluate the product in general. The key point on how to process through multi discipline clash is to take into account of opinions of all the team members no matter how insignificant it felt to others. This is because even the most inaccurate of comment can become the base to a major issue. The project work was uniformly division based on each team members skill and capacity. The project helped me to think like people from other disciplines and to come up with ideas that would be feasible to all in team. The only downside was that, one of my team mate was dormant throughout the project. Even though we came from different disciplines and background, against all odds the team actually pulled through every single task and milestone even without the dormant person’s help in an exquisite way. The main purpose of PDME discipline in any project is to provide base concept, viable design check in on the aesthetic appeal, functionality of the product based on requirements. The process of iteration of design and concept based on ideas set forward by my team mates helped me understand the importance and uniqueness of PDME. By being able to provide the team with contemporary designs for the product by which I was able to find my part in the project process. The ideas for concepts sketches were inspired from real life situations and scenarios.
The collaboration and refining of all ideas based on each discipline helped in coming up with a product design that actually is in harmony with every sine requirements put forth by all discipline members. It was I who provided the team with the base idea of going with modified LED light strips instead of conventional smart light bulbs as PDME discipline guy. Though my primary work was to provide concept sketches and bill of materials I ended up with more than one discipline work as my team was missing Industrial Design discipline. After my main focus task of creating the base concept design of our product, I was tasked with checking the aesthetics, feasibility, cost of production of the product fit into our requirements without compromising quality. I was able to come up with a unique concept design, Assembly drawing and the Bill of materials for the theorized product.
After which I was tasked with various other tasks like Production layout, product layout, Estimation for net cost for production, Initial investment, Profit margin, Annual Volume, cycle time, time to produce each unit, Line balancing, Processes invited during production etc. This was due to my experience in the field and this experience helped me to tackle many obstacles that came along with each step of the project work. The name of our product is ‘LIFE’ which is an abstract for Light Intensity Fine-tune Element. The 5 weeks I have worked with my team on the project has been entertaining and an upskilling experience. We had so many discussions on various topics both personal and professional, which has given us different view points on how to tackle different obstacles while handling situations, incidents, designing and producing a product. We have grown closer as a team and in person. It felt like gaining a secondary family outside of regular circle. The experience also helped us realize the potential some of us had as a guide, manager and leader. The completion of project feels like a sweet nectar after going through all the turmoil as a team. The short time for the project has also helped me to adapt to situations very fast and improvise depending on it.
