Ship Assignment

Individual Role

Individual role in the team cooperation during the IMA project and the ship assignment

In term A, the first project we were assigned to is the Imagineering Project. We are a group of 5 students, my role of the team is to give creative input into the project. Since, creativity is one of my core-quadrants. It is important for me to be creative in any kind of way, as it has a lot to do with my personality. So my individual role in the team is using my creativity. However, of course there are some challenges for me here to keep things realistic, also it may be a threat for me accepting traditional ideas of others.

I do have a great influence on the project by applying my imagination. After all it is possible to let one’s creativity out in this project, as it is all about creating a memorable experience for visitors of the Dolfinarium. My motivation in this term about the course Imagineering was kept high, since this is one of my favorite subjects and I am able to let my creativity free in all kinds of way. Letting my imagination run is the best opportunity in this project as you are allowed to come up with crazy ideas and I get to blast off into some uncharted territory of my mind. Furthermore, Imagineers need to know the values of their target group in order to create a meaningful experience. Imagineering is all about coming up with original creative concepts and find a unique experience. During the ship assignment, my group and I were enthusiastic about it, which personally I think is great motivation to work together as a team. Watching back to the video of the ship assignment showed me that I used my main core quadrant, creativity. I was letting my mind free and told my ideas to the group. The idea of drawing an unusual ship with wings shows that I want my group to be different towards other groups. I want the ideas we have to shoot out and with my team members adding to the idea it creates a great teamwork project and builds a team.

Besides being creative, I think it is important to stay organized within a team. Being organized is necessary in any project, such as to keep track within time, task division and setting internal deadlines within the project group. However, my project group does not have a chaotic working atmosphere, therefore I keep myself organized and do not need to remind them of any tasks. This is also seen in our team values, which is commitment, honesty and one of the most important is reliability, these values will be more in-depth explained later in this report. Also we have Anne, who is taking care of the organizational part. Although, when we meet in a group, it always takes a while to get started, so I mostly take initiative and tell them that we should get started as we are now in a meeting and should not be discussing personal things. Looking back at the video of our team working together I see a lot more of my creativity input than my organization core quadrant. Indeed, here it shows that my main core quadrant is creativity and that Anne uses her core quadrant organized. Stating this makes me realize that all group members use one of their own core quadrants and connecting these creates a strong team.

My general goal for this term is to deliver a well-experienced report for Imagineering as well as to connect well with team members. Another is to use my skills in a proper way. But to get on the right path, I will need to identify my own skills and train them to a higher level.

Team Role

Reflection on team cooperation

The ship assignment we had done recently and by looking back at the video, my team and me realized that we cooperate well in a team. Every team member has a few ideas and each person can have a word. However sometimes some group members interrupt someone while talking, which can have a negative impact on the group process, as it can effect that only a few decisions are made and that much time is wasted. And I have the feeling we work in a chaotic atmosphere, with not much structure and a lot of private conversations are held in this meeting. Indeed, I realized that we take quiet a while to get to the point due to interrupting of each other. Furthermore, I had noticed after watching the video that we generally always hold meetings such as this one. Our meetings mostly have results and all the tasks are equally divided. We have a great team spirit, since we all help each other out, for example to expand the other persons idea, or helping out with other tasks. Meetings can be productive and useful, when it has a purpose, to prepare ahead of time and to set deadlines during the meeting, also to keep all group member informed of the new developments made in the project. The leader of our group usually guides our meetings with an agenda. My project group of the Imagineering project got together and bonded by sharing what the values are.

These values are:

- Creativity, creativity is needed to deliver a unique concept. In the ship assignment we have put our creativity together and came up with a flying ship instead a usual ship floating on water.

- Commitment, this is a critical factor in team success in order to work together effectively and to accomplish goals.

- Honesty, honesty is seen as keeping your word and promises and delivering work on time.

- Quality, quality is meant by handing in a well done written report as well as using our creativity to come up with a strong concept experience.

- Reliability is the quality value of being reliable, dependable and trustworthy. The project group represents this value by helping and supporting each member.

The project group works well together, the communication between the members is good but when I was watching at the video of the ship assignment I noticed that there was no structure in the conversations and as mentioned before there is a lot of interruptions between us. So now we know how we can improve our meetings to more an effective approach and how to communicate better. We do work together well, since we are dedicated and motivated. Indeed, some are more active than others. This can be seen in the video where Anne, Milena and I have a more active role whereas Stefan and Djarana are just agreeing on our decisions. Our task in the video was to create a ship with each his own character. We decided to create a flying boat with wings, this because we reflected upon our own values of being free. Being free means a lot to our group members because we do not want to be too strict nor too hard on each other. Also the boat has a unicorn horn in front that is based on our group name: UniPhins. This is a combination of Unicorn and dolphin. We chose this group name because we want to be like a unicorn, because a unicorn is unique and wild and this we want to deliver in our Imagineering project report. The word dolphin is used due to we are working on creating a meaningful experience concept for the Dolfinarium out commissioner of the project.

Working together as a team is all about relying on each other since we have the same goal to reach, which is to pass, creating things together. At the beginning of the project, we all shared our knowledge, skills and thoughts of how we can get together as a group. This helped us to define who is what within the group, which will be more detailed in the next chapter.

Role of each team member during the IMA project and the ship assignment

The following is a reflection of each individual group member of who they represent in the ship assignment but also in the project group. Watching back at the video of the ship assignment, it made me realize that each group member has his or her individual role and also different roles towards each other. A description of all team member will be discussed:

Stefan is our team leader, he makes sure that we all have a chance to speak and that all tasks are divided equally upon team members. Also he is responsible for each meeting we do, he chairs the meetings and guides us to an effective result after the discussions. In the ship assignment, I notice that Stefan is a bit laid back and he keeps silent, but does try to interact with the rest when ideas pop up. This could be because all other group members are female and he might not keep up as fast as we do. Another is that he takes care of what we are allowed to do and what not, which means he takes rules seriously. Stefan is characterized as the captain of the ship, since he is our group leader and this character suits him well. Next is Djarana, a very enthusiastic group member. She does her job on a good level, however she is one of the group members who has less input when decision are being done. There is also less creative input from her side. She characterized herself as the musician on the ship, because she has musical talents, however this character does not relate her to the project nor it relates her in the ship assignment. Djarana was a lot more interested in the project at the beginning, I noticed and it affected our deadlines of the rest of the group. She did not put much creativity into the ship assignment, however I do know her quiet some time now, and she can be a lot more creative. Milena is a great participant of us, since she is mostly active and brings in a lot of creativity. Also I have noticed that she is the most motivated group member we have. Milena always makes sure that we are following the student manual, and that we have all documents are structured. In my point of view, I think Milena is dedicated the most out of all group members, she shows that she wants to deliver good quality work, she puts in a lot of her time for this and knowing that makes other group members motivated as well. Milena was drawn as the cook of our ship. She personally chose the cook, because she told us she likes cooking. However I reflect different upon how to reflect on her character. Being the cook can mean that she takes care of the team members, she wants us to be satisfied with a lot of nutrition by means of motivation and dedication. Moving on to my last group member Anne. She is very dedicated, comes up with really random ideas, however if the team helps develop them, they give great input. Anne is dedicated and always makes sure that our planning is on time. She generally always has an overview of the whole project therefore we assigned her as being the bird. The bird that has the whole overview of the project and as mentioned earlier she takes care on an organizational aspect. She makes sure that everything is done according to the manual. In the ship assignment she took too much care of the minutes we had to use for each step, although it was good to know for other members to know where we lie towards time. Anne and I had a great input of creativity during the ship assignment and I had more interactive with Anne here too. We interact well together because we do a lot of stuff in our free time and therefore we bond well together in a team, as we know each other personally.

We characterized me as the engineer, the engineer because I put in the creative input however an engineer is the person who develops new technological solutions, also design materials and structure while thinking of limitations by means of costs, regulations, practically and cost. I do not see myself completely as the engineer but in some aspects I do, such as developing new creative ideas for solutions. I see myself more as the painter of the ship, because of my core quality creativity.