Immersion, Spring Semester -- Week 8

The "Power" of Collective Constructs

Recent readings in design research have discussed collective constructs and shared argumentation. I will be honest, the drill down that some design research provides can drive me nuts, but the two articles discussing these concepts have really resonated with me, especially in the context of our current Immersion team climate. In order for a design team to function, collective constructs need to occur to allow for accumulation of "sharable" knowledge. From the second week of this semester until today, I have felt that the team ideas are not functioning "as-if-shared". So, for most of this semester, I have felt like a ship without a rudder and all those other "lost" cliques that you can think of. I have tried my best to share my frustrations with the group about what I felt was a fundamental missing link in our process. My efforts to communicate this perceived dissonance were not successful. But something happened today. I felt like today was the first time we functioned as a team IN MONTHS as we worked together to define our direction for an aspect of the Virtual Collaboration Center. In this instance, I believe that the impact of the collective construct could be felt, and from where I sat, the accumulation of knowledge was powerful. I just hope we can maintain this momentum as we move into the end of the semester.