Project Objective
Through inspirations from nature, we hope to design a tool kit that can encourage collaboration, idea generation and productivity within a group setting.
We envision that this tool kit can be adopted in various company settings, from design groups to logistical meetings, to simple decision making.
Initial Research
Leader Consult Process
Decentralized Decision Making
Leader Consult Process
Initial Research
Canada geese take turns leading the flock as they fly to their destination. This ensures that there are multiple leaders who are cross-trained and expert in guiding the flock, at all times.
Birds would sync their wing beats, they may move around until they find the location with the least resistance.
Illustrations Of the Canada Goose Formation
Work Flow
Leader
Leader
Leader
Leader
Leader
Leader
Rather than a more free-flowing discussion format, each member is assigned a role between the leader, the critic and the supporter. Member can only provide input based on the specific responsibilities of their roles. After each stage, the roles would switch.
Supporter
Critic
Leader
Physical Experiment
Hypothesis
With this experiment, we are testing if
- Assigning each member a role in the team will improve overall team responsiveness/participation
- Team will work more efficiently working under a leader (time spent on a problem/quality of outcome)
- The methodology will improve every team member's confidence in leadership, radical ideation, and communication.
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Experiment Procedure
As a team of 3, each group member is assigned a role between critic, supporter, and leader. The group starts with a prompt and are provided with 3 ideas regarding the prompt.
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The members would critique each idea based on the responsibilities of their roles.
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After 5 min, the leader would come to a final idea which would be rated among the group members to assess its agreeability.
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Then the roles switch, and the process starts all over again.
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Experiment Analysis
The physical tool kit experiments proved to be very effective. Each group member was actively engaging with the ideation process. The final ideas decided by the leaders also accurately represented the overall consensus of the group. As a whole, the group members are much more critical in voicing their opinions and taking perspectives from a broader scale.
Advantages
This process challenges each member of the team to take on the role of leadership, it pushes the team to look at the project from a specific lens of a member of the team. Hence broaden the scope of possibility in ideation. It also forces the team to work in a different way, and give each member the opportunity to look at the design process from a holistic angle and faster decision making.
This toolkit can be utilized between every stage of the design process to accelerate the decision making process as well as inspire new conversations about the design directions.
Digital Toolkit: Rodea
Initial
Flow
Workspace Flow
Decision
Flow
App
Start a workspace
Invite Teammates
Add Ideas
Roles Assigned
Create/React To Comments
The comments can be reorganized in different configurations to efficiently understand the overall group consensus on the project directions
Add more ideas
Participants vote on ideas
Leader's Final Idea
Team votes for idea
Potential Applications
We envision Rodea to be a helpful tool in many different group work settings including but not limited to idea generation, problem solving, multidisciplinary collaboration and many more.
