Module 5 - Team dynamics and final projet#

For this module, we had 4 sessions:

  1. Project Analysis and Design - Problem and objective trees analysis
  2. Group formation and brainstorming on societal issues
  3. Group dynamics - tools to function better in a group
  4. Problem and objective of your group project

5.1 Project Analysis and Design#

Inspired from the fatlab projects I choose this project that is looking to help the construction workers with the high level of noise. I think this is a major problem with negative health effects and which targets an extremely large number of people. Analyzing the project I made a problem and a objective tree. In order to do that I followed a few steps:

  1. Problem tree

    • identify the main problem (trunk)
    • identify the primary problem causes (roots) and the causes behind the causes (deeper roots)
    • identify the problem direct consequences (branches) and secondary effects (ramifications)

  2. Objective tree

    • rephrase the problem into an objective
    • replace the causes by the activities to develop to reach the objective
    • rephrase the problem consequences into project outcomes

5.2 Group formation and societal issues#

The first step was to find and bring an object related to a problem that interests us. I chose a miniature solar panel, which is a solution for global warming and renewable energy. But there’s something I couldn’t find, so I represented it through a drawing. To start, everyone put their object or drawing on the floor, with a question closely related to it, so we had the opportunity to analyze these objects and their purposes. The next step was to ask questions about the objects that interest us and find people with objects that answer common questions, from similar fields, or simply people who are interested in our topic and vice versa. The experience was a bit frustrating because I couldn’t find people who were interested in the same problem, most of them having objects and topics from a completely different field. But, being open to new ideas, I teamed up with Altay, thanks to his idea which I found very interesting that consist in making electroencephalogram (EEG) placed on the head.We tried to find other interested people, but without success, and later we gave up on this idea due to its complexity. In the end we made a team with Mohamed who was interested in social inequalities, and Hac, who had the idea of ​​an object for recycling electronic devices, something closer to the topic I was addressing if we talk about the global warming. Now the task was to try to find a common issue for our objects , this was very difficult due to the different concerns. So we made a brainstorming .

We could then identify 3 issues that concerned us:

  1. Renewable energy
  2. Social inequalities
  3. Recycling

After the session Altay came with another problematic that is related to health care.

5.3 Group dynamics#

In this session, we were introduced to project management by studying different tools and ideas for a proper group work. I will develop 3 tools that we learned during the session and that I find useful for our future project :

  1. The division of tasks and roles
    • assign roles like animateur, gestion du temps, secrétaire, ambiance, for the reunion of the group . This helps the reunions to be more organized and efficient. Motivated fingers is a interesting method to determine who takes a role by raising a hand with a number of fingers that represents the motivation for it.
    • assign task according to the personal skill of each person and the the tools learned (CNC,3D Printing,laser cut,electronic).
  2. Structuring the meetings
    • Structuring a meeting is always important if we want to be efficient and be able to get to work as quickly as possible. The suggested structure in the course was this: make a entrance that is about how we feel,clarify some subjects, make a to do list, give the roles of the day ,set the agenda , make a conclusion about how it was.
  3. Weighted vote for taking decisions
    • It is important to have a technique for making a decision, especially in the case of a larger group where this can be a problem. That is why weighted voting is a very good solution, it is described by the fact that each person votes on the proposals on a certain scale, from 1 to 4 for example, and in the end, the decision with the highest score wins.

After using the weighted vote on our issues , we ended up with :

  1. health care
  2. social inequalities

During this session we also made a “Chart” with the worst and the best thing that could happen to the group project. In this way we know already what to avoid and what to aspire during the project.

5.4 Problem and objective of the group project#

The objective of this session was to find a concrete problem for our group project. We decided to look into the health care area and the chosen problem was “Forgetting to take medication for people with Alzheimer’s” .

After creating the problem tree and the solution tree, our solution was to create a pill dispenser . We understood that in fact our solution is not answering to the problem above, but to the sub-problem of it, that is “Expensive or difficult to use pill dispenser on the market” .