About Collaboration

We were asked to think about what collaboration is this morning. We sat according to the sequence of name’s alphabet and then group in four to collaborate. We were asked to think about what collaboration is and what we bring to collaboration.

What is collaboration to me

For me, collaboration is the process when different people work together in order to achieve one same goal. It means listening, understanding and contributing. Because of different background and life experiences, everyone has his unique way of thinking and doing things, as a result, the hardest thing in collaboration is understanding each other, which means everyone should respect and listen to others. Different from woking alone, one also has to speak out what he thinks in every decision and the reason behind it to get more understanding.

However, the most fascinating thing in collaboration is also the difference, through which one could see varied perspectives of opinions. For me, I could learn from others' way of thinking and get myself more open while working with different people.

A good collaboration to me would be everyone contributes and works hard with an agreed goal in advance about the task. There could be different methods of thinking and doing things but team members should have the same pace and finish the tasks on time.

Here are some of the tips I concluded to achieve a good collaboration:

• Talk about the expectation of the task at first to get a consensus and agree on a same goal.

• Every time there should only be one person talking and others should try not to interrupt, listen first.

• Do not simply say that you disagree, say the reasons as well to convince others.

• Set a timekeeper for discussion and decisions when the team cannot make an agreement.

• Try not to say "but" to others' opinion. Develop on others' opinions instead of always shooting new opinions.

What is collaboration

What I can bring to collaboration

I am inclusive and patient to listen to others and feel comfortable understanding others' opinions. This makes me a bridge as well, reexplaining one's ideas to others when they cannot understand each other.I have a habit of asking questions as a way of developing the idea. I have critical thinking skills and view questions in a relatively thorough way, but this also makes me sometimes falling in to the state of being too practical and easily negating an idea. I am good at improving others' ideas and also bringing forward new ideas, an idea provider and developer.

I am not that good at presenting and time management, and I am trying to improve these two areas.

I quite like the process when everyone then starts to introduce what he can bring to collaboration in front of the whole class. For me, I have not worked with most the people in the room and it is a good chance to introduce yourself and know about others as well. It forces you to think about who you really are and what kind of the partner you really want to work with. It is a chance for everyone to search for the partners in tune in the later project.

Project start-up

We were asked to 1. Record how we access and interact with Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre as a living, non-human archive. 2. Make a 2-min presentation highlighting cognitive, spatial, technical, physical assets.

I grouped with Beibei and Byron and we did not distribute tasks clearly at first. We got there together and I started to take photos about what I felt interested in. Later I asked their opinions about the recording methods and we agreed on one person taking photos(me) and others taking notes. Due to the limitation of the time (15mins), we soon went back to the classroom to classify the photos and share the views. I used my laptop as a viewing screen and simply using the order of the picture to classify. After we agreed on the orders, I suggested that each of us could choose one part to present and prepare for his own part. We agreed on this and managed the presentation well.

Some of our findings:

• spatial - a space defined by closets as boundaries. The closets surround the inside space and naturally keep the visitors off the inside, giving the area a spirit of privacy and leading the visitors walking on two sides.

A spaced formed by boundaries

• spatial - a stair which gives the space a vertical extend and make the space more lively.

A stair connecting the floors

• technical - There are cameras all around the shopping centre. However, since they are on the ceilings, they are not easily noticed.

A camera on the ceiling

• cognitive - The information board in the shopping centre is not obvious at all. They are on the ceilings and surrounded by messy objects. They are not in colour consistency as well.

Information board