Yen was asked how successful collaborations come about when working across disciplines. I found it very interesting in her responding with saying as an urban planner there is regular collaboration with communities. This is a type of collaboration that is not really covered in this unit. And i think it can be equally as important as collaborating with other professions. Particularly large scale projects and professions such as urban planning and architecture. The scales of community collaboration would vary of course. An architect could collaborate with a primary school during the process of designing a library for them, where as an industrial designer would collaborate with elderly people when designing walking frames. I think it is important that collaboration is seen as a bigger picture, not purely involving the people working on the project but also the people in whom they are working on the project for.
Even with the most perfect tension free team work between different disciplines, the end result will always be influenced by how effective collaboration with the clients has been.
Being a part of a team as the designer amongst business people or scientists would be a much more difficult working environment i think. Below is a table i have put together to explore the pro's and con's.
Yen spoke about how everyone learnt how to communicate with each other. there were times people were trying to say the same thing but just in a "different language". The different language refers to the term used that are discipline specific. Sometimes it is easy to forget that others do not have the same vocabulary on certain topics, but this does not mean they do not have an understanding.
Designers work through a very similar process in their work. All go through different stages such as;
envisioning, cutting back ideas, brainstorm, inspiration and figuring out the detail.
Certain disciplines may be better at certain stages through the process. For example perhaps industrial designers are great at spitting out loads of ideas on the spot at the very start of a project and maybe later its the architects that have strengths in working on finer details. The difference between what designers do, is not in the process but in the product as the end result. This is a benefit of our design team. We all understand the processes and stages of how to progress through the project. This common understanding has assisted in the ease of our collaboration. If we were to be in a team of more broadly mixed disinclines, it would probably be a struggle to work together without a common understanding of process and stages.
Strengths identified (Trihn, N.D.):
Planners- thinking strategically connecting the dots= organising, seeing opportunities making links
Graphic designer- able to communicate to the point effectively - diagrams, simple
Industrial designer- good at people! user experience and interactions scenario planning
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