This collaborative project revealed many problems, not only in the group work but also in myself.
We had three main problems with this group work.
- we did not have a clear timeline and ddl, which also led to an unbalanced workload
- we did not make the formatting requirements clear enough when matching resources
- we did not have enough communication and adjustment sessions
The first issue was particularly important in the group work, as we were all organising the resources ourselves and producing them ourselves. So sometimes we didn’t know exactly what other people were doing, and we didn’t know when to transfer resources. This time we were lucky that we all had a prototype in our heads and no one was behind on their resources, otherwise there would have been major time management problems and we would not have been able to finish the project. Also, because we didn’t know exactly what each other was producing, some people were doing a relatively small amount of work, while others were working overtime. This is not really conducive to teamwork.
So in the next group collaboration I will take the initiative to ask for this and get everyone to work out and organise the workload together.
The second problem was that neither of our groups knew much about what the other was producing. I didn’t fully understand the nature of 3d animation and they weren’t sure exactly what I wanted in terms of model quality and requirements. So at the beginning I just told them that I needed the model mapped and in fbx format, which led to problems with single-sided models going through the mould and multiple points in the animation that prevented the animation from being imported successfully. If I had told them this at the beginning it would have saved everyone time and been more efficient.
So I decided to put together a document with possible problems and to record the problems I hadn’t anticipated this time and send it to them in advance for the next collaboration.
The last problem was more my own. We were all communicating one-to-one in this group, rather than discussing and coming to a conclusion together as a group. Although I was aware of this problem, I did not raise it and chose to accept this method of communication. I also did not take the initiative to increase the frequency of communication, which led to us ending up with some misunderstandings of each other’s resources and projects.
I need to get over my submissive nature and take responsibility for communicating when I think I need to organise, rather than ignoring the problem by thinking that the project can continue even if it does.