Group Dynamics

A tablet application that facilitates the communication and understanding between introverts and extroverts in a team setting.

The design is a platform bridging extroverts and introverts.

We firstly ideated potential topics through affinity diagram.

Then we grouped similar ideas together to find common grounds.

The result of first-stage narrowing down.

People with different temperaments work differently. Misunderstanding occurs when people judge their teammates' contribution only from their own perspectives and only from what they see during a meeting. In a team setting, people who are extroverted can perceive their introverted teammates as lazy or as if they don’t care, don’t have anything to say, etc. On the other hand, introverts can view their extroverted teammates as loud and bossy and as people who don’t take time to think things through before they talk.

Extroverts thrive on social interaction while introverts tend to work better and more creatively alone where they are free to focus on specific goals.

Based on our primary and secondary research, we discovered that each group's optimal creative and productive condition is the exact opposite of the other. Extroverts thrive on social interaction while introverts tend to work better and more creatively alone where they are free to focus on specific goals. From Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, we learned about the extrovert ideal and how it changed the fabric of the American workforce. We also learned that small teams with diversity in skills and personality provide the best results.

Our design was intended to improve the understanding between introverts and extroverts in a team setting by providing them a collaborative tool to facilitate communication before, during and after meetings. The prototypes below showed how the relation tree visualizes the group dynamics and each team member's contribution, as well as how the filter function provides constant feedback to team members.

Start a new project.

Every team member can record what they did and convey what they think from the timeline.

A new content is added to the timeline.

Users can drag the content to the map to build relations of each other's contribution.

As the content becomes richer, the relation tree grows larger as well.

The panel below sums each member's posts on the timeline, nodes in the tree, and how relative those nodes are.

Tapping the first person reveals his own contribution.

The same thing works for the other members.

Before meetings, people who did more individual works can make their contribution be seen by others through the application. During meetings, the facilitator of the team can start discussions from what has been recorded, instead of being drawn by people who talk more and ignoring the quieter one. Once in a while, the team can review each other's contribution and discuss future expectation based on everybody's performance. The following video showed an overall scenario that the design can possibly be used.

Eames Store

An iPad application showcasing Eames chair collection that reflects Eames' design spirit.

The design was aimed at showcasing Eames' iterative design spirit.

The challenge is to create an Eames store within Crate & Barrel's current product lines.

We researched about the histories and design styles of both parties.

The moodboards created by graphic designers that served as a bridge of our visual communication.

A sketch of our final concept and how we were going to divide the work.

Given that Crate & Barrel, an American furniture company, had made a commitment to launch The Eames Store within its product lines, the challenge is to create a digital experience on iPads: a store within a store that features the furniture designs of Charles and Ray Eames. It was also a collaborative project between the School of Fine Arts and the School of Informatics at IU. Our team was composed of 2 graphic designers and 2 interaction designers, which reflects the real-time collaboration in a work environment.

"Yes, it was a flash of inspiration, a kind of 30-year flash." by Charles Eames describing how the development of the Molded Plywood Chairs evolved over time.

In the first meeting, our team started from exchanging each other's design processes and initial thoughts about the project to find common grounds. The group came to the decision that the app should be as much about education as commerce, connecting with the desired audience - young, tasteful professionals with money to burn - inviting them to be part of a world which has been shaped by the Eameses in subtle and explicit ways. After that, each person focused on researching his field of expertise. For interaction designers, we looked more into users' needs and the exemplars of tablet shopping experience, while graphic designers focused more on Eames' design spirits and building actual visual elements, e.g. moodboards, as the resource assets that can be utilized in the future. We shared phrases and keywords which shone out brightly during our research, with the idea of a “thirty year flash of inspiration” standing out as especially potent. Exploring this idea on the white board, the group arrived at an idea of a graphic timeline, leading the user from the initial inspiration for each Eames design, to the logical conclusion of committing to a purchase.

The homepage.

The introduction page provided an overview of Eames' design.

The collection of Eames chairs.

Users can tap a specific chair to see more of it's information.

Users can explore the history of the chair on the timeline by scrolling to the right.

The middle of the timeline.

The end of the timeline.

Scrolling to the end, users can see the chair they selected placed in situ.

The shopping cart summarized all the selected items and allowed users to finalize product details.

The project was a fresh and inspired collaborative experience for all of us. The interaction designers learned about the central role of type as visual identity from the graphic designers, who likewise appreciated the insights of usability testing performed by the interaction designers. The project has opened our eyes to the methods employed by our counterparts and made us more open minded to new possibilities, both in envisioning a final artifact and in the collaborative process itself.