5. Group dynamics and group project#
As many of you know, the group proyect is an essential part of the fablab experience. Through this process we learn team-work and team-management skills that are very useful, and that we’ll probabbly apply in work-related environments in the near future.
5.1 Project analysis and design 1/10/24#
Denis asked us to get inspiration from an existing fablab project and make a problem and soluction tree.
Ecology is something i deeply care about, hence why the lockbin fablab project from 2023 instantly caught my eye.
The global problem they were trying to tackle is plastic pollution in the oceans, this is a very complex issue. The root of it being us disposing plastic waste into the ocen and one the nasty conseuqences being us eating seafood which has previously ingested plastic.
This is the problem tree they made.
And the solution tree:
The state of this fablab project I beleive is in its early stages, they made a third final prototype which consisted on a passive floating but no further developments from there.
5.2 Group formation and brainstoriming on project problems 21/10/24#
The 21st of October we started with the group dymanic. We each brought an object to class that represented a societal problem we cared about and based on our topics of interest we made the groups. It felt like a natural way to find your teammates.
In my case i brought a mirror and my societal problem was:
Why is vertical farming so expensive?#
In fact the reason i chose the mirror was because I had already thought of a solution to the societal problem and i wanted to share it. (mirror setting to amplify light in vertical farms) However, I have learned that the important thing is to approach the problem first and fully understand its roots and consequences before jumping to solutions. This also allowed me to reflect on other people’s perpectives and to include everyone’s unique ideas in the group decision-making process.
My teammates are Kate, Antoine and Simon. I am a physics student from Spain, Kate is a bioengineering student from France and Antoine and Simon are both bioengineering students from Brussels. What we all had in common was an interest in how technology and agriculture can come toguether and lead to a more sustainible and egalitarian future. We are very motivated to start!!
In order to find a group “problematique” we wrote several of them in a piece of paper, ranked them according to our interest and discussed. Here is a list of the finalist ones:
After the discussion we narrowed our region of interest to be urban agriculture in Brussels. Simon’s personal experience with collective in-city farming inspires us, and we think that we want to continue on that route. We have yet to find an expert that can lead us in getting more specific with our problematique
5.3 Group dynamics 4/11/24#
On this group dynamics session we learnt from an expert several tools to use within a team in order to make decisions, distribute tasks and ensure the members’ well being within the group.
This is the link to the presentation they made for us:
We discussed two different decision-making methods that I found interesting. The consent method, for isntance, allows the group to move forward if nobody opposes an idea, whereas the voting method requires all participants to vote explicitly yes to the proposal. They both serve different purposes. While collective democratic decisions engage all members, they are often time consuming and hence individual decisions can prove to be uselful. The key is to find balance.
alues as a group and will hopefully ensure a smooth teamkork experience.
We each wrote in post-it notes our best and worst case scenarios for the group dynamics and used them to set up some guidelines for our group’s wellbeing.
Roles within a group may also be important. The ones we discussesd in class are leader, time manager, secretary and vibes manager. In our group we decided to take turns each week with the roles as we all wanted to see where we fit best and considered the secretary role the most time-consuming.