Saturday, January 16, 2010
10 Reasons Why Your Last Collaboration Did Not Work
FreelanceSwitch: "Whether you are fresh out of design school or a professional with twenty years of experience you have collaborated. And if you are anything like me, half of those endeavors failed miserably. The good ones produce the best work of your career, and the bad ones…oh, the bad ones. The bad ones make you age horribly, keep you up at night, and question your profession. Successful collaborations force us to learn from one another they make designers grow, and they test their limits. Collaborations are what being a designer is all about."
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8 comments:
This article supports all that we talked about in basic PTM last week, but with more specifics. Collaboration is important in design, but with that comes communication, which is at the bottom of all ten of these reasons. I particularly like the part about getting to know your collaborators, not just their portfolio, but who they really are. Beginning with communication there will make it easier to work with them for the duration. You don't have to become best friends, but an effort for friendship must be made. Also, i liked the thought that communications with the client should come from one source. I will remember that when working, as a confused client is never good, and they often end up with a final product that is not what they had imagined due to the confusion of the communication.
As long as design work and theatrical arts involves people from various background people, the communication between them are essential for best collaboration work. This article analyzes well the theme by breaking communication problems into "10 reasons".
I strongly agree with each of these ideas. Knowing the skills of other people and their work and making the ultimate goal of the project and team clear are critical to work within a team. Explain your own idea and hearing others before deciding these ideas are good or bad. Bring any issues up to the table and discuss the problem. And then, of course every one of the project members have to be motivated enough to seek the best solution constructively. Ultimately, I think it is important to always go back to the goal of the project, if the team gets lost in their way.
Beyond the fact that everything seems to come down to communication these days, the reasons outlined in the article are ones that while they really can break a project, may not be what needs to be fixed. The list of 10 simply stated things that any group of people who are serious about working with each other should be doing as second nature, not actively thinking about a need to do them. The list felt all to familiar, especially since it seems that every list about managing a group project hits these 10 ideas in one form or another over and over. If these aren't base value to begin with, then you're probably not working in a very good compatible group to begin with.
Coming out of PTM last week, this was essentially the lectures and discussions we had. It is funny to see it from someone else, but I completely agree with the list.
I find it strange though that Ego is number 10. That would have been in my top 3. Although I may just be saying that because it impacts students then adults I feel. I couldn't agree more with the number one problem which is communication. As our society continues into an age where we use text messages, emails, and skype to communicate then actual talking communication can be very tough and open to interpretation. Being clear and concise saves projects, time, feelings, money and energy. We need to be more open to actual speaking then sending an email. Especially when it is something important and the deadline is approaching.
I disagree with Charley on this. I think that although it might seem like these 10 things should be second nature, they are often easy to forget about. I think that a lot of the times you can get too caught up with the ideas of the design (or show) and forget about how to work with other people.
I definitely agree with the article that communication is the most important thing. You need to communicate with your partner(s) about everything including ego. I also think that it's extremely important to go in with a positive attitude. I think that a lot of people will go in to a collaborative project thinking negatively that the person isn't going to know what they are doing, etc, and this sets them up for a bad collaborative relationship.
This article is a great source of tips for what to do--and what not to do. I wish I'd seen this before the last group project I'd worked on, and things might have gone a little better. Like Brian mentions, we were talking in PTM with Joe Pino about consensus vs cooperation vs collaboration, and this seems like the key for achieving collaboration. I really like the tips about not assuming everyone knows what you know, and asking questions. Better to ask a stupid question, than make a stupid (and potentially expensive) mistake.
After first reading this article I felt that all it did was point out the most obvious reasons for group failure without really delving into them. Then I realized that while this list of reasons may seem very obvious, they are generally ignored, which is why they are so commonly the reason group projects go badly. Sometimes people are so focussed on having a brilliant design that they forget about the communication and planning that is required to make their ideas into a reality. It would be good for people to remember the advice that this list provides before going into their next group project.
I think this article although it references graphic design specifically in the beginning, is really pertinent to theater in the bad project aspect of design (No. 8). Sometimes designers just "make things look better" and just improving general aesthetics although they strive for so much more. In the article it attributes one of the reasons for a failed collaboration to the fact that maybe as a designer you did not create an really groundbreaking design but simply improved aesthetic and I can definitely see how designers would be less effective collaborating with someone on a project that I feel has been overdone in the past or is cliche and not new and pioneering. Also I think its really interesting that number one is communication, because I can definitely see how so much can go wrong if not all parties in a collaborating team speak up and are on the same page.
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