Teamwork in ID

Personally, I think this would be one of the hardest aspects of working in the field of ID. Even though it sometimes seemed that it would be the end of the world if we didn't do everything, I'm sure it would be much worse when each designer is a full-time employee and their are jobs and millions of dollars on the line. Here are some of the lessons I learned about teamwork in ID.

First, communication is key. Especially in the situation of our class, communication is very important. For us, there were a few times where we just assumed that someone in the group was going to do a certain task, but it ended up getting done at the last second, with an added bonus of mild panic. A small amount of time and effort in the area of communicating can save you a whole lot of headache. Also, it was very important to communicate our ideas and share our progress with everyone. We did a spectacular job of this in the design phase. We had rough drafts ready in advance, and we emailed them to each other, then reviewed and revised everything. Our project would have been horrible if we each printed out our own sections, then just put them together in class.

Second, compromising helps. For the most part, our group was on the same page at all times. One of the times that we had a disagreement was in assigned out the jobs for a certain phase. We were just able to talk about what resources and experience we each had and the best person was found for each job. It worked out well in the end, but once again, our final product would not look good if we hadn't compromised on responsibilities.

Finally, get it done. It was amazing how much easier my jobs were than I thought they would be. Somehow, I still had to grit my teeth and just get on task. Once I started, some of my responsibilities took less time and less effort than I ever thought they would, but that's also because we had a solid foundation to work from in our analysis.