From the start, I knew I wanted to focus my efforts on the group project and work on my portfolio later on in the term. This is because I wanted to wait until I had some guidance and tutoring on graphic design before I made a start. This also allowed me to spend a good few weeks focused on the group project without distraction. When it came time to start my portfolio, I had to implement a time management routine and make sure both projects were getting the time they needed.

To structure our meetings we elected a chair person, minutes and decided an agenda for each meeting. We did this to structure the meetings and and ensure what was concluded from the meetings was documented appropriately. As elected chair person for the first week, I had to make sure the meeting was relevant throughout and that we were keeping to our time limit guide. I enjoyed being the chair person which made me think I wouldn’t mind taking a managerial job one day. I tried to keep everyone on track and direct the meeting but I also let people speak their mind and finish making points. Although the step from chair person to manager is quite a leap, it has opened up the possibility for me.

In terms of time management, one thing we did early on was a Gantt chart. This was only a preliminary solution but allowed me to quickly see what I had to get done and how long I had to do it. We thought using a Gantt chart was the best time management tool because it was easy to read, accessible for all team members and modifiable. This also helped with the collaboration of our group because we could use each others research to guide our own research direction. I undertook UX research and managed to get it done in time and make it relevant to our project.

Some other tools that we used to help us manage the project include Miro, Trello, Teams, group chats and video calls. I think being able to talk to my team on a video call was very beneficial as it has that personal quality that means we can all contribute our feelings and schedules at the same time, quickly and easily. Personally, to manage my own time and projects, I found keeping a note pad and writing things down helped a lot, just writing something down on paper may seem basic but it helped me remember project information and freed up my mind for other ideas. Miro also helped with this as we used it as a virtual sketchbook for our ideas due to its collaborative nature and tools available.

Communicating with my team was something that was always ongoing. We had a group chat that we can use to post our thoughts, questions and ideas but we also used video calls frequently. We would make sure to video call at least twice a week. As well as this, we used Trello to help us organise our time. Trello was used quite a lot but I think we had too many platforms of communication to keep up with and it got confusing at times. Maybe not using one of the collaboration apps would be beneficial in the long term as it would be easier to keep track of work. Living in the same house as two of my team members made it very easy to track hours worked and personal direction but it did require a different approach. For example, when we were doing the 635 method to create ideas, we could all be in the same room but I had to use an agile approach to my ideas as they would be built on very quickly by other group members. Being in the same house also helped with design sprints and ideating but the other two members did not benefit from this arrangement. To try to combat this, we used the Kanban approach and video called a lot during the ideation process. The Kanban board on Miro made it easier to stay on the same page and trach each others work loads.