Blog 12 and 13

When I first began this course, I literally had no idea as to what "playing the whole game" entailed. However, the impression that I did receive within the first few days of the course was that it would take the entire semester to learn all of the essential elements of how to play the game. It was very helpful to learn the various aspects on a class by class basis as I was able to retain the information more effectively, as opposed to teaching all of the necessary steps to playing the game within a few classes or weeks.

Playing the whole game is a much more complicated process than it appears to be on the surface. There is a lot of focus devoted to multiple areas including developing ideas and concepts, figuring out who the users would be, utilizing primary and secondary research, developing insights on that research, putting together MANY sketches for potential designs, carrying out the usability testing, reiterating and utilizing "kaizen" to continually improve your concepts and designs, building a prototype and then hopefully putting the product into the market. Within this process includes working with programmers to get the ball rolling on the actual implementation of all the concepts into an actual working piece of technology, the area of individuals concerned with the business side of the process to determine whether or not the product would satisfy the business needs, the design team responsible for putting together the concept sketches together and working with the programmers, and everyone else in between.

One of the primary elements of the class that I have grown to appreciate the most is the amount of group work that is involved. With many of my other informatics classes, there is not a lot of emphasis placed on group work. The heavy amount of group work that is encouraged has exposed me to the essential roles of being an asset to a team: the leadership position and the team member for support. This class has taught me necessary skills to help balance between the two positions - knowing when to take charge, but also knowing when to share the leadership role and becoming a team member for support of the other members of the group. Overall, it has been an incredible course and I have absorbed a lot of useful information that I will be able to take with me as I venture into the marketplace.

- Michael Jacobsmeyer