11: “GRAND FINAL” **

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Celebrate the final, virtually mediated project presentation like an important ceremony.

Cultural Context

Supports Collectivist Community Orientation,  and Hierarchical Authority Orientation cultures. Bridges Achievement and Ascription Orientation, Universal and Particular Standard Orientation and High and Low  Contextual Communication Orientation cultures.

This pattern was used in the context of Hong Kong/Korean, Hong Kong/Austrian and Hong Kong/Taiwanese collaboration.

Context

Local teams produced LOCAL VARIATIONS of design solutions, which were implemented in prototypes and need to be presented as part of the final solution of the project.

Breakdown

Over weeks participants worked on a common project. Teams came up with a common design concept and theme after long negotiations. Although students were asked to work on a collaborative solution, they were also inspired to develop and implement local product variations to test and improve the concepts. The concept and local implementation need to be presented to and assessed by both universities faculty. Although teams are required to present their project as a team, there might not be enough funds and time to organize a collocated meeting to present, discuss and assess the work collocatedly, as it was already done in the GRAND OPENING.

Problem

How can one achieve a fair evaluation of the global and local teamwork and adjourn the international collaborative design project satisfactorily?

Forces

The finale presentation is an important milestone based on which the design learning community is coordinated. Students’ work needs to be assessed and rewarded. However, concepts of reward vary culturally. Universal Standard Orientation and Ascription Orientation cultures may focus on the consistency and innovativeness of a design concept. Particular Standard Orientation and Achievement Orientation cultures may assess student work based on the presentation of appealing and refined final prototypes. Hence, an awareness of local product variations and the conceptual foundations of the shared solution space need to be created to assess the collaborative and individual work. Especially for High Contextual Communication Orientation cultures, it is difficult to describe tangible design solutions and products only verbally. A concept can be explained verbally, but a product or artefact needs to be explored and tested. Hence, a final presentation needs to support multi-modal communication.

Solution

Organize a technologically sophisticated, virtually mediated final presentation where global virtual teams present to all local and remote tutors and other teams and receive a final critique and evaluation of their work.

Balance achievement of results and ascription to the design concept in the requirements and assessment criteria. A verbally and visually mediated concept presentation presents the key contributions of the global virtual team. In parallel, design features and interactions with local product variations are videotaped and broadcasted to the remote teams and tutors. While final tangible product implementations can be send to the collaborative partner by mail, virtual prototypes can be shared online. Individual contributions as well as collaborative efforts can be assessed based on the concept and artefact presentation.

Why

The grand final presentation is another intensive part of the design collaboration project. It gives students a chance to show and be rewarded for the hard work of the last weeks. Collectivist Community Orientation cultures do not let members of the team loose face in front of the tutors and other teams. Even though many collaboration issues were discussed controversy at times, the team will present the design solution collectively, which gives the team a last chance to resolve all unspoken problems before they present. Teams grow together again in the end of the project. A grand final presentation mediates the projects’ importance to all participants. Therefore, students will give their best. This means for ascription cultures to build a strong, shared concept on which all implementations can base. However, presenting real artefacts as product solution encourages achievement cultures to work hard for this milestone. This also promotes equality in assessment and reward of students’ efforts.

Since students became more communication technology-adept and confident over the period of remote collaboration, the use of varying communication media offers another possibility to demonstrate competence to collaborate over a distance. The multimodal presentation of artefacts and concepts balances High and Low  Contextual Communication Orientation cultures.

Resulting Context

Using this pattern results in a context where students believe they had a valuable learning experience. Moreover, the international students are animated to stay in contact beyond this collaboration.

Related Work

There are further reports about the success of networked design critiques by Sheldon et al. (1995) and Fu and East (1999).

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