Andrew Alexander Wk 8 Commentary

I must express that although some of my group members have doubts about the project regarding time and application to the U.P. system, I myself am absolutely confident that our redesign will be supported by the data and more importantly, make extremely signficant recommendations to Ubiquitous Presenter. That being said, I will proceed with my commentary.
This week felt a little scattered with multiple meetings involving multiple members. Overall, the main goal of this week was to consolidate models and complete the affinity wall. I feel that we have succeeded in accomplishing these two goals, with the exception of a consolidated artifact model. The affinity wall seemed like a very slow process, and there were times where people were arguing over seemingly trivial details that I just had to take a step back and work on something else. One thing I have noticed is that group projects require everyone to make concessions, but some people feel like their opinion is the right one. Thats all and well, but if it is holding back the progress of the entire project then one should simply move on. I am glad the affinity wall is done, I felt like some of the group members were slightly distracted in their quest to make it perfect.
This week I personally took part in the consolidation of the flow model, creation of two sequence models that had not been completed, consolidation of the sequence model, and the creation of the affinity wall. On Sunday several group members met up for what felt like the most productive meeting of the entire quarter. When we walked the affinity wall and began the visioning/ redesign process I finally realized the importance of the affinity wall. It seemed as though great design ideas were bouncing all over the room and I was happy to capture them on the wiki as well as facilitate further development of ideas. I knew that we had plenty of great design ideas for U.P. from the very beginning, the challenge was collecting data that would support the kinds of requirements we all sort of had in mind. Actually seeing the data spawn these design ideas was very...satisfying...to say the least. Overall, I feel like the group members that were present on Sunday received a sort of revitalization, and now I am almost sure that everyone shares the same confidence and great feelings about our project that I have felt throughout the entirety of the process. If there was some way to implement and actually create a system like the one we have in mind, I feel as though it would almost revolutionize the way people look at school and learning. The next week includes development of design ideas, prototyping, storyboarding, and the initiation of the paper. All is well.