Cool Hand Luke (1967) uses the expression "What we have here is a failure to communicate" and can be viewed in this scene on YouTube
This video also illustrates the effect that authoritarian leadership has on members of a team. While the Warden tries to explain in a rather benevolent fashion that Luke's beating is due to the fact that "Some men cannot be reached" this should definitely not be the case in a team oriented atmosphere of Computer-based learning tools development.
Vicente continues to illustrate his point with the surgical team example in which one member views himself as more important than another. However, for the overall survival of the patient (or project in our case) all members must be viewed as vital, important and valuable. I'd like to state right now that our group is made up of four talented individuals, each bringing vast and varied experiences that interweave well in our project development thus far.
It is when members view them selves as more important or valuable than others and when these people rely on fear-invoking authoritarian styles of leadership that lines of communication are broken and the proverbial patient dies.
The necessity to communicate outside of our team with our users and clients is also a critical element to keeping our patient/project alive. We can use our prototype as a design tool to gather information and feedback from our users to make our customers strong co-designers (p370). Our challenge then is to communicate the experience that our new system will offer. Including our users as co-designers will help to establish and maintain trust while simultaneously develop buy-in from our clientele. The prototype testing process should also flush out design flaws as we receive feedback from our users. This relates well to Vicente's argument that all shareholders are important to a project's success.
This ties in well with my own personal beliefs of classroom instruction. I believe that teachers are not the sole sources of knowledge and that we can allow student input to the direction and modifications of their learning. Respecting student's abilities and experiences as valuable creates an environment of trust and collaborative learning.
Returning to Vicente's plane crash examples, communication need not stem from the original holder of information. It is all members' responsibilities to seek out information about the actions of others within our project. This is why we have enabled to "update" feature in our wiki to inform each other of recent changes to our project.
While the wiki affords us time and space to reflect deeply on our process, face-face meetings allow for rapid iterations and resolving arguments within our design team(Citation Required Here). Just as Vicente's anaesthesiologist experience real-life pressure and stress trying to save the dummy patient, instant feedback has been important to the smooth development of our LMS.
Furthermore, the dynamic and authentic assessment scenario of the practice dummy related well to Norman's Visceral, behavioural and reflective levels of design as working on that patient will be an experience not long forgotten by Vicente's anaesthesiologist. Working closely with our users in as close to real situations in our prototype may evoke memories and emotions from our users that in turn will uncover deeply hidden design and technical flaws in our LMS.
References
Cool Hand Luke (1967) Jalem Productions.
Norman, D. A. (2004) Emotional Design: Why we Love(or hate) everyday things. Basic Books. New York.
Vicente, K. (2004) The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology. Vintage, Random House. Toronto
XXXXXXX, X. (####) AAAAAAAAA. Chapter 17: Prototyping as a design tool.
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