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Welcome to the Commentary page Each element on this page is auto-retracted. To view a particular element click the arrow to the right of its title. I recommend opening one at a time; open one, view it, close it, and open the next. |
~ OP Design Methodology
To design this OP I used a lean project design methodology - Goals - Get it down then get it good - Artifacts - Fill gaps - Assess - Final edit
- Goals -
- Write clear and concise
- For a wide audience
- Show importance of UI
- Contribute to knowledge commons
- Complete cycle of this project
- Get it down then get it good - I started to write about the different aspects of my experiences without to much thought, then I found the pertinent extracts cleaned them up and found where they fit into the report.
- Artifacts - Next I started to line up documents and proofs with the various extracts this filled in more of the report.
- Holes - Now that I had the majority of the report built I simply looked for holes and created maps, found more extracts and wrote the final sections, filling them in.
- Assess - Originally I built this OP in a three page template on assessment I realized the OP does not reflect the topic. The core report was on one page in two columns. I created more pages and reformatted everything using my UI Design skills including the navigation arrows. Big improvement!
- Final edit - I made my final tweaks of the report had help editing, and then completed my self-review.
~ Pathway Tracking
This is my second to last project OP in my BSc program. This project is a great highlight in my Gaia U learning pathway, it has revealed some capabilities I was unaware of. Andrew reinforced this revelation in a meeting saying that I have a good social and tech balance which is a rare skillflex, its typically one or the other. Going into this project I did not see it as a permaculture design but as I took it on as an official OP project I started to see similar principles being used and realized it was a social design. This was my first real experience with UI design and I see I have a natural ability for it. This experience has diversified my skillflex and deepened my awareness of design.
I filled out the progress tracking rubric which I created in my capstone LIPD for this project (image below). I am very pleased with the outcomes of my un/learning in this project. I anticipated to gain more proficiency in networking and solution based feedback. Networking was one of the big unlearnings I had. Going into it I thought if I try really hard to connect and engage with my peers that it will work. This was not always the case, and I don't blame anyone for it. Fortunately Andrew already had went through this unlearning. He informed me that any social platform needs a large pool of people for it to take off. In such cases like that of Gaia U, it takes active curators to keep up the momentum. Solution based feedback was lacking do to the minimal opportunities to give feedback because of the low amount of interaction. I do feel like I made progress and flexed this skill consciously, mostly when misunderstandings or failures would arise. I excelled beyond what I had expected in six of the aptitude spheres. I am really proud that I pushed through beginners crunch (in UI design) and through the feeling of isolation. It was precisely because of these two obstacles that I took this project on in the first place and I was faced by them in the project its self. I added a few new skill-flexes that I did not anticipate in my LIPD (Empowering others, User Interface design, Mahara Skills and Tech. Skills,). I see that they are key additions for my overall learning goals, particularly empowering others!
In the core report I speak about how my advisor questioned me how this project could fit into the theme of my year of teaching permaculture and the design cycle and meet the learning goals I have outlined in my LIPD. I will briefly speak to it here as well. Social design is the key paradigm shifting element in design in this time. By honoring the work and efforts I have put into this project by writing this OP I am completing a cycle. This OP and my Mid-Year presentation (which is focused on this project) are teaching others the principles and key experiences I learned in this project.
See my original learning goals mind map for this year below. This project does not touch every goal directly but it does touch most. Where this will lead I do not know, but I see great potential to unite large networks of people and facilitate great work through this new knowledge I have gained.
To ensure this OP was improving from my feedback loops I completed a checklist tool (F.L.E.C.) that I created in my Learning Intention and Pathway Design (planning my year). This checklist ensures I touch on eight specific elements. I extracted these elements from my end of cycle review from last year. This is a great tool to have! I am posting it to my Design tools page➚ on the Activity Hub to offer it to other associates for their own use. The check list is at the top of the center column.
F.L.E.C. Checklist
Feedback Loop End of Cycle. This checklist has been condensed from the constructive feedback of my End-of-cycle review.
(deconstructing negative paradigms) interventions & World context
reconstruction-deconstruction-critique-expansion
Comparative assessment of my thinking to others in the field.
How my thinking arouse from others, identify gaps and articulate interventions
Best practices in the field evidence of gaps
Integrate comments when including various media (who created it? how were your involved?)
Share your roles and accountabilities within context
Finish thoughts and complete explanations of the different components of the project including OP itself
~ Participation Records
This project has been very interactive and has pushed me to reach out to as many people as possible. Though the Hub itself has not had as much activity on it as I would have liked, the project itself fulfilled my goal of having a more interactive and integrated learning pathway. My meetings with my main advisor and guild have been consistent and positive. I recently got a message from an associate who read one of my OPs and was very thankful for the tools and inspiration. I was very grateful to get this feedback (it is rare), we established email correspondence and will meet in the near future to further a peer relationship.
To see the various documents of my engagements in this project see the Supporting evidence page. You can access my Gaia Radio notes here➚.
~ Managing Time and Promises
I have stayed on track during this cycle following my original LIPD timeline for my OP3, which can be seen here➚. The theme of my OP3 project changed it was originally the Permaculture Listening Project, which was aimed at collecting best practices for teaching Permaculture Design. I did speak with some Permaculture teachers about the project and decided I was not prepared to take it on. During this time my work on the Activity Hub picked up and I was asked to help prototype a scaled-up version of the Gaia U Mahara site to include more institutions. My skillflexing deepened and I realized it would be beneficial to document this experience in an OP. I had already produced so much material and with good notes and documents of all my engagements. At the time I chose to change I had one month to make it into an OP. I knew this was sufficient time if I gave some time to it daily. I rewrote my OP3 checklist of general tasks to ensure I could complete it by Dec first (seen below).
The only issue I had, I did not account for my mid-year presentation. It snuck up on me, I didn't know until mid November that I would need to put together my presentation during the same time I was finishing up my OP.
I did not use any time management tools to tackle this issue I just made the presentation my priority and still committed some of my daily school time to my OP.
~ OP3 tasks
This project is to create a user interface for Gaia University on Mahara.
Set my Goals - Personal, Project and Impact
Do a SWOC analysis of user interfaces and this context
Reflect on my experience of creating this platform
Get feed back from others on how the AH is working for them and what they would like to see happen
Get the bones of my OP in place
look over outline of material and assess how best to present, make changes and hone text
Finish creating my OP3 on Mahara
Enter review cycle
~ Skillflex Assessment
Below I reflect on the skills I obtained during this OP Cycle:
- Personal: I have gained more confidence by working in a team and initiating events and actions. I got a new sense of leadership through the positive feedback I got from decisions I made through out this cycle. A new arena of designed opened up to me showing me a skill flex capacity that I have which I was unaware of before.
- Professional: Through being a leader and initiator during this cycle I have increased my professional capacities and this intern has given me more confidence to be in a position of decision making. Designers in the field of UI and UX (User Experience) are very well paid and in demand so I am interested in pursuing this as a stacked skill flex on that can create revenue and help the EcoSocial field meet its goals.
- Peer: This has been the most interactive cycle of my learning path yet! It was my pursuit of contributors and collaborators that made it so interactive not the Hub itself. Though the Hub has not performed to the high standards I had set, I am pleased with the outcome.
- Political/Patrix: I dealt with the feeling of isolation and the idea of failure many times throughout this cycle. It is hard when you put yourself out there asking for feedback and interaction and no one responds. I dealt with this by staying positive and not letting the silence block my inspiration. I also made an effort to always respond to other associates on forums, knowing it has a ripple effect. To address this silence issue I also made a suggestion to the Mahara developers to include a like button on forums to provide users an easier way to engage and provide feedback.
How does this skill building relate back to the LIPD? This project surprisingly meets most all of my original LIPD goals for skill building and even adds a few new ones. I give more details about this in the Pathway tracking block in the left hand column.
How does this project affect my pathway development? This project has widened my vision of the potentials I have on my pathway. It has diversified my skills, increasing my resiliency in the job market. I am still uncertain of my exact trajectory. Unlike many people this does not make me feel insecure. My worldview is one of trust in the Universe, I believe in putting in effort and having dedication and this will reveal the right path.
~ Learning journal excerpts
This journal entry shows my state of mind right before I made the intervention to reengage the Activity Hub project. The key for me is the last sentence.
7/2/2014
I connected with another Gaia U associate who I am hoping will become another guild member. I have a lot of frustrations with the way Gaia U seems disconnected. It seems they put all the energy into the orientation get them all started up and then move onto the next bunch and leave the rest of us to our own devices, with minimal input. The potential yield of a system is unlimited!
This entry shows some of the unfolding of this intervention and my efforts to connect and collaborate with more associates.
7/15/2-14
I have had a few back and forth with Charlie D. the past few days. I saw a page he put together on a design checklist of sorts and had the idea of starting a collection of pages from multiple associates in the activity hub as a demonstration of the vision I had. I asked if he would like to contribute to such a project and he was on it. He will wait until it gets reviewed and edited… We also just linked up on Skype so looks like my guild is growing I also linked with another associate Virginia M. Who looks to be another good link for my Guild, adding some diversity, being a woman. Feels good, I feel like I am getting out of a solo feeling slump!
The entry below shows my attempts at following through with my original LIPD OP3 project and the struggles I encountered. This is one of those journal entries that inspire me to journal. It show a pattern of "how I work" by follow the path that presents itself, it also records resources that I will likely refer to later on.
7/29/2014
I have had a bit of a mental set back in pursuing Pedagogy patterns. I met with two teachers up in Quebec PC convergence and told them about my project, Dave Jacke and Bernard Alonso. Dave Jacke said follow it for awhile and see where it goes, I got a few ideas from watching him teach and listening to more of his talks on a podcast. Bernard told me that he usually makes a plan on what he is going to teach and then ends up “reading the crowd” and diverging from his plan. After getting some of their feedback I felt frustrated and almost as if it was an impossible project. I had almost given up on the idea of pursuing it. I was researching into things that Dave JACKE had turned me onto in his talk on designing ecological cultures. I wrote a little blog post on some of the ideas here (http://episystemic.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/succession-of-a-successful-culture/➚). I have just been pursuing random interests also reading some of the book Sacred Economics. The conundrum that (Dave presented of designing cultures) cosmology is the glue that holds it all together and permaculture has avoided that spiritual aspect of human culture really lit up a lot of questions for me in pursuing ecosocial design as a career path. I started to wonder is it even possible? does it end up becoming social engineering? and many more
I recently stumbled across this image of the “eight elements of digital literacy”. I followed it to see is origin and I ran into blog posts about Doug Belshaw. I started to watch this Ted Talk (http://www.edudemic.com/digital-literacy/➚) by him on digital literacies and he is talking about developing literacies (plural) progressively rather than sequentially. This seemed like it could be a break through to some degree for me in understanding the pedagogy that is developing world wide.
The way I understand the difference is that progressive is from patterns to detail and sequential is a linear path of both patterns and detail at the same time.
This entry shows me reengaging the Hub. What I like about this post is it show a bit of happiness, like I am actually enjoying my studies even and that is partly because I feel some freedom to pursue what is interesting me rather than forcing myself into something that doesn't seem to be flowing (my original OP3 project).
8/21/2014
I haven’t been working on “what I am supposed to” :) I know that is incorrect as far as Gaia goes… I have been moving in areas of interest. I have recently connected with Andrew about the activity Hub to get it up to date I want a chat plugin and a more dynamic interface. I created a fun animation for the cover page which was a new skill I gained using GIMP to create a GIF animation it was a lot of fun. I have then taken on the possible project of working on an application known as Liquid feedback with Andrew.
OP process reflection ❋
This includes the following four sections
- Learnings
- Goals
- Incorporation of Feedback
- Dissemination Efforts
~ Learnings
What did I learn? My major learning during the creation of this OP was to consider how the report should reflect what you are reporting on. As obvious as it may seem, it did not occur to me that this OP should be a good example of a user interface itself. I learned a great deal about creating a good page structure using tables. I also learned that Mahara itself as a user interface could use some improvement; I have reported details of this to the developers. During this cycle my main un/learning was to drop expectation of others and act from my own inspiration! By dropping expectations of others we free up a lot of space in our mind and heart, making more room for new inspiration. This can help with the feeling of isolation.
What were the highlights of this cycle? Diverse interaction with my peers and the creation of a multi-purpose user interface. Though the Activity Hub has not achieved the level of activity I was hoping for, the creation of it fulfilled this need.
What would you do differently next time? Because of my worldview I trust that it could have been no other way, and would not want it to be another way. Though I could see people in my position might say that they would have tried other channels to connect with Andrew when the e-mail did not work. Though this would have given this project a much earlier kick-off, I would not have received this teaching if it had not happened the way it had.
~ Goals
Did you meet your design goals for the OP? Yes, I met and exceeded the goals I set for this report. I used a short form template that Jennifer English made, when I reached the assessment phase of my design process I realized the OP was not a good reflection of a user interface. This was not one of my original goals when I set out designing this OP because I did not think of it. Once I realized this I spent a lot of time creating new pages and reformatting everything including creating the arrow navigation. This was an unexpected increase in workload but it pushed me to learn Mahara even deeper. Most every block is within a table. I used tables because the way Mahara lays out the page there is very little margin and white space. Having this space between elements is a key feature of a good user interface. I am very happy with the way that this report turned out!
Associate goals for the Hub
Being an associate I know that other most likely have many of the same needs and goals as I do, I still wanted to hear from my peers. I made many attempts to get other associates goals for this group.
Failed attempts to get user goals include: Posting a suggestion form on the group home page and on forums, posting in all Gaia U forums and social media pages asking for people to post to the group or to email me, forum topics dedicated to this topic, and connecting associates directly to Mahara Developers who were asking for feed back to make platform improvements.
Success in getting user goals: Mostly through directly meetings with associates, I had a few responses to forum posts and pages, for example on the tutorial videos topic, and on the Gallery of OPs.
Andrew's goals
I learned of Andrew's goals when he emailed me the proposal, see the proposal and my response in the left column of the Supporting Evidence page.
~ Incorporation of Feedback
My advisor suggested on one of my OP reports that the commentary should follow the core report. I followed her suggestion in this OP. I tweaked Jennifer English's three page template which I used for this OP. Originally I filled it out as it was, my core report was all on one page in two columns, a long scrolling page. My advisor had advised against this in one of my past OPs. It was here that I realized that this OP should reflect my knowledge of user interface design. When I thought I was almost finished I had just begun! It is hard for a reader to see but I put a lot of time and energy into making the layout reflect a good user interface. I realized Mahara does not leave enough space in the margins between column so I used tables to format each block. I also added the usability feature of the navigation arrows at the bottom of the pages. I implemented things I learned from the OP Support calls and the PoDAPO calls with Jennifer English such as defining the world context and broadening the scope for a wide audience among others, see my notes on my Gaia Radio page here➚. I used feedback I got from my mid year presentation like putting the user interface definition early on and defining unfamiliar words like Mahara and Skill-flex. Each OP I build off of the feedback from previous ones, they improve each time because of this. Feedback is an essential component in the equation for improvement!
After Peer Review
My peer reviewer had some good suggestions. I changed my Title image logo from an altered Gaia U logo to the present UI logo. I did this because of the sensitivity and illegality of altering logos. I added a reference to a blog post which shows good and bad UI design. I added some more text about how this project fits into my career goals and I exposed elements in my Supporting evidence that were originally auto-retracted. I was also in the process of implementing feedback from my Main Advisor on my LIPD and used her feedback on improving my project abstract to improve my abstract on this OP as well.
After Pro Review
~ Dissemination Efforts
This project by its very nature has been shared with all of Gaia U. I have also invited all of Gaia U to the two Google hangouts on this topic. I created a Prezi presentation for my Mid Year presentation for this OP, see right column of Supporting evidence. No audience showed up for the presentation so I recorded my presentation uploaded it to youtube➚ and have shared it with several of my guild to get feedback from them, these can be found in the same section of the Supporting evidence page. I will post this report as soon as it passes pro-review into the Gallery of OPs and on to my profile page. I will be meeting with a guild buddy, Jacki Saorsail soon (who is reviewing my mid year presentation) to see how our projects can benefit one another.
~ Digiphon
This OP was created on a MacBook Air. The text was created directly in Mahara then copied and pasted in TextEdit and saved as plain text (or uploaded for journals & Docs.). All photos were taken with my iPhone 4 saved as a jpg and imported at 50 kg to Mahara or taken as screenshots, see this page➚ for how I take screen shots. I tweaked the three page template of Jennifer English as the format of this OP. I have made a tutorial video post on the Hub about finding and copying templates which can be found here➚. In the text of this post I explain how to find this particular template.
The photos that have been altered with effects and drop-shadows were altered in Pixelmator (highly recommended - cheap $20 photo editor), all mindmaps were created in XMind and embedded, and resized them to 50kb in preview, uploaded to Mahara, Self-eval progress tracking rubic and key images were created in Mac Numbers, I took a screen shot, resized in preview, then uploaded to Mahara. User Interface tour video was recorded with Google hangout and edited on iMovie, Google hangout sandbox meeting video was recorded with google hangout and edited on the youtube editor. The Annotated resourcee are an RSS feed that was embedded from my Xmarks account which allows you to share your bookmarks with notes.