This is the talk I gave in Dublin, Ireland at Interaction 12 describing how designers need to demystify their processes to improve team cohesion, collaboration and productivity.
looks like someone here got the wrong invitation http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wTiz7SEEdVU/TujhE7vzIUI/AAAAAAAADXw/z-NMHaEumhM/s400/skinny+man+in+body+building+contest+dr+heckle+funny+photo+blog.jpg
quickly degenerates into us vs. them http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a0/Allegany_Township_silos.jpg/1024px-Allegany_Township_silos.jpg
collaboration is directly related to team cohesion The Role of Team and Task Characteristics in R & D Team Collaborative Problem Solving and Productivity Robert C. Dailey Management Science Vol. 24, No. 15 (Nov., 1978), pp. 1579-1588 http://www.jstor.org/pss/2630673 “the collaborative problem solving-productivity relationship was …shown [to be] sensitive to high and low levels for each of four predictors …task certainty, task interdependence, team size, and team cohesiveness.”
inevitably, we’ll get in our own way “The process laid out here — a delusion of happy collaboration between bean counters, stressed out clients and business minded account managers and, presumably, somewhere in the mix, designers — would be an unproductive clusterfuck for any capable designer. Input is one thing — valuable, in its place. But clients want design to solve hard problems, and to solve them beautifully and brilliantly. Pandering to people on the team by earnestly seeking opinions and and then making sure those wayward, uninformed, and wrong opinions are manifest in the product dilutes quality.” -jmaharry, october 15th, 2011 posted as a response to “demystifying design”on a list apart