Team Up: Getting Off on the Right Foot
Introducing the team and establishing a strong foundation for our capstone project
Industry clients. Five MHCI students. One difficult open problem. Seven months to design a relevant solution.
Since before even beginning the MHCI journey we’ve been hearing non-stop about the capstone project that starts off in the Spring semester. It’s not only a large part of the MHCI curriculum, but a full project start to finish and our chance to apply all the combined skills we have learned in MHCI, and in life. That said, you can imagine the anticipation leading up the morning of Monday January 15th, when the team assignment emails came through.
So without further ado…
Introducing Team numo
We’re a young and diverse team of five with varying levels of experience, professional backgrounds, and future aspirations. Here’s the skinny:
- Radha Nath (that’s me!) — Coming from agency-side, I was a UX Strategist with a background in project management and QA. Although I’m a Florida-native who loves the water, part of my heart lives in the mountains of Colorado. I’m a lover of many things, among those things: jigsaw puzzles, coffee shops, my precious pup, and all of the hiking things.
- Jordan Jackson — Formerly a product manager and a sucker for great aesthetics & experiences, design inclusivity, and strategy. He settled in the SF Bay Area for a brief period after finishing his undergrad in 2016 and before joining MHCI. In addition to being a tennis fanatic, he enjoys photography and distance running.
- Alexis China — A designer with an interest in technology and human psychology. She’s originally from small-town south-central PA but lived in Philadelphia for undergrad before entering the MHCI program. In her free time, she enjoys traveling, spending time with family, watching movies, and playing piano.
- Nathan LeBlanc — A researcher hoping to connect design with anthropology. He’s from the Boston area with stints in Iowa and SF, and he was previously a UX Strategist at an agency with experience in global development and non-profits. In his free time, he plays Overwatch and enjoys drag shows.
- Emily Deng — A technologist with a knack for coding, gadgets, and design. She has a special place in her heart for typography. She’s from the SF Bay Area where she traveled as an IT consultant for a data management software company. When she’s not in the MHCI lab, she’s cooking up yummy Instant Pot recipes and staying fit at the gym.
You’ll get a chance to hear from all of us individually over the next several months, but let’s talk about how we decided to approach the first week.
Starting to Understand our Team Dynamics
The first deliverable all teams were internally tasked with was a “Team Contract”. That’s what it’s officially called, but to be honest… it’s less about the contract deliverable and more about the conversations that crop up when creating it. (I know… insert cliche quote about journeys and destinations or whatever..but it’s true.)
Defining “The Roles”
This is probably the most time intensive part. It requires getting into the nitty gritty of backgrounds, skills, career aspirations, and personal goals. We did two exercises to help the conversation:
- Good, Learn, End Goal Grid
Individually, we broadly answered three questions: what are you good at?, what do you want to learn?, and what’s your end goal?. This helped build an understanding of what we each wanted to take away from the project. - Skills Assessment Matrix
We plotted out different skills we felt may be relevant to our project and assessed using a the scale of Contribute, Perform, Excel, Teach. This helped us visualize and document where we are currently in terms of skill.
Ultimately, we decided to assign lead roles based on what made most sense by skill level with the intention of that person being held accountable for certain tasks and deliverables. However, as a team we decided to remain fluid with task delegation and decided to do bi-weekly goal check-ins. Reason being that we want to remain mindful towards the fine balance of delegating a task to someone who wants to learn vs. someone who already knows how to do it. I think that is going to be a major key 🔑 to a fulfilled team and, as a result, a healthy project.
With that said, here are the lead roles:
Jordan, Product Manager + Client Liaison
Radha, Project Lead + UX Design Lead
Nathan, Research Lead
Alexis, Visual Design Lead
Emily, Technical Lead
Some Other Important Details
Outside of roles, we addressed a few other questions upfront:
- How do we deal with work and interpersonal conflicts?
- What do we need to do our best work? (food. seriously.)
- How do we communicate effectively? What are our ‘working hours’?
- What are our rules around meeting etiquette and time wasters?
- How do we define a successful capstone experience?
- How can we bond outside of the project and encourage healthy habits? (We did the Andy Warhol Museum and Federal Galley over the weekend!)
Our Core Values
And if all else fails, we’ll be keeping these three things in mind.
1 — Learn. A whole lot.
2 — Do good work. Do smart work.
3 — Better each other and ourselves.
And of course, the project!
I couldn’t let this be our first post with out introducing why we’re all here, so here’s a super quick elevator pitch. Our client, numo, is a small (~10 person) fin-tech incubator located right here in Pittsburgh. They’ve partnered with Allegheny Conference, a local non-profit, to tackle the gritty problem of future workforce shortages, specifically by improving the K-12 career planning process.
I hope that’s piqued your interest because you’ll be hearing tons more about the project and our process starting with the next post that will be up in a few days!
About this Publication
The intention of our Team numo’s Capstone Publication is two-fold. First, to give you an insider’s perspective to our capstone experience: the successes, failures, decisions, processes, and thoughts. And second, to engage with you around this space of job seeking and career planning / education, it’s a highly relatable topic so we’d love to hear your thoughts as we progress and post. So please follow/clap/comment/share/reach out to us — we’d be happy to hear from you.
A final note before the end: Personally, I just wanted to add how thrilled I am to work with this group of individuals. We’re diverse, sharp, open to growth, and enthusiastic about this space. I have no doubt that we’ll rise up to the many challenges to come, and that we’ll conquer them as a team.
‘Till next time! ✌️
