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Journal 9: Process Reflection

EWe’re here! The end! The final moments of our Processes & Perspectives and the moment where we can take a perspective on the things we’ve learned and consider what we might do next. This reminds me of the agile practice of running a retrospective: What would you stop doing? What would you start doing? What would you do less of? What would you do more of? And what would you keep as-is? 

So let’s think about this in reverse-order, which I think may lend a hand to asking ‘what did I need from the preceding stage to get me through this one?’

Evaluation

Think more about metrics

Understand who your audience is

Implementation

Put some polish together earlier - you need the ‘thing’ solidified before you can add the details about it

Don’t be afraid to step back again and re-cast a feature or pull a section

Selection

Come up with your selection criteria before you have an emotional investment in the outcome

Build a strong team trust so selection can be to-the-point rather than drawn out

Ideation

More is better, but a couple rounds of culling and discussions help

Drawings are worth dozens of bullet points

Definition

Argue about the definition of the problem until you’ve got something that can stand up to another argument

Change it many times and then reserve the right for it to be wrong

Analysis

Think about byproducts, tangents, and unrelated -- there’s more going on you just have to try different approaches

No research is wasted but put a lot of your research into the trash bin if it doesn’t survive the next phase - it’s not relevant, move on

Acceptance 

Look, sometimes you just gotta do work you maybe aren’t 100% jazzed on... Try to find the reasons and build positive momentum 

Accept that your team members all have their own challenges and logistics and try to learn how to make this a great experience for everyone

That’s about it for me! I think this process will continue to be handy throughout the rest of the program, as well as into work environments as well. It’s always helpful to have a framework to try to leverage. 

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Mars: Process Journal 8: Evaluate

At the end of any endeavor, you need to be able to evaluate and learn. Now that we’ve traveled through the design process stages, it’s time to think about where we’ve been, what we’ve learned, and how to wrap it all up.

In my work career, we’ve tried (poorly) to leverage the retrospective event as an opportunity to ask 5 questions: What should we stop doing? What should we start doing? What do we want to do more of? What do we want to do less of? And what should be left as-is? Given that we don’t get to iterate from here (our band is breaking up, going their separate ways - perhaps we’ll do a greatest hits album at our 20 year reunion?) -- the best takeaway we can hope for through the evaluation phase is to determine some basic things: 

What made the group effective? 

What did I contribute, that helped or hindered the group? 

If we were to go back to the beginning, what decisions would we have made differently? 

Did we have the right incentives / rewards / mechanisms in place to proceed through the project together? 

Do we like the outcome? 

If we were to add, modify, or remove group members or approaches, what would we change? 

How can we leverage what we learned in this group / project towards future school projects and/or professional environments? 

I think we could have created a better online collaboration space. Our Google Drive is a little messy and it probably would’ve benefitted us to assign some more concrete roles early-on? Perhaps someone could be responsible for meeting notes, someone for project timeline, someone for deliverable management, someone for Drive organization, etc. Just general housekeeping that might have helped us better work the process, regardless of the fact that we overcame much of those challenges into a pretty awesome final deliverable. 

I’m looking forward to seeing the results in the final presentations - and I’m also really thrilled with the caliber of thinking that we’ve experienced as a group as well as shared within our class across teams. 

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Mars: Conceptualized (Meet LIAM)

Meet Liam,

This is our first draft of Liam’s physical appearance. As we mentioned last week, we see Liam as having a base model and from there highly customizable based on his intended use. His internal features, the software, is the actual product whereas the hardware here is just how we visually see him working best on the mission to Mars.

To walk you through his appearance, he has a lightweight shell with speakers on the top third where he can communicate with his user. The middle third houses his screen for sharing data and accepting data input from the user. Between the screens there are three fans that will help him navigate the Hab’s environment. The lowest portion will be our “surveillance,” housing the camera for 24/7 data collection, along with a projector capability to share visual information on a larger scale. The lights run down the seams of his shell, LED’s that change colors with his “mood” or identify what type of alert he has for the crew member (i.e. red would be emergency, blue might be messages, etc.).

As for the software, here are the capabilities that make up Liam: Soft Skills AI, Team Dynamics Training, Smart Team Facilitator, Guided Stress Reduction, Remote Data Collection, Adaptive Distant Management, Advanced Passive Emotion Tracking, Instant Feedback & Mediation, and Task Management Support.

Each version of Liam we send to Mars will be color coded to make identifying every individual Liam easy for the team. They will train with them for the year prior to launch and aid in daily life while in space. We envision his daily activities to be hovering around the Hab monitoring the teams emotions and performance within the group, sharing  information , alerting ground control of any emergencies and offering help when needed or prompted.

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Mars: Business Model Canvas for LIAM

This week’s exercise: Our Business Model Canvas. Anybody got a few hundred million dollars to spare?

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MARS: Implementation

I speak business goodly.

This week has been focused on the implementation (and refinement) of the selected solution. Our team has moved pretty quickly from the ephemeral (what does it mean to go to Mars?) to the specific of hard plastics and team-problem-solving software. 

Unfortunately, I had a conflict and missed our normally scheduled Sunday-night call - I’m (as usual) grateful for my team for carrying the load on these discussions. 

We took a slightly different approach in this stretch compared to others, allowing our team to optimize for our individual strengths and dividing up the work accordingly. I was more than happy to take the lead on building out the Business Model Canvas as it’s something that I’ve done in the past, as well as a document / artifact that could be created without the need to closely collaborate (and synchronize calendars) with other classmates. 

In the BMC, I focused on trying to envision a company that wasn’t dependent upon actually having a business plan or a go-to-market strategy. Instead, we envisioned a hybrid investment-based procurement approach, whereby perhaps the US government would see this program as an important extension of the overall Mars mission strategy, fund it to get it started through non-equity grants, and then transition to become a guaranteed purchasing partner. This would allow the LIAM product business to focus on building the right solution rather than trying to rush a product to market. In this case, we really think that these autonomous assistants could be a crucial part of not only the work around the ship, but also in maintaining healthy emotional states for the passengers on these missions.

Our final-stretch will be to converge all these working ideas into a single coherent message. I’m excited to see what our ‘creative’ folks cooks up in terms of physical look and feel of the device. The final stretch! 

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Process Journal: Mars Solution

Some weeks - you just gotta depend on your team to pull you through. 

Given that I had to travel to China for work this past week, my already constrained schedule got completely inverted (by a 15 hour time difference) and I wasn’t able to participate in group discussions and activities nearly as much as I’d like to. We were, however, able to make reasonably good use of our time to set a direction around our product, which has started to materialize quite quickly both in our minds as well as in the assignments. 

At first, I wasn’t sure where all this discussion about team was going to take us, but fortunately it’s led to some interesting discussions and ideas. I think our topic would work just as well in this course as it would for a creative writing “science fiction” course, because we’re really exploring the whole gamut of ideas surrounding what kinds of things we’d want to take along with us (or want someone going on the trip to take along with them). 

Deviating slightly from the main topic, I spent a few minutes conjuring up naming ideas for our product, now that it’s got some sense of direction. In true NASA-fashion, I decided the prudent course would be to try finding combinations of initials that spelled out something clever or witty, while also trying to tie the functionality that we’ve been describing together. Some of my favorites are TERI: Team Enhancing Robotic Interface, or MARC: Mars Autonomous Robotic Crewmember. I like the idea of personifying the system and making it seem like part of the crew. Conceptually, I envision each crew member receiving one of these as their assistant / friend / confidant / blowoff valve! 

Now that we’re coming into the final stretch, I think our group has really shown a lot of willingness to help each other, and keep the entire effort driving forward with eagerness. I’m really impressed with how much effort and honest contribution people are giving this project, and I’m hoping to be a better contributor moving down the final few weeks! 

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Mars: Solution

Our team utilized taking polls up until this point as the predominant way to make decisions. This time around when coming to a solution we  utilized a couple different methods. Coming into our “solutions” week we still had three main questions that all could be potential solutions to our problem definition. We could either:

-define how we will select team members

-define a team structure

or -define a tool or product the team needs in order to be successful.

In deciding on our solution, it came pretty organically. Everyone agreed outlining human characteristics and personality traits might be too subjective: we can never accurately predict human behavior and conflict is inevitable. Everyone’s interest peaked when we identified that a tool or a product, some ‘X’, would be the solution to creating a team to successfully make it to Mars.

This led us to rephrasing our problem definition to include, “even the most capable team needs outside support on the mission to Mars.” It cleared up exactly what we were looking for in a solution and the next step for us was coming up with the specific criteria for our “outside support.” What we learned in our research is that there are four main aspects of group work and they are, “forming”, “storming”, “norming” and “performing”. The “storming” and “norming” phases are where the majority of teams experience conflict and therefore added stress and emotions. This is where teams need outside support in order to ease group tensions and provide other general mission support.

Our criteria for coming up with the ‘X’ is this:

Data collection of individual crew members and environment

Communication

Face/voice recognition

PCM technology (emotional intelligence)

Keyword problem solving

Spacial awareness

Ability to have software updates

In coming up with the form of the ‘X’ we are still working on coming to a consensus and will inevitably need to compromise on certain aspects of this thing. Our last group meeting of the week we used more of an idea potpourri method: everyone came to the table with their criteria for ‘X’ and from there we whittled it down and combined ideas. We inadvertently used a few other selection methods because this ‘X’ is so heavily represented in Sci-Fi, that we need to make sure our version was pragmatic.

Logistically, it’s been interesting to scope out our solution. On the one hand, anything related to a Mars voyage is likely to be very expensive. On the other hand, we’re operating under the assumption that there is a confirmed voyage to Mars which would suggest that there is adequate funding for such a huge undertaking. All of our solutions have a higher cost to them, but when you take into consideration advances in technology as well as potential applications outside of the Mars trip the costs become more reasonable. In terms of accuracy, we think there is very little margin for error with our solution. It will be with the astronauts for an extended period of time in a high-stress environment, so any mistakes could have long lasting consequences. We have been thinking about the development cycle, and believe it would have an extended earth trial to account for any edge cases. It would also have the ability to receive over the air updates, as who knows what could change over the period of the trip. There is definitely a potential for annoyance, but luckily our solution isn’t a zero sum game. It doesn’t need to be used all the time by everyone, so if there are issues someone can step away until cooler heads prevail. How exactly the hardware should manifest itself upon the crew is still up for debate!

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Process Journal: Mars - Brainstorming

This past week was one of the more difficult weeks for this project simply because of time and logistics constraints. It started with missing class due to a work meeting that landed on our class time. Therefore - I missed that brainstorming session. 

Trying to pick up a brainstorming session from the notes gathered was tough, but I think I got the gist of what people were thinking. Obviously the nuance was missed, but the big bullet points were there and that helped a lot. I then attempted to add my own thoughts on a couple of the big questions raised. Specifically, I was intrigued at the idea of successful groups and teams in existence, and did some further research on a couple groups that I specifically keyed into which were submarine crews (small confined space, travel away from people, difficult working conditions, actual life threatening environment), as well as antarctic base personnel who have to brave harsh conditions and potentially be self-sufficient for weeks or months on end. 

One of the big things that comes to mind as we work through the Mars travel and team challenge is that it seems like you benefit from a group that’s larger than smaller. In the example of sub crews, we’re talking modern vessels in the 130-150 person range. Antarctic research bases can have dozens of staff during peak periods, and typically don’t fall smaller than about 10 due to the number of things that need to be done. When you think about future Mars missions, I think knowing how many people could go might make a big difference to how you would staff it. 

I was able to catch up with Jas from the team during a quick call, but overall this was a rather scattered week. I’m hoping that I can contribute more - though traveling internationally adds some complexity to scheduling west coast time zone conversations. Looking forward to dialing in the final stretch and building up to our solution! 

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Mars: Brainstorming

This week our team went through another round of ideation and brainstorming to expand on the topic of teams & people going to Mars. 

Ultimately, our topics are really wide-ranging but there are some common threads that I think we can take advantage of to further drive towards our solution.

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Process Journal #4: Definition

Who wants to go to Mars?

This week seemed a little more straightforward than the previous weeks’, in the fact that we’ve already done a lot of the work to dial-in on the topic of Mars and where our group wants to go with it. 

Ultimately, it seemed like we were (as a group) at an intersection between 3 choices: 

1. Who gets to go to Mars, and how do we (humans / Americans / etc.) decide?

2. Why should we go to Mars, and is it just a cop-out for messing up Earth?

3. What will the ownership and rights really be on Mars - given that there’s a bunch of treaties, but those are all probably worthless once people actually get there and real lives are on the line. 

So - of the 3, we went with the first one primarily because it seems to be the most tangible, with a feasible “solution” (or, set of solutions). The second option seemed too negative - that we’d just get to rehash all the known issues with Earth. I keep coming back to the line from The West Wing about traveling to the Moon: 

There are a lot of hungry people in the world, Mal, and none of them are hungry 'cause we went to the moon. None of them are colder and certainly none of them are dumber 'cause we went to the moon.

There’s a great opportunity, I think, to make a real Mars mission a powerful unifier for mankind, and for people to also use it as a vehicle to describe important math, science, and engineering concepts to kids. I think we’re missing something by not having a “moon mission” in our national dialog. 

Anyways - back to the topic at hand - Mars. 

The definition that we went with as a group is really going to focus on teams, interpersonal communications, and how to anticipate what could go wrong within a confined space over several years (including things like anger, frustration, love, loneliness, boredom, happiness, and the entire spectrum of emotions). We’re not even really worried about the engineering or the science of the vessels or the mission planning - that’s all fairly well defined, even though it’s hard and expensive. But the human factors are unknown, and nobody’s quite sure (from what we’ve all researched) what the optimal team looks like in this context. 

The closest analogies that we probably have on Earth are going to be remote & desolate destinations. I think the two best case studies with real-world analogues are submarine crews, and antarctic bases. 

We can also use long-term space station residents like Astronaut Scott Kelly 

I think our project is off to a great start - but we have a long way to go. Looking forward to getting into the solution & ideation phases! 

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Mars: Problem Definition

Historically we’ve selected people to go to space based on individual capabilities, however now we must select individuals to form a team to collaborate successfully on a Martian mission through the challenges of confinement, isolation, and lack of resources.

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How and why we choose who will to go to Mars will define both the near-term success, and lay the foundation for long-term habitation of the red planet.

Dave Cole ... just now. 

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Week10: Conjunction Junction

MacBook Pro

My Mac laptop is silver and has black keys and has a black bezel around the display and has 2 USB-C ports and has a headphone jack on the side.

My Mac laptop is silver but not the light silver. It has 2 USB ports but neither of them are USB-A. It has a backlit keyboard but no touch bar. It has a retina display but it’s only 13”.

My House

My house has a 3 car garage and is two stories tall and has a great kitchen and has a large backyard and has 4 great trees in the yard.

My house is located in Summerlin but not the fancy part of town. My house has a large backyard but most of it is rock, but that means there’s plenty of room to work with. My kitchen is large but it needs some work and I’m thinking about a total remodel.

West Wing TV Show

The TV show West Wing features great actors like Rob Lowe, Martin Sheen, and Bradley Whitford and has great writing by Aaron Sorkin and did a great job balancing drama and comedy and is still worth watching today - nearly 20 years after it premiered.

The TV show West Wing is often considered one of the best shows on TV but it still has critics who say it’s too idealistic or sappy. Most of the show’s episodes stand alone, but the entire series takes you through an overarching story arc. The central character tends to be the president (played by Martin Sheen) but I think the show is really about one of his lieutenants, Josh Lyman (played by Bradley Whitford) as that character is central to most of the show’s stories.

IKEA

Ikea is a great place to browse for home ideas and is a good spot to grab a quick bite to eat and is pretty kid-friendly so you can let the little ones roam and has plenty of new products to check out and has pretty good & affordable food in the cafe.

Ikea can be a good place for furniture ideas but it does feel a lot like a dorm room. The food in the cafe is good but it can be crowded on the weekends. A lot of the furniture is really cheap, but sometimes it’s cheap because it’s actually poorly constructed.

USC Trojans Football

The USC Trojans are a great team for anyone to root for and they have a tremendous history of winning and there are some great rivalries like Notre Dame and UCLA and the home games are beautiful at the coliseum and this upcoming season should be an exciting one and I’m already planning my trip to catch a game!

The USC Trojans football team has a great legacy but legacies don’t win football games. The team has a deep pool of talent but they did lose quite a bit to the recent NFL draft. The PAC-12 is traditionally a tough conference but last year they did exceptionally poorly during bowl season winning only 1 of 9 bowl appearances. The Trojans stand to be conference champions this season but there’s a whole lot of football to play between September and December.

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Mars: Morphological Analysis

Exploring the challenges and opportunities of Mars and humans. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lpgMFeWAVCcXI7LjVdS0W0ovci5tRwxM7uVgH3xS-gg/edit?usp=sharing

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Mars: Analysis (Economy + Resources)

Once the group settled on the topic of Mars, I was eager to get started on research & analysis. This is a huge topic! There are a lot of different ways we can go with this, but I think the group is most interested in exploring the human concepts, like ownership, rights, and even the emotional aspects of travel, adventure, and discovery.

My research has mostly focused on pragmatic questions around Mars - specifically into economic considerations like the costs and decisions that need to be made. I found a fascinating article about "creating" breathable and usable oxygen on Mars (nicknamed "moxie). [link: http://www.businessinsider.com/moxie-makes-oxygen-for-colonies-on-mars-2015-3] Fundamental chemistry becomes really really important!

I found another article about how water was produced in the fictional movie setting of The Martian [link: https://www.quora.com/In-movie-The-Martian-how-does-he-make-water-on-mars] which again reiterates the importance of basic chemistry understanding and how that will become essential to travelers on Mars.

I continue to be fascinated by the broader economic consequences, however. On Earth, we have the advantage of most of this chemistry is done for us - thereby creating this wealth of natural resources. Whether we need water, minerals, air, gravity, etc - we really have an "Eden" at our disposal. On Mars - everything - absolutely everything will have to be planned, manufactured, managed, recycled, and disposed of properly. Given the enormous costs of early Mars travel, there will be no room for error and little tolerance for waste. 

This then makes me consider how our American model of individualistic capitalism may not work in this setting. You wonder if perhaps a more Chinese-based semi-capitalist approach might be more feasible, where the central planning is all done ahead of time, and where markets make more sense they're allowed, and where they don't, you simply prohibit free markets. I'd like to continue exploring the ramifications of these ideas during the project, including how that could affect mission design, long-term Mars colonization, and how this might be a forewarning to Earth as well.

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Mars: Acceptance - Process Step

Looking forward just 7 more weeks, the course will be complete and our group will disband - satisfied in our collective efforts to work together, learn together, and support each other towards the goal of building a great project. Since this is the first term of a 5-term program, it's also exciting to envision that this course completion will put me at the ~20% complete mark of my graduate studies - marking a major milestone in the overall effort to earn my Master's degree and further my career and personal development.

In regards to rewards, I think clearly there's going to be a need to find week-by-week  goals and rewards that are worthwhile. As I envision it, if I can stay on-top of my objectives and keep ahead of what my teammates need, I imagine a reward would be the ability to watch a show or spend a few extra minutes sleeping when I can. In the broader sense, this project is important for this course, which is important for my degree, which I do plan to celebrate once earned by at least buying one of those fancy "USC Alumni" license plate frames. I also look forward to sharing this accomplishment with my kids, so they can be reminded that education is important and that learning is a lifelong activity.

Overall - I think they key to motivation in this setting is the combination of personal drive and commitment to the overall program - especially given that I've told all my friends and family about it as a commitment device. And with the focus on teamwork & group effort, I want to make sure I don't let my teammates down. Let's do it!

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Mars: The Destination and the Journey

In our team meeting, we narrowed our list of over 60 topics, down to three. Mars, graffiti, and the music industry were our favorites. Collectively we gravitated towards Mars (pun intended), but were drawn to all three possibilities. As we research, we will start with where Mars intersects with the other two verticals. If we find alignment and inspiration we will continue down that path and if we do not, then we will pivot towards the strongest case. We feel as though this topic is the perfect balance of problem and opportunity, as well as a big unknown for all of our team members. Our team agreed that we are capable of utilizing each other’s skills and contributions to the group. We’re all capable of communicating where we might fall short and need help.

Jasmine Interests: I personally gravitated to Mars because of the abstractness of the possibilities. As science fiction writer Tom Chiang said, "Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know." Taking on a topic like this will either be hugely rewarding to think big and bold or incredibly challenging to take on something so removed from the here and now.

Expertise/contributions: I am knowledgeable in the area of science fiction media and technology. I’m a good researcher and presentation maker, and I promise to make deadlines.

Alex Interests: I’m completely unbiased regarding our topic because I know very little about it, so the research phase will be really fun for me. I think there is an interesting intersect between the topics of Mars and Graffiti that I’d like to really dive into. I am personally interested sociology and cultural norms of a new society on Mars.

Expertise/contributions: I’m good at organizing group thoughts and ideas. I’m a visual thinker with a design background that I feel can help with constructing team deliverables.

Dave Interests: I’m excited for the topic - Mars has tons of history spanning back to ancient times and is now back in view thanks to the latest rocket technology and renewed interest in exploring our solar system. My 3 year old son loves watching video of the SpaceX rocket launches, and it’s exciting to see Blue Origin, SpaceX, and other companies compete in a new era space race.  

Expertise / Contributions: As part of the team, I can help with idea generation, technology, prototyping, research, and presentations. I’m an an avid science fiction fan, so I’m excited to explore the broad topic and dive into something specific. Even this last week I was reading about the Opportunity rover that’s still exploring Mars - even though it has lasted 14 years longer than the engineers expected it to. It will be interesting to see how our group drives towards a more specific problem, given the broad starting point, but I think we’ve already shown our ability to collaborate, communicate, and keep working towards our goals.

Arie: Interests: I’m excited to learn more about Mars and the broader implications of potentially starting another society. There are all sorts of societal and cultural concerns to take into account aside from the host of technological and safety-related issues. I think it is an interesting proxy to explore societal dynamics in the absence of certain elements and institutions, and could be viewed as an opportunity to study the formation and evolution of human society.

Expertise/contributions: As far as contributions, I am interested in the topic so I can help with creating ideas as well as exploring alternative angles to others’ ideas. I also have experience in project management, design, and writing, so I can help with various aspects of the project.

Lauren Interests: As for my capabilities regarding the topic of Mars, I know very little however, and plan to make the most in our next research phase. Expertise/contributions: I see myself as a good listener, someone who can both generate and build well off of other’s ideas. I communicate well, whether its on topic or not is another story. I enjoy pulling loose ends together and visually smoothing presentations out and I’m hoping I get to flex my creative muscles.