23/01/14 - Team Development using Belbin

Today's session focused on getting to know each others roles within the team using the Belbin questionnaire. The questionnaire is devised to find out what kind of role you play within a team. The Belbin method proposes 9 roles that each person can fit into . Each role plays a part in the larger collective of every member.
The 9 key roles are:
- Plant
- Resource Investigator
- Co-Ordinator
- Shaper
- Monitor/Evaluator
- Team Worker
- Implementer
- Completer/Finisher
- Specialist

 Each key role fits into three broader areas; Thinking / People / Doing

Thinking
- Plant
- Monitor /Evaluator
- Specialist

People
- Co-Ordinator
- Team Worker
- Resource Investigator

Doing
- Completer/Finisher
- Implementer
- Team Worker

From this information we each completed the questionnaire to work out which role we all best fit into. The ideal situation was to have a member of the team in each of the broad areas. This worked successfully for our group as shown in the picture below we had a person which fit with each of the broader areas, although today we had Amy missing.
The questionnaire helped to understand each person's strengths and weaknesses and to give a general understanding of how the group dynamic will work and how each individual will work best.

We also used this session to discuss any research/ideas we had collected since Tuesday.
Andrea brought forward the idea of creating sensory rooms for autistic children. The idea was to create interior pieces that could be used in a variety of locations to help calm children.
We all felt positively about this idea and Annabelle had looked into themochromic inks which are inks that change colour when heated or cooled down. Combining these ideas we came up with an idea of creating interior pieces which could be bought in retail stores and could be put into the home.
Having done some trend research, I suggested looking at the trend 'FOCUS' when imagining and designing the wall/floor/furniture pieces. The trend fits well with the idea as the description of the trend is to 'create a sensory experience'. The trend has a lot of calming aspects which I think would work well with the environment we are trying to create.

From this session we have decided to go away and look further into the general field in which we want to design for. It is too early on in the project to condense our research down and have a specific focus. Also without having Amy in to contribute ideas, we didn't want to get too ahead of ourselves before discussing it as a whole group.

Grid which shows each member's strongest and weakest roles and which category they fall under