The Favella is dead...

The favella is dead,

The favella is a shanty village (in Brazil) but also more than that it is a community that pulls together to support its members and achieve more than individuals could. Our favella is not nurturing its members and thus we must disband it in its current form. So we must look to other means of achieving our goal.

The Tico EV studio has an objective of creating 4 vehicles for Costa Rica. We still have this objective but now our goal is closer and our progress is not at the point it should be.
We could look for blame at this point, but I will relieve the group and take responsibility. The favella requires a community and I have not inspired it to materialise. So now we are faced with the task but our community needs to rethink itself to become effective.

It has been said that the group is too large, and after witnessing the Interaction today I am inclined to believe that this group cannot function partially bcause of the amount of participants. This peer group is not capable of participating in group discussion and individuals are prevented from designing by the apparent complexity of the group interaction. It has been suggested that the favella reforms into 4 groups each will negotiate the requirements for a vehicle. I hope that this change will give clarity to the topic each sub-group is addressing.

This change in structure has not reduced the expectation for the remainder of the semester.
The entire group must still determine tasks to achieve the Studio goals and dates by which these tasks are to be completed.

Some New links

So we are concluding the initial stages of the research.
Our next stage is to create Requirments for the design of the Vehicle. So i have created some new links so you can look at design methodologies and resources.
S

User Centred Design

We are using User Centred Design or UCD to design this vehicle.

"There is an international standard that is the basis for many UCD methodologies. This standard (ISO 13407: Human-centred design process) defines a general process for including human-centered activities throughout a development life-cycle, but does not specify exact methods."
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/usability_resources/about_usability/what_is_ucd.html