A9MichaelMinerva

A9MichaelMinerva

To-Do

please discuss / address the following issues:

1. enumerate, analyze, and discusses different "distances"
2. describe technologies for all the distances (existing ones, envisioned ones) which you identified in (1) which help to overcome and reduce these distances
3. does distance matter?
   1. yes? (under which circumstances)
   2. no? (under which circumstances)
4. describe one example based on your personal experience where distance and diversity was
   1. a positive experience
   2. a negative experience

Group Members

Michael Minerva

enumerate, analyze, and discusses different "distances"

The paper discussed four kinds of distances across which created enterprises can be distributed. The first discussed was spatial. Spatial distance is the problem of having different contributes being situated possibly great distances away. The paper asserts that it is often difficult to establish the needed relationships or get past difficult hurdles without some amount of face to face time. On the other hand, the success of open source projects show that some great collaborative work can be accomplished by people who have never met face to face. The second distance discussed was temporal. Temporal distance refers to the fact that sometimes one set of designer will be working on a project at time A and some other set of designer will be working on the project at time B. This set up could present significant hurdles for the designers at the later point in time, if the original designers did not take the necessary steps to make the reasons behind their design decisions clear, and provide understandable and sufficiently in depth documentation. The third distance described was technological. Technological distance refers to the task of collaborating with technology. As with the case of DODEs and other critiquing software, it often could be useful for a designer to receive feedback about common mistakes or receive suggestions from a program that has access to vast amounts of information on the specific domain.

describe technologies for all the distances (existing ones, envisioned ones) which you identified in (1) which help to overcome and reduce these distances

There are many technologies to overcome spatial distances. One such example is video conferencing software which allows collaborators to not only meet and discuss their project but also simulates face to face contact and helps individuals build relationships with those they are collaborating with. Also, social networking websites allow collaborators easy ways to build up relationships and send quick communications further helping to bridge spatial distances.

Temporal distance can be more easily defied through use of software such as java docs or built in documentation tools in packages such as visual studio. Any tool that allows a designer to create meaningful documentation more effectively and efficiently will help bridge temporal distances by motivating designers to document their work and allowing the time the spend doing so to be more meaningful.

It is hard for me to say how technological distance is bridged by technology, because the distance is inherent to the use of technology to aid the design process. But nonetheless, it does seem that tools such as DODEs would make the design process much more efficient.

does distance matter?

It seems clear that this distance does matter and I would have trouble identifying any circumstances under which all the aforementioned distances would be of no relevance except when an individual is designing completely by themselves. Instead of looking at circumstances where the distance matters or does not matter, it might be more logical to examine where the distance is of greater or lesser concern. I would argue that some of these distances would be of lesser concern when the design process can be highly modularized. This will at least make spatial distance less of concern because each individual would be less reliant upon direct collaboration with other designers. Of course there will still be a great need for a meeting of the minds when the task of combing modules comes up and when it comes to deciding on the next set of modules to be implemented. Also, this example in no way eliminates the problem of temporal distance which seems like it will always be a large issue. On the other side of the spectrum from the highly modularized design activity it seems that a project that requires constant input from a large group of collaborators would suffer the most from spatial distance.

describe one example (per group member) based on your personal experience where distance and diversity was

One example where temporal distance was a negative experience arose in my operating systems class which involved changing some of the features of the MINX operating system running on a virtual machine. The problem arose because MINX had almost no documentation to speak of, and what they had was often misleading or out of date. It seemed almost universal sentiment in the class that most of the trouble with any given assignment was trying to figure out the intent of the original designer of the OS, rather then trying to accomplish the task assigned by the professor. While this does not relate to design activities, I believe my experience working at a pizza shop speaks to the same issue addressed in this paper where I had many positive experiences related to diversity. The shop I worked at had an amazing level of education for the demands of the profession and the disciplines practiced by the employees spanned the entries spectrum. This led to some of the most fascinating and enlightening conversation I have ever been privy to. I believe that having access to such a wide range of intelligent people from diverse backgrounds has been a great boon for me and is one of the reasons I stayed at a job that did not directly further my long term professional aspirations.