A8Hiphoppipotimi

A8Hiphoppipotimi

To-Do

Create a response as a group to the following questions:

1. how and to which extent does the EDC support individual and/or social creativity?
2. which features of the EDC (if any) did you find interesting / impressive?
3. which features are missing from the EDC?

how and to which extent does the EDC support individual and/or social creativity?

The integrated computational environment of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory presents a number of interesting prospects for development on both the individual and social levels. The EDC approach is very good at using the 'symmetry of ignorance' to assist, rather than hinder the project. The EDC attacks this problem in distributed cognition by providing users with this shared, digital environment. The interaction between the various group members provides a source of growth for the project. One potential factor that can push an EDC into the realm of being more suited for individual design is the possibility of only having one user at a time able to enter input. This pushes the collaboration toward solving the problems of the design environment itself, and can cut down on the benefit to distributed cognition. The optimal collaborative environment would provide users with methods to place real objects instead of just touching the screen in order to give the model a more 3-dimensional feel, but also gives users their own cursor so they do not have to take turns in order to display a function. The effect of this design environment when used on an architectural project was impressive, but one can't help but wonder at the effect of using it for programming or software planning. So many tasks in software engineering are still relegated to pen and paper, and it would be interesting to see how a programming team could use the visual aspects of the EDC to speed development.

which features of the EDC (if any) did you find interesting / impressive?

The fact that the EDC includes communities of practice is extremely impressive. No effort to improve a situation would be especially effective without considering how things work now and building on those strengths and weaknesses. Often, we are so focused on the future when designing these situations, that we forget to take into account the mistakes of the past. Additionally, you get a viewpoint (or several!) that a normal designer would never have. Communities of practice are an especially effective way to design and collaborate on projects, and their inclusion into the EDC is one of its most impressive and effective attributes.

which features are missing from the EDC?

A feature that is inevitably touched on but not directly addressed is the standard perception of what typical users "know". What standard knowledge is necessary to be a user of a modifiable model? Is there a standard threshold? If so, what patience do users have to reach this point to truly benefit from available technologies? Can these projections be predicted or can such issues only be addressed as they come up?