Qi Wen's Reflection

Role in project

As the appointed leader, it was my role to coordinate the members, lead the discussions and ensure that we're on track. Here, my role was made easy as most of the members were cooperative and proactive.

As a group, we would brainstorm for needs, come up with interview and survey questions as well as solutions. It was a group effort from the start, and it was indeed a successful one.

One of the challenges we faced as a group was coming up with solutions to cater to the needs identified. This is because, throughout the needs analysis process (from the interview to the survey analysis), the needs of the centre are constantly changing. Therefore, the solutions we had during our initial presentation were no longer valid.

It was hard to start from a fresh perspective. All our previous solutions were specifically catered to combat the first need identified from the interview, and as we were stumped, the remaining solutions we came up with were not sufficient to help resolve the newly-analysed need of the centre.

Even though it was a tough process, I'm glad that the group never gave up. We persevered on. After hitting the wall for a few discussions, we finally came up with a solutions that we were all satisfied with.

This experience granted me a whole new level of appreciation for group projects and collaboration. All these while, I have always believed that working as an individual was always better than the potential conflict that may arise form working as a group.

However, this project gave me new meaning to collaboration. As an individual, I would have never been able to push through the many boulders faced and come up with such a great solution without support from the group. Therefore, I learned that being different may not necessarily be a disadvantage. Instead, it may even achieve better results (5 heads are better than 1).

From here on out, I am more willing to work towards being a better team player as work with others to problem solve.

What we did well was the delegation of roles towards the end of the project. As we needed to create a web page that does not allow multiple device editing at the same time, we had to divide the work. Therefore, while two members focused on the webdesign, the remainder of us would work on the content.

I must admit that the web design would be much more challenging as it was our first time creating a website on the Wix platform. Recognizing the amount of work and stress the designing group may potentially face, I tapped onto my strength in research and reports to not only organize the content, but collage pictures, documents and any other attachments required for the web page. Ultimately, to support the design group by hoping to lighten their burden.

Here, I learned that to think critically and recognize my strengths and weaknesses. I have always been doubtful of my abilities, but through the process, I've developed self-awareness on my strengths and how I can contribute as a member of the group. I shared my expertise on the content input to ease the burden of the designers.

Therefore, I learned to be more confident of my abilities and recognize my strengths. This way, I not only know how I can benefit the group, but also know what to work on to improve as an individual.

I have learned to be reflect critically on my strengths and weaknesses instead of constantly be in denial of "there's nothing I'm good at". With this, I will be able to develop as an individual and as a leader as I would be able to better delegate roles within the group to improve efficiency.