Week 9: Communities of Practice

Week 9's topic revolves around communities of practice. We had quite a lot of course content this time in the form of journals and videos.

Researching Communities of Practice

The first video was Alcwyn Parker introducing the concept, which was summed up in one of the slides by Jeniffer Preece:

A group of people who come together to learn from each other by sharing knowledge and experties about activities in which they are engaged

(Preece, 2003)

This already sounds like my cohorts of UX and Indie Game developers and I can see this happening on Discord already, sharing knowledge but also supporting and discussing topics.

I have to admit I was reluctant to join Discord initially. I felt I already had too much digital noise in my life with, WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Slack, Gmail, Messanger, and Instagram. It was another feed I would have to keep up to date on. This is similar to how Nir Eyal describes it in Indistractable (2019), his follow-up to Hooked(2019).

The Ubiquity of eternal triggers, like notifications, pings, dings, alarms, and even other people, make them hard to ignore.

(Eyal, 2020)

Eyal goes on...

The More we respond to external trigger, the more we train our brain in a never-ending stimulus-response loop.

(Eyal, 2020)

I eventually did join the Discord server and have set SMART Goals to ensure I maintain engagement on the platform, but I still hold on to my reservations. I do feel sometimes I have reached a point where I struggle to keep up to date with all of the messages I am inundated with from all the different channels of communication. The benefits with Discord however may outweigh the negatives in this instance. Engagement in the community is important for personal and professional growth and networking opportunities. I see others in the cohort have already fostered positive and fruitful relationships and it does make me wish I had joined sooner.

Another quote that resonated with me from the videos was from Clay Shirky

The goal of getting better at something is different from the goal of being good at it; There is a pleasure in improving your abilities even if that doesn't translate into actual perfection.

(Shirky, 2009)

I feel someone should have told me this quote several years ago. I am finding enjoyment in the course, I do want to be good at it but should also relish the opportunities to learn and practice my craft. To explore new concepts and ways of doing things and new ideas from my peers and new perspectives. At times I can be crippled by perfectionism and revert to ways of delivering a solution I have used before because it is safe. The point of academic institutions as a student is to push your boundaries and explore the more experimental, and this is something I recognise I need to improve on.

The video also went on to discuss Tacit Knowledge which is imparted through more social means like casual conversations and anecdotes (Parker, 2022). This is often what is missing when you are a lone developer and I speak from experience here. I spent 3 years as the only developer in the companies I worked for and although I worked in creative teams, I was not being enriched as a developer by my colleagues. My aim was to join a development team and use the collective knowledge that the team offers to help inform my practice and help me improve as a developer which I achieved when I joined Blue Bay Travel in 2019.

We were also asked to reflect on the type of networker we were and whether we found the activity daunting. Although I often appear confident when entering social situations, I still find it difficult to strike up a conversation with an established group.

In 2011 I was new to web design and wanted to get to know the community. I had heard about a networking group called Multipack which met in Birmingham once a month. I decided to attend one of their social gatherings but had a really difficult time integrating or even feeling welcome. I felt out of my depth and the members seemed dismissive as if I needed to have a certain level of knowledge to be acknowledged. This negative experience put me off the idea of networking in real life with peers for quite some time and is a different experience than the one described by Alcwyn Parker in the video content.

No matter what your interests, motives or abilities, your participation and engamement is generally valued. Each individual brings there own social capital that makes the community as a whole a richer and more diverse space.

(Parker, 2022)

There may well have been a level of insecurity regarding my abilities and experience at the time that contributed to this. I think I struggled to find the balance between light conversation and shop talk, and many of the members appeared to form a clique with shared histories and in-jokes.

I was actually shocked to find that multipack was operating still and not just in Birmingham but in my local town of Penkridge - a town of fewer than 9000 people! It had expanded and splintered into Penkridge and Litchfield branches in the interim years and they met in a pub I frequently frequented up until the pandemic. It looked like some of the faces had changed so I decided to send a direct message to see if they were still meeting up. Hopefully, I get a second chance to make a first impression and gain some great insights and networking opportunities. I feel I have more social capital to bring to the table this time around and will try to take Sarra Horowitz's advice:

Start networking by thinking of all the ways you can be helpful and start giving. You're building your love bank account. After some robust giving, you can start to ask for help, advice, brainstorming et cetera

(Horowitz and Sciarra Poynter, 2012)

Belinda Waldock on the Agile Community

After watching the second video on our course literature by Belinda Waldock, I was asked to research other local community groups and I headed over to https://meetup.com. Looking through I found it difficult to find any UX groups that were local to me but eventually found a UX Huddle (Meetup. 2022) in Solihull which is a little bit far for me to travel to but the premise seemed interesting as it appears to be a group open to both aspiring UX's and entrepreneurs. However my studies, work, and family keep me very busy already, so I don't want to set unrealistic goals. I think I might see how Multipack goes first and keep this as a backup.

Andy Smith on the Maker Community

Andy Smith mentions the Arduino project. Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software. It's intended for anyone making interactive projects. The examples Andy gives are a sensor in a plant pot that can message you when it needs watering or your toaster sending you a report on its usage. This is an example of maker-made The Internet of things (IoT), an umbrella term for everyday items utilising hardware and networking capabilities based on web communications protocols to bring additional convenience and value. My first exposure to this concept (although it had not yet received the moniker) was in 2003 during the final two years of my Undergraduate Degree at Nottingham Trent University when I was writing my dissertation on smart homes in 2003 Britain. The concept was practically unheard of at this point and was highly experimental, with both Philips and Orange creating labs to trial the fledgling technology. A wave of nostalgia took over me and I dusted off my dissertation and turned to the telephone interview I conducted with Jon Carter, Project lead of the 'Orange at Home' project. I was shocked at the prophetic nature of the interview, little did I appreciate the pioneering work I was investigating at the time and the insight into future developments in telecommunication that for the most part came into fruition:

How we can enhance the use of the mobile terminal in the home, what services can we provide the customers when they take their mobile into the home and that could be connected to other devices and it basically becomes a remote control for different services within the home.

(Carter, 2003)

It suddenly dawned on me that I had always had a fascination with the combined nature of the digital and the real. My rudimentary experiments with Augmented reality in week 3 and subsequent rapid ideations both used elements that interacted with real-world objects. Framed this way, the maker movement began to take on a different dimension. One where I would be able to extend the limits of the digital solution I developed in the future. The idea was alluring and yet I couldn't feel this was another area I would have to investigate further. I was concerned I would be out of my depth in a similar way to games mechanics and development. Both concepts - and the idea that I would have an opportunity to explore them - hadn't entered my mind before starting the course. I was more interested in web and application design and development and how UX pertains to them, but being exposed to this concept was pulling my interest in multiple directions.

Looking on Arduino's Project Hub for inspiration, I fell in love with the Nixie clock by Mirko Pavleski(2022), combining old technology with new. There is a studio less than 2 miles away from where I live Called Bad Dog Design (2022) that specialises in Nixie tube products and custom designs and they used to put on workshops for people to build their own Nixie clocks before the covid pandemic, but it appears this may have been suspended now, which is a shame.

I also liked Control Position of DC Motor Precisely via Web (IoT_lover, 2022)(Sollae Insider, 2018), Where the user was able to control the position of the needle on a real-life model (in this case made to look like a compass) using motors and Audino as well as a web interface that uses WebSockets for real-time communication and feedback. This fascinated me more than it probably should have, considering some of the other projects on display, but I could see the potential in using the technology in a multitude of scenarios and I was excited with the possibilities to incorporate real-world mechanics into potential future projects.

(Sollae Insider, 2018)

Professor Heidi Ellis

The final video was from Heidi Ellis and concerned Open Source projects. I was struck that the very first project she discussed was so similar to one of my initial concepts during my second rapid ideation. Great minds think alike! The software, which was disaster management was forked by one of Heidi's students and they ended up presenting their idea to a group of industry leaders and gaining valuable feedback and experience. This is may have been an exception to the rule but just goes to show the level of projects and the importance of the open-source community. Linux and Git were both open source projects, developed initially by Linus Torvalds, with at one port Linux powering 95% of the world's web servers,

I was asked if I would consider contributing to an open-source project and the one that leaped out to me was AFrame, an open-source Virtual and Augmented reality project. It has a core team that looks after the code base but appears that it's open to contributing and folk on Github. I seem to gravitate to this area of study and it would be really nice at some point in the future of my career if I could contribute in some way to the codebase and community. I plan during the break between modules to explore this area of study more.

SMART GOAL

To explore different ways to produce Augmented and virtual reality experiences. I will try to do this between the first and second modules.

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References

Insider, S., 2018. Arduino - Control Position of DC motor via Web. [online] Youtube.com. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAmXtPjBrQA> [Accessed 3 April 2022].

Eyal, N., 2020. Indistractable. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, pp.92,94.

Eyal, N. and Hoover, R., 2019. Hooked. 2nd ed. Penguin Business.

IoT_lover, 2022. Arduino - Control Position of DC Motor Precisely via Web. [online] Arduino Project Hub. Available at: <https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/iot_lover/arduino-control-position-of-dc-motor-precisely-via-web-e70593?ref=user&ref_id=221288&offset=1> [Accessed 3 April 2022].

Carter, J., 2003. Orange at Home Interview, Exploring Smart Products In the Home - The feasibility in 2003 Britain.

Arduino.cc. 2022. Arduino - Home. [online] Available at: <https://www.arduino.cc/> [Accessed 3 April 2022].

(Tinkercad | From mind to design in minutes, 2022)

Tinkercad. 2022. Tinkercad | From mind to design in minutes. [online] Available at: <https://www.tinkercad.com/> [Accessed 3 April 2022].

Horowitz, S and Sciarra Poynter, T., 2012. The Freelancer's Bible. New York: Workman Publishing Company, Incorporated.

Pavleski, M., 2022. DIY Arduino IN-1 (ИН-1) Nixie Tube Clock. [online] Arduino Project Hub. Available at: <https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/mircemk/diy-arduino-in-1-1-nixie-tube-clock-e5c08b?ref=platform&ref_id=424_trending___&offset=65> [Accessed 3 April 2022].

Bad-dog-designs.co.uk. 2022. Bad Dog Designs Nixie Clocks Ltd. [online] Available at: <https://www.bad-dog-designs.co.uk/> [Accessed 3 April 2022].

Preece, J., 2003. Tacit Knowledge and Social Capital:Supporting Sociability in Online Communities of Practice. 3rd International Conference on KnowledgeManagementt, [online] pp.72-78. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228958321_Tacit_knowledge_and_social_capital_Supporting_sociability_in_online_communities_of_practice/stats>.

Meetup. 2022. UX Huddle, Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 6:15 PM | Meetup. [online] Available at: <https://www.meetup.com/Birmingham-User-Experience-Group/events/284899165/> [Accessed 4 April 2022].

Shirky, C., 2009. Here comes everybody. London: Penguin.

Cover image by Shane Rounce on Unsplash