»brainstorm«

When I was talking to Frank yesterday about the interviews, he suggested to programme an online questionnaire. But the thing is that I'm not looking for numbers. The numbers are what bugged me most about all the studies I read: they try to clarify things but just make everything very abstract.

Freya gave me a nice word for what I wanna do: qualitative survey. I want to hear stories, I want to create an image of the country. My former boss would call it the look and feel.

This actually goes pretty much in line with the culture assimilators which try to approach cultures by means of presenting critical incidents.

I will need facts and figures, too. Sure. But the question is: how to present them? After all I'm not a scholar but a designer (to-be ;-)

To sum it up: what do I want my web application to be like?

The target group are people being sent to work abroad. To be specific my web application is aiming at people who need to prepare themselves for this mission. They might eventually attend a language course but they do not benefit from a cross-cultural training prior to their departure. Based on recent studies it is 40% of companies who do not prepare their employees. I still need to find numbers for this but it's presumably small and middle-class companies who do not afford preparational training courses for their employees.

The web app wants to alleviate the effects of a missing preparation. I use the word alleviate because I am aware of the fact that even the nicest web app will never be able to substitute a proper training. Thus the purpose of a web app has to be to raise awareness, to allow future expatriates a glimpse into the foreign world, to support understanding of the cultural differences.

So, into what will I have to further investigate?

• I will need to know more about the Polish history. Since my web app is specifically about working in Poland, I am not sure in how far I will integrate the Polish history in general but nevertheless it is essential background knowledge. Especially after the turbulent and adverserial past Germany and Poland share.
• The educational system. Which subjects are stressed in general? How is education valued? How to people get into their jobs?
• Which significance does work have? In which relation do leisure time and working time stand? Is there a strict separation of the two fields?
• How is work organized? When are meetings held? Who carries which responsibilities?
• Style of communication. Within the company as well as towards the head office? How does communication with partners work? How with clients?

I'll hope to find an answer to these questions in the interviews as well as in books and articles. Some questions sound to be rather specific and I expect specific answers, too, but actually I see each answer, story and piece of information to lead to a more general picture. Osland and Bird had described the learning process to be analagous to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. It's about learning an internal logic rather than learning the exact rules.

PS: This is not meant to be a full list of best intentions. It's a start. Suggestions are always welcomed :-) and I needed to free some memory space in my head so I can continue to think...

My head is so full of things that still need to grow into ideas that I have a hard time to put anything down into words.

The first good news is that I'll have several interview partners. I got hooked up with two companies who have their headquarters in Germany in subsidiaries in Poland.

The first is a constructing company started cooperating with a Polish company right away in 1990. They then started to buy shares and in 2000 eventually merged the two companies into one. The Polish part of the company works independently but already looking on the names listed as members of the board, you can see some German names.

The other company is a doing logistics in Poland at four places. It used to be completeyl run by German expatriates. Nowadays they have more than 700 employees in Poland.

And as you see, I still need to gather muchmuchmore information :)

and then I call it a day.

Is it necessary to present interviews as films? Do I need to see a moving face the whole time? What's the alternative? Film stills (or photos)? A form of visualizing the content of the things said?

I mean I still need to figure out how to visualize all the other things but the interviews are at least something very specific...

It's done. What a relief. The structure board for my web application. I tried to put in all possible aspects of work. This might seem a little crowded at first but it reflects pretty much the collage I have in mind. Additionally, I will have to kick out points to which I will not get enough information. Thus:



click to enlarge ...

Tomorrow I'll add specific information about Poland to this abstract. Stay tuned ;-)

How do I want to use the interviews?

For sure not as full-length interviews. I would rather want to use bits and pieces and assemble them new.

The most obvious would be to group various answers to one question. This could be done by either putting them together in a film or by to allow the user to click onto the various answers.

When I was younger I had a adventure book. At the end of each page you had to decide what the protagonist was gonna do. Accordingly you had to read further on page xy or on page yz. And at the end of each page you again had to decide between two options. I always tried to read all possible strings of the story at the same time but that of course didn't work.

The narrative concept's of storytelling try to catch up on this idea. Basically it's the whole idea of internet as Chrizi said today. Clicking and thus making a choice. There is no way to always know all the options but still it's the user who actively decides on which content he or she wants to get, to learn, ...

I mean this is not the new enlightment but the question is how to use it. In the moment I follow the results of a project where the user is seeing his/her very own documentation: Florian Thalhofer and Kolja Mensing interviewed the inhabitants of a huge immeuble (1600 people live there) for a project called "13.Stock" (unfortunately the English version is down so there is only a Polish translation). With every piece of interview you watch you get three other pieces to choose next.

I don't like their design that's for sure. But actually in the moment I'm not even sure if I like the idea and what I get out of that. I remember to have seen other projects with the same concepts so I still need to check that out. And hopefully come up with an opinion.

For the moment there is still what Chrizi came up with: take pieces of an interview and stop them at a certain point. The respective pieces would tell a typical story about working in Poland, some special cross-cultural encounter, or something like that. Just before the "strange" behavior the film would be stopped and the usere would have to guess what happens next. Thus to become aware of his/her own behaviorly patterns and expectancies.

This would be quite analogous to the method of culture assimilators and the story telling of critical incidents. Therefore it would also be necessary to find an appropriate Polish explanation for certain behaviors.

I decided on the structure board to be so fullfullfull because it is reflecting the collage-character of the web application. There will not be a typical navigation bar with the main categories and their sub categories. Each screen will include several linkages which will take the user to different sights.

The page on "continued training" for example could link to "motivation" but as well to general "concepts of education". The later would for example link to the "model employee" since the way and content of learning reveal quite a lot about desirable character traits.

I'm not sure if it works. I can understand that people get lost but for now it's my working model. Maybe I can break it down into more general categories later but in the moment that would not help me much - I need the overview...

So, now I started to sort information I have about Poland. Every icon on the structure board will in the end be at least one page in the web application. Thus I try to collect which will be the content of these pages.

One will be on the model employee:


One will be on issues such as motivation and feeback:



I started some more but to all of them I will need to add much more content. So this is just to give an impression.

My web app is gonna be wonderful :) It's going to illustrate the daily cultural differences one - well, actually one is someone German - most likely comes about working in Poland. In order to promote understanding, culturally influenced behavior at the work place will be drawn upon historical events, educational structures, daily living conditions... That's all. (Why is "all" so difficult?)

There are four main categories: staff formation, promotion of motivation, meetings/organisation of the work flow, contact to externals. These main categories I wanted to function as independent "training"-units.

For example: contact to externals will have a page for each step that is to be taken.

1. Find somebody who knows the person you want to get into contact with, get introduced.
2. Call the "external". Talk about everything but work.
3. Write a letter. Write about everything but work.
4. Go and pay the external person a personal visit.
5. ...

In general these sub-pages-training-steps will be linked to the meta-level. The urge to establish personal bounds as foundation for business actions can be explained by the Polish history: on the one hand the control of the people by a socialistic regime brought the people closer together and on the other end during the era of deficiency in the 1980s a lot of goods for daily use for not publicly available but only by means of personal networks.

So... there is already the next problem. At what point, where in the training-unit can you navigate to the meta-level?

And to make it more complicate.... in order to have a network and to deliberate cultural complexity and to promote intuitive learning (and just to make some reasons up) I wanted the meta-levels to consist of different steps/units, too. It's like picking out a history book to look something up and then you start flipping through some pages and end up somewhere else. And at various points you jump back into the one or the other main category.

Thus.... now! Uff! What a huge knot! And my teacher wants to know what the start page will show... gee... good question. The start page, the second page, can somebody please scrap the good from the evil ideas out of my head. And worst of all.... what happens when you're confused? You fall back to the usual. I've been designing numerous websites these last days that would work for a restaurant just as well.... argh. I want my concept to show. I want the design to be nice. I want the website to be something special. I want. I want. I want.

Alright.... what needs to be on the very first page. Associate with the idea that the user has to directly see - oh, this is involving business! and oh, this is involving me going abroad to some unknown culture.

So... this is it. My state of mind. Do you still believe I'm happy with my project? I am. I'm so liking it. This is a manifesto.

So.... some bits and pieces of sketches I've been doing this week. None of them are what I really want. But what I like about them is that they look more serious - at least that's my impression, hope, belief, ... (pleaseplease, agree!).

But... ah. Just need to rule off to continue somewhere else.


1. little flash on happy color :) (clickable)




2. little navigation detail




3. another little navigation detail plus some I-go-crazy-colors




4. little page pretending too be complete (clickable)




5. little page based on the page that pretends to be complete but with colors kicked out (clickable)




And don't complain... this is already the best-of. With the other stuff I'm not even gonna bother you.