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Look at What We Did!

by Sam Dennis
July/August 2015
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Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/look-at-what-we-did!/5022414/

Collaboration doesn’t come easy to designers. Like artists, we were rewarded in design school for individualistic design, not for teamwork. This desire to make a personal artistic statement followed us into the professional world where too many of us have forgotten what it means to collaborate on something meaningful.

But, if we think back to our childhoods, we can recall many instances of collaboration. Children are naturally collaborative, right? Well, that depends on what we mean by collaboration.

One of the definitions of collaboration is cooperation. When I was a child, I wasn’t considered very cooperative by my kindergarten teachers. Like Lucy from Kevin Henke’s books, I spent a lot of time in the ‘uncooperative chair.’ My mother became used to hearing “Sammy wasn’t very cooperative today. Again.” 

At the time, I was confused by the teacher’s use of the term. I thought I was cooperative all day. Like the other ­children, I engaged in cooperative play. That is to say, I collaborated with my friends on many projects. We collaborated on the design and construction of giant castle villages in the sand play area. We collaborated on ...

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