Importance of Peer Reviews
“Feedback is crucial for learning and improving, but it’s rarely fun to be on the receiving end of it when it’s critical.”
– Spencer Harrison, HBR, 2017
Feedback is of vital importance for the improvement and progression of one’s ideas throughout the development cycle, and as Spencer Harrison (2017) highlights “we have mythologized creativity as the domain of an individual genius working alone”, however, the creative industry is full of talented individuals who are capable of achieving great things through collaboration, and teamwork as a means of capitalizing on their core skills to execute mutual milestones and goals.
But how do we create constructive feedback, not criticism? This can be obtained by being as “objective, specific, and constructive as possible.” (UOW, 2022) Through the review of others’ work, we are able to obtain newfound insight into our own projects’ strengths and weaknesses, along with how we can improve our work with our new hindsight, which makes peer reviewing a mutually beneficial activity for all parties involved. (Brown & Glasner, 2000)
Breakdown of Digital Artefact Projects
Jacob Huisman – MNM HUB & Creative Service Team (PITCH)
Over this coming semester, Jacob will be continuing his YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram channels posting a variety of content, along with this he will be providing editing services for students in need through the Creative Service Team!
Aleksandar Veselinovic – Creative Service Team & Portfolio Building (PITCH)
Aleksander is planning to provide a myriad of skills to current students including E-Commerce, Marketing, Copywriting, Video Editing, and Social Media Specialisation through the Creative Service Team, and will directly work towards building his portfolio of skills to showcase to potential employers.
Improving the Presentation of Concept, Methodology, and Utility
Jacob and Aleksandar have effectively communicated their DAs concepts in fine detail, which helps provide context to the narrative of their projects, however, they lack substance during the explanation of the methodology and social utility to help drive that narrative home with their respective processes and audiences for their projects.
Re-evaluations for Jacob Huisman
Jacob could improve the narrative and explanation of his DA by expanding on his methodology with a more depth showcase of his processes to achieve his desired goals for his DA. Jacob could achieve this by including more visual evidence of his work and plans, which help flow into the overview of his project’s social utility, whereby again he could show the engagement and outcomes he has achieved during his previous years of running the MNM Hub.
Re-evaluations for Aleksandar Veselinovic
Aleksandar could use this pitch video as an opportunity to showcase his previous work to not only boost his professional portfolio on his website but also comply with a range of his work that he will be providing for the creative service team, as a means of creating an exhibit for potential clients to browse. This provision of evidence will play directly into the project’s social utility and provide a clear example of the range and scope that is capable of Aleksandar’s talent and set of crafted skills.
Content Genre in Project Framing
Framing a project “can provide a new angle of approaching the open, complex, dynamic, and networked problems” (Dorst, K 2015) that we can face in this digitalised and collaborative-focused landscape. Therefore, It will be important to consider how Jacob and Aleks should frame their Digital Artefacts, personally, I think that the concept of being contractors is the best framing for their participation in the creative service team.
Over the semester they will have a wide range of clients with differing Digital Artefacts, spanning multiple content genres, but at their core, they will be contractors conducting themselves in a professional manner in a world, where large companies outsource creative work to third parties that have narrow focuses on different services like Aleks and Jacob are offering.
Areas of Potential Improvements
Improvements for Jacob Huisman
Jacob has stuck with MNM Hub for the last three years and has committed tons of man-hours to get it to where it stands presently, however, I’d love to see Jacob expand upon his current formula and create a more diverse range of media. Through this, Jacob will be able to test his audience, and potentially develop his social utility with new video styles, which will showcase his range of video editing styles. Hopefully, with the creative service team, he will be able to gather some opportunities to create different media types, but I’d love to see him expand the MNM Hub experience on his YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.
Improvements for Aleksandar Veselinovic
Aleksandar has a great range of skills as previously discussed but with the age-old adage of ‘Jack of all trades, master of none, I feel that Aleks needs to narrow down his offerings to allow him to focus and develop skills around one of his certain interests may that be his marketing/Ecommerce side or his video editing, blogging and social media side.
This will allow him to highlight and improve some of his weaker skills to bring them on par with his other services, along with this, if he can showcase that he is the best within the service team for a specific job, he could see a potential see more potential student clients coming to him for that role that may have deemed it once unachievable.
Rounding Off
Richard Buchanan (2019) writes that “no single definition of design, or branches of professionalized practice such as industrial or graphic design, adequately covers the diversity of ideas and methods gathered together under the label.” This highlights, just how subjective the entire creative industry truly is, consequently, it has been of vital importance to make clear that this peer review and feedback is just ‘my opinion’ of these students’ planned projects, and hopefully have created an alternative perspective on their work that may help them in their future endeavours.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this blog and have discovered some new insight into the peer review process, along with its importance in helping both parties achieve their goals. Take this time to reflect on your own work, and say “What can I improve on today?”
Cheers,
Jacob
Reference List
Harrison, S (2017) How to Give and Receive Feedback About Creative Work [online] https://hbr.org/2017/11/how-to-give-and-receive-feedback-about-creative-work [Accessed 27/08/2022]
UOW Co-Op Learning (2022) Peer-assessment & self-evaluation [online] https://www.uow.edu.au/student/learning-co-op/assessments/evaluation/ [Accessed 27/08/2022]
Brown, S & Glasner, A (eds) 2000, Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches, Buckingham, The Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press, 2000.
Dorst, K (2015) Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design [online] https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/uow/reader.action?docID=3339962# [Accessed 27/08/2022]
Buchanan, R (1992) Wicked Problems in Design Thinking [online] https://web.mit.edu/jrankin/www/engin_as_lib_art/Design_thinking.pdf [Accessed 27/08/2022]
Jacob Suter 
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