Unit 3 Reflection Blog
In this unit, I learnt about the YOU-attitude, drafted my formal report and gave a peer review to my teammate, Mandy Su, for her formal report draft. My report topic was about the education of software in an e-commerce company. Unit 3 felt longer than it was, but it was also more rewarding looking back at what I have done.
The process of researching
Since I am currently doing an internship in one of the e-commerce companies in Hong Kong, I had a chance to know more about the flow of how things work in this business which is technology driven. The research process was quite hectic. I had to do a survey for the normal colleagues and also interview with three different managers.
E-commerce industry is one of the leading directions that the world is going towards. Covid-19 has disrupted a lot of businesses in the world, but not our company. Number of orders kept increasing, returning customers were bringing more revenue to our company which made most of our staff very busy dealing with the “new normal”. Therefore, I was not able to interview with the managers at the original time. I had to reschedule a few times in order to interview with them, usually the interview took place during lunch time or in the evening after I was off duty.
The process of asking colleagues completing the survey was very easy. Most of the staff members were very friendly. I tried to find people from different departments to complete the survey. They completed very quickly and was very respectful to me even though I have not met them before. It made the process of collecting data way easier.
The process of organizing and writing my formal report
After extracting the information, I had to organize my data and present them with graphics. I used Google Form for the survey, so most of the graphics had been drawn by the system. For the interview questions, I also had to organize them by grouping similar response and present them in the report.
The process of writing my formal report was long. I always had to think how many references I have to give, and how to address the issue better. Also, I took a long time debating whether I should present the data in the data section or in the appendix. Since I need data to support my argument and propose a solution but showing them all is not feasible in the data section as the report would be too detailed. At last, I decided to put most of the graphics in the data section, as well as some of the interview questions that speak to the graphics. For the others, I will put them in the Appendix as a reference.
Peer Review Process
The peer review process was very rewarding, I enjoyed reading Mandy’s report. She had a really great flow of showing the current problem first, then the preference of her interviewee in three different dimensions, then propose three different solutions for each problem. I would like to do the same in my report as the flow would support my argument stronger.
In this peer review process, I have also applied the YOU-attitude. I felt great writing in this way because not only could I apply what I have learnt at the beginning of this unit to the real life, but also the respect that I imagine my reader had when I was reading. I think the YOU-attitude is my biggest getaway from this unit and would affect how I give feedback to others in the future.