Checkpoint -- Choices

A recap of what I expected from this module:

1. Pain
2. Great People
3. Satisfaction

To look back now, I'd say I had set very modest goals. They were things which I quite expected to achieve after knowing what CS3216 has to offer so I think I should list down what I learned apart from the above...

It really almost always boils down to choices and everyone gets their set of choices whether they realize it or not.

Context
I was concurrently doing another module, CS2103 SE with this module and had taken on a team of not so imba coders to lead them to a great product..(lol)..why do something suicidal like this?

Well, a cool article on CS said, "try to be the imba programmer in a team and the ~imba programmer in a team once in your lifetime" which I felt would be a good learning experience. Since js and web programming are far from my turf, the latter was quite aptly fulfilled here so I thought it would be cool to tick this milestone completely off my list.

In the meantime, CS3216 was quite nice the first two assignments..

Status Time Capsule
Amazing people where 4 coders made it something like a party..it was quite convenient to do work without having to push people or have any issues getting things done..workflow rocked and we made a cool product which got sorta killed by timeline.. (I guess...)

Kontitude - Conference with Attitude
Another team with not so much fuss..No formal leadership required (and Alan is awesome) so its not difficult to do your shit, get your job done and be happy and come out with something cool...

MysteryStory.me
"Nearing combustion..gonna explode..wth is going on.."

Why did this happen?

Well, I can clearly see the drastic difference between what happened in the first two assignments and here..

For the first two, the team was strong, powerful and had well defined goals and objectives..

For the final project, things got ugly..we did not have strong leadership in any sphere..vision was missing....also if our manpower could have been more in the non-coding aspects, we could have achieved more..

We did manage to buck up and make it though....our product is cool if you see it on an iPhone or Android. The problem with it is that on an iPad it looks like there is nothing much to do and it doesn't jump out and impress but all the testing we did with the phone got a great response...

And honestly, I think I learned the most on the final project than on the other two assignments..though I started CS3216 as someone who was roughly alien to js compared to the stalwarts in the class, I did pick it up quite a bit..but most importantly, screwing up things here and there in the final project gave me a learning experience with each failure..

I also realized some of my weaknesses in the final project..I could not be the one carrying the vision for the team or anything similar in the final project even if I wanted to..I was doing a lot for my CS2103 group and that project would literally crumble if I did not iron man it throughout.. it taught me immensely about team management and getting work out of people which I feel is invaluable to learn and will help me in the future..

To be brutally honest to my CS3216 team, no one ended up carrying the vision..some tried but clearly inexperience was their master..you have to realize it is a full-time job and with such a multi-disciplinary team, one has to be very capable (or competent) to be able to make it all work...

The other thing I learnt was that you cannot make everyone happy..some people like lists, some people hate it, some people like reading some people don't so you should never gauge your product according to what everyone thinks but should instead concentrate on identifying your target audience and making your product better for them...

To sum up, I think I made it out of CS3216 quite well and though I am not starting my own company soon (maybe ;)) and am not in the midst of an epic take-over deal, I think I've learned my bit from this module..

Maybe things would have panned out differently with a different set of choices..maybe..but more importantly..I don't regret the ones I made..

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Poster Session 101

My first ever poster session is over! And I've learned enough from it to blog about...


So some things I observed..


Foreplay


1. Dress well. You and your skills are as much on display as you product.


2. Pick a good location. Generally people come in with enthusuasim and listen about half the people before they get tired and start window shopping.


3. Your poster is part of your first impression. Make it look awesome. Don't compromise on size or quality.




The Pitch


Be prepared. Be bloody prepared. Don't have one pitch mugged up. Everyone is not going to give you the same amount of time or interest. You have to continuously improvise and modify it to suit who is listening to it.


Also, be prepared that what you think is your USP may not be what others think. It is highly dependent on the audience and things change quite dramatically and unexpectedly. Know the geeks from the hippies. 


Observe the people you are pitching to. This is not a speech and you are not going to do it only once. Interact with them, talk with them and see what they like. Chances are, other people who are going to listen to you in the future might like the same things.


If you can, demo your product. Convince them with everything you have. This is your only chance with these people.  Try to get at least one person out of one crowd to use your product.


Aftermath


Try to give something to your audience to take back and remember that they spent 5 minutes listening to you. A small little branded trinket or toy never fails. Then you have stationary and similar items. But, if you have a URL, put that in somewhere. It is absolutely necessary since you want people to go out there and try it out for themselves. (The little letter with a ribbon was a very good idea in my opinion)


Your success after the session is usually dependent on the kind of takeaways you give your crowd because people have busy lives with bad memories. It is difficult for you to penetrate fully into these without some little token which reminds them to try you out later and exactly how they can do that.


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Security

This is what security is in a nutshell...

I think this was one of the most well balanced lectures in terms of technical and non-technical content...after the previous week's CS Hardcore, this was a light discussion relevant to everyone as security touches everyone's lives unobtrusively...

I really liked the "has privacy vanished", technology makes privacy zero and the gay male statistic..it is quite startling that most people are not aware how much data they put in when they use facebook applications..I remember that while we did the status time capsule, we had potentially a lot of data which could be used in whatever way we wanted..some might contend that people don't care about the information and thus they share it..

I doubt this..I think most people are paranoid about personal information but the fact is that the way technology seeps into our life and privacy is so subtle that many do not realize that for gmail to generate targeted advertising it will be going through your email or that your personalized history being recorded by a company is on pure goodwill and you cannot control anything if it was misused..

But I think the world works better with people not thinking about these things..somehow, the lack of privacy is also maintaining balance in the world..imagine people actually got paranoid about their private security, you won't be able to do much..information will get cut off, and IT will die.. :D

Then there are issues about employers researching and cyber stalking you..what you blog, what you post, everything defines who you are..this separation between the virtual and real world is gone..we are officially a digitized society (Singapore)..

I really don't think I can summarize the entire lecture completely..probably I will come back to it and talk more about the lecture..its just that security is a topic which just makes me think so much..I might just digress again..


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Million Eyeballs

Time for a blog marathon..I will finally transcribe whatever little I wrote down in the "notes" of my iPad and put it on the blog..(This is completely unrelated to Prof's email)...

Honestly, I really lost out a lot on this lecture since I was too busy with a submission so was listening intermittently, trying to filter the relevance of the lecture.

I found it was an amazing lecture though! The things he covered were quite cool!

For a person like me who walked into CS3216 with minimal web experience (compared to the gods here), it was quite an eye opener. I suddenly realized the importance of concepts sprinkled across modules and how they pieced together. Gotta love CS..things seem so much cooler the deeper you go..

The web page load time was also interesting...load testing and stress testing were not new to me so my concentration drifted at those points..

Apart from that, I guess the most important thing I picked up was, "keep the lecture notes", they will be handy...(hopefully.. :-) )


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Team Work(s)

I guess I should first finish up on my post on team dynamics.


Mr. J did bring up quite a few interesting points during the sharing of his CS3216 combustion. It did make a lot of us aware (paranoid) and Prof's nice little statistic (one team combustion rule) was like salt to a newly nurtured wound.


I think with that, the lower bound of the project is defined quite well and so will the upper bound be within two weeks. As usual, CS3216 is amazing.


There were three ides which I really liked and which I would like to discuss with my fingerless readers.


Team vs Idea


This was something I felt that is a nice  chicken and the egg problem and its quite cool to see different perspectives as to what people believe. It helps in two ways. It gives a broad perspective to the issue adding a new dimension and also helps to know how you have to pitch to these people and what will appeal to them.


US vs China


I have worked with the team-less kind in CS3216 while my CS2103 group is quite well-defined where one person makes the key decisions. I feel that the right way to decide this does not exist because it is very difficult to decide who is the first among equals. Also, a bad leader is worse than a powerless leader or no leader at all. So pick your team well and see which battles are more important.


Emphasize vs. Escalate


Eternal question which is one of the key things that defines that we are human. I have done both, do both regularly, and will continue to do both depending upon the situation.


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U[IX]

So so many things to blog about..I guess I'll cover some stuff and maybe (if I live), will follow up with another article.


Firstly, I think that the "Get Help" team should really be thanked for coming down and having a class full of people fire at them which takes a good amount of courage. Also, that too for mistakes they made in the distant past.


I really enjoyed today's lecture. The topics Prof chose to educate us on are apt for a management class which makes it all the more vital in something like the CS3216 universe. Both the case studies bring to light harsh stories which can be part of any project's silent failure.


For the UI testing part, I learned that my previous blog post had successfully analyzed the change and that made me happy. I also learned so so many more "mistakes" made by the team. In terms of tech, I learned what the heck AB testing is and the cool stuff that can be done with Google Analytics. Especially the bit about testing with random interfaces.


The principle that "Every user interaction is an opportunity to get another user to perform an interaction.." though spammy and looked down upon by me, is true for apps of this kind. Without this, they will just be used by a small group of friends which will eventually fizz out and die.


Another was that "UI is not UX" was something that I only found out about after taking this module and hope that everyone has already figured it out by now. If not, God/Prof save them. I have to admit, UX is one of the things I enjoy thinking about since it gives one such a unique and fresh perspective.


The user interaction diagram was also quite cool since I really like the ideas of removing all dead ends which might exist in the app and minimizing clicks. These are things which you don't think about as much and I hope our designer thinks that way. Though I think he will have no choice given the nature of our project (Hint: it's a game)


That's it for this post and to all the silent readers, hold on for the next installment for this week coming to a blog near you!


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Give and Get Help...

I have no formal knowledge/training in design so my comments just reflect the "feeling" I get when I view an application.


To me, the application Get Help seems to mimic a sort of News Feed for a specific purpose, namely to get help in doing certain things which require special skills.


So, to begin the comparison, the first thing which struck me as being off was the Home Screen being a page where you will get the option of only specifying what you need help with. This will cause users to click the app, say they need help and forget about it.


But that is not the main objective of the app since the only thing that will keep this app going is people actually helping other people. Otherwise, it will result in too many requests for help and too few people helping out.


Thus, I feel the Home Screen should be extremely similar to the existing FB News Feed with a text box to quickly post a help request while the help requests from others come below that.


Next, I have no idea why that SQL Query is there but I hope its not part of the design. Also, there are too many options which I feel will intimidate many people. After going through the feedback I have received throughout this module, I now know two things better.

1. People have needs which are too damn diverse
2. You can't make everyone happy

So, I think something simpler has a greater chance of acceptance that being a feature packed do-it-all product. I recall getting frustrated by some apps while reviewing them myself so I don't think I can blame others for little patience for complications created by developers.

The project page can be made better with options like posting up pictures or videos in addition to text.

Also, the app could have gone for a point EXP levelling up system for people instead of the typical badges. I think people respond to that more readily than just badges since there is this feeling of continuous achievement however small.

Thats about it I guess from what I "see". It'll be interesting to read the insights by others and take part in the "peer learning" Prof is always talking about...


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