Final Project Presentation

I think it's a bit strange to see a Final Project Presentation when we are not really done with our projects (MVP yes, production quality definitely no), but I guess there's no other slot to put it. Also, I'm glad we had the opportunity to see how the other people in 3216 are doing today. Our presentation went pretty well - I think we're the only group who was well within the time limit, but I think it's because our video was really well-done (three cheers to Kai for spending so much time on it!), so we didn't need a lot of slides to elaborate on our application and its features. The font size was a bit small though, I must admit. >.<

Okie, going through all the app presentations one by one!

Classroom Quest

I'm so used to this being JFDI that "Classroom Quest" sounds so foreign to me. Most of the pages they demo-ed looked okay, but I think it can be a little bit more attractive. I think students are easily awed though, or at least, I think I would be if I had to use such a website for my classes, so in a way, they don't have to make it too cool. Usability is a must, but if it was me in my secondary school days, as long as it works better than IVLE, I'm fine with it. The thing that would concern me most however, is reliability. Mainly because students are actually quite kiasu about their grades. 

Intraix iOS App

To be honest, I didn't really understand the whole Intraix thing prior to the presentation, but when they demo-ed it, it was pretty cool. I like the animated statistics + scrolling (good to steal, so I assume that's what Jon Lew was talking about when he said that we should work together.) The rotatable menu is also quite cool. I also like the colour scheme. Throughout the presentation though, I had this one thought at the back of my head and it was, "Who is the speaker? Has he always been in CS3216?" I guess it's partially my fault for not interacting with more people. >.<

Clickee

Arduino! I was actually expecting the Arduino to fail, not because of the group, but because all the Arduino presentations I have seen have always ended up in... moderate success only. So I have this opinion that hardware is well, unpredictable. But they succeeded in showing us that it works. However, I'm still a bit confused by how they're linking the website with the Arduino controls. Umm, how many Arduinos does it take to light up one lightbulb anyway? (Genuine question here! I want to know whether it's cost-feasible to implement it.)

iMeet U 

The first presentation of the entire session, which must have made it more nerve-wracking. There were quite a few technical errors, but it must have been an awfully lot of work for them to make two separate apps. At this moment in time though, I really do hope that they concentrate on just one, because one good application is better than two buggy applications.

Splinkit 

Besides our group's application, this group's application is another app that seems to have changed/ deviated a lot from its original idea. The UI does look not bad, but I think getting users to use it would be a challenge. I don't really see the difference between this and Facebook events/Eventbrite. It does look nice though. Also, is this the group with the time formatting that is missing a '0' at the back?

CrossView 

The interface of CrossView kind of reminds me of Instagram's interface. I think this group needs to work a little more on getting users to use the programme, especially since in a way, they're being compared to Hush! due to the similarities that they have. I don't think I'll use this app, but that's mainly because I don't share pictures on social networks. 

Hush! 

Hush! is more developed and I think the group did a really good job on tackling the question of "how we improved Hush!" Since Hush! (and CrossView) are applications that are already done, I think they have to do more work to convince people that they are not slacking. (In a way, my group came up with something totally new, so people are more impressed by the changes - It's like comparing 0 and 1 for ours, and 1 and 2 for theirs. The first is a infinite amount of change, while the latter is a 100% improvement, although the increment of 1 is still the same). Hush!'s interface hasn't really changed as much (but I'm neither a UI-person or very observant so...) but they do have a list of features that they have added, which I had hoped that they could have demo-ed more. (emoji!) 

With regards to the use cases, I think they should come up with more concrete use cases. I think they don't want to limit their use cases, but because people don't know what to use it for, it might be good to suggest a few possible use cases so that people can relate to it and use it for those purposes. I think there's a slight distinction between having a set of use cases and limiting the use of the websites to those use cases only. And coming up with those concrete use cases makes the audience feel like y'know, that they have done their homework, especially during poster session. (I.e. don't just use the "backmouthing your own organisation" use case.)

Between Two Trees

I like the use of green on the mobile application. The feel of the application is quite okay, but I was a bit confused because Pei Yi mentions the children sometimes when she actually means the parents. (Or at least that's what I felt.) Because she mentioned the word 'children' more than 'parents', I felt like the application was for children to play with, even though I know it isn't. Did anyone get the same confused feeling, or was it just me? 

One UI thingy that I found weird was on the Admin interface, where to add a user, you add the picture first. Logically, we always type the person's name first. Adding the picture usually comes second, so it felt strange to me. But... if it's a client requirement, then yeah. The children are also listed as users, which felt a bit strange since the children don't use the application at all, but it must have been a hassle to type "XXX's parent" instead. 

Some more thoughts on Mini Monocle

Haha, after going through the presentation, I wasn't really thinking any more. Also, I couldn't decide whether Jon Lew's question of "What else do you guys have for the next 2 weeks?" as being sarcastic or not (sarcastic being "you guys have so much more to do", non-sarcastic being genuinely asking what else do we have to do), so I wasn't sure how to answer. But yes, we still have a big component to finish, which is the retain user bit. Sound and animation yes. We also have a couple of bugs to fix (the monocle stops spinning if you go to the home screen, and then back to the application. >.< Cheap way of doing it is to well... just go back to the normal title screen, but prompt them on whether they want to continue their game xD but I'll see whether I can continue it's animation...) 

Also, as a side-note, doing CS2103 has its perks. I think I learnt a lot about software engineering while being a tutor. Today (or yesterday), I learnt about the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. (There's a better description here.) It does tell us that to even become a novice, we must be familiar with the rules, so that's why I think in CS2103, through CE1 and CE2, we tried to enforce the coding standards. Only in the Final Project, then did we give more autonomy to the students to provide them a chance to hit the "Competent" and "Proficiency" level. I also think there is no such thing as "inborn intuition", but rather because people can apply what they know, they immediately see the solutions to the problem. (To apply what you know though, you need to know a lot of stuff.) So in any case, yes, I shall try and follow this method more with respect to acquiring skills. I think in a way, I don't like following rules, so that's why I like to hit "Experts" as much as possible, but I think I fail quite often because I try and skip too many steps along the way. >.<

To end off, my friend has been seeing Dropbox fail on him very often recently, but we both concur that the Dropbox fail icon is really cute, so here it is!