Very Busy days...   still have 40+ days.  I should tell my juniors never take too many projects like cs3216, cg3002... just now hear other groups casher says "pi ka qiu", means their voice works. While we just start building it. Maybe we need to start camp earlier....  CEG Camp~~ DSA lab

Compared to CS3216, we still have a lot of stuff to do... ah move on...

Case study 2 Team Dynamics

1. Lanh said, “It would be really bad if we have a great idea but are unable to execute it success- fully”. What are your views? Which is more important - the idea or the execution? Why?

In my view, for this cs3216 course, execution is more important. I do not mean idea is not important, we definitely need to good idea to execution. But this course is not thinking and talking. The base line of it is to build a web application. If I only have idea, I think it has no difference as I do not have. Also how much we need to implement in the idea need to adjust according to the group man-power. Make sure we can finish the work by deadline is also a task in cs3216.

     2.  What have you learnt about Facebook so far? 

Facebook is a popular social network platform allover the world except China. The art of social network is its user base. Developers can build may kinds of apps on it. They are easy to growing and getting more users. Also we can get some information from facebook api instead of user importing everything.     

     3.  Comment on the ideas for Another Life and Fan Gang. 

     4.  Should the team have changed their idea for the Final Project mid-way or stuck to their original idea? Why, or why not? 

Maybe Another Life is a 'good' idea, but it cannot finish by deadline. So this idea may not so good. It is like a small Second Life which requires a lot of drawing also programming. It is quite brave to generate this kind of idea since it really needs too much skills and times. One problem is they should plan well their workload. They said they are all year 4 and have many other projects. Then there is no point not spending much time to finish this big project.  Fan Gang looks quite simple and redundant since facebook already exists interest tag. So this idea may not look so attractive as Another Life. Actually these stuff should be thought clearly in the first week like Technical available or man-power. But I still think they should continue their Another Life. Maybe plan the execution again and choose high value low costs and high value high cost work to do first.It is important for people to do something they really want. If change to Fan Gang, people may not work well without passion. 

     5.  List the major problems (obvious and non-obvious ones) in faced by the team? How could they have done differently and better? 

Work allocation and teamwork corporation. First the work allocation is not so clear. But the work could not be so clear if everyone only aim to finish his own part and complain why it is not work, my part is ok and so on. The goal of everybody in one team should be let the whole system work. We must corporate each other and connect each piece of code. One suggestion is they can sit together and code and first implement the layout and backbone to connect each others` code. Then implement their own feature. 

     6.  What did the team do right/well? 

This team actually did a lot of discussion and thought of many issues. Also they did some consultation which may be helpful for them. Last, there still one person not giving up in the team.

     7.  What would you do if you were Jeremy on the evening of 24th April (and the deadline for the final project submission was the next day)? 

Actually it is so sad for him at that time. Maybe the only thing he can do is to continue with some IT friends to finish as more as possible by deadline. Do not give up until the last second.  

     8.  How would you handle a situation where one of your team members is unable to deliver on the work he/she promised because of personal problems? 

 

First we need to make sure the attitude of that person is positive. If he is very active only quite busy last few days, it is ok we help him finish the work together. But if the attitude of the person has problem, redo the whole plan.  Also we need some buffer for each person. It is important to plan well the execution. Do not make it the last day of assignment.

    9.  What, in your opinion, are the key learning points from this case study? 

Before execution, plan well the whole project. 

Try to understand each one in team and get well with the relationship and teamwork.

We need to learn how to solve accident in team project and change our plan dynamically. 

Case Study  GetHelp!

1 Usability vs Aesthetics.

First, user interface is greatly important for software engineering since this is the main part to connect users and our apps. A good user interface does not mean colourful or complex, it should be very clear and user friendly. The biggest problem of this GetHelp app is the main page. Too many options and confuse user a lot. I really don`t know what to do first.  And the overview page,  I think user should see some popular or related posts in their main page. This is really similar to my first assignment: Eureka~

May be the color of the buttons should change to consistent to facebook color theme. Another problem is the new project button. It is not very easy to find it and it may not need to appear in every page. 

So I think some features need to remove from the main page. Make sure user can easy get what they want and they know what they are doing. 

2 Number of options / freedom given to user when posting a need.

I think the problem is still too many fields to fill. It should only show the most important and required fields and hide other fields to a more info option. For me, the most important fields are only deadline and topic like: "can someone help me finish the final assignment by tomorrow?"  And the people options may be too complex, I think only post to all / post to friends is ok.

3 Cycle of interaction & incentives (Are the elements of the app engaging?)

I think the main method of incentives is the statics. People may be happy seeing their ranking up when they help others or post helps. But this may not work. As we thought in Eureka, we thought if someone ask and answer questions, there will be more people ask and answer. Also a ranking system may engage them. But there may exist many ways to achieve the same stuffs like google, baidu. We need something they don`t have. I think we must focus on only small point first. It is hard to be very general at first. We need some user base from this small group then extend the functions using this small group people to engage more people. So my suggestion is to focus first like only in NUS. I know one example is an app developed by students in top University of China called "Xue Zhang Bang Bang Mang". It is about some junior sister can ask question and senior brother can help them. And this is rally popular in SOC since I have the same experience...

4 Other problems you think 

In this kind of app, I think the matching is also quite important. How can a user`s problem to be solved  efficiently. It must appear in the feeds of people who can solve it or who can easily search it. Some string parse and natural language processing and also a search engine should be done to support it.  Only the product can really help people solve problem will become popular.