What I learned from CS3216

At the beginning of the semester, I wrote a post about "What i hope to get out of CS3216". As the semester is closing to an end now, it's time for me to write another post about "What I learned from CS3216".

I am not a writer. My most disliked subjects usually include language-related subjects. I can be creative in anything and everything except in writing. But I will follow Cedric's advice in this post. He told me once that "You should write a blog post for yourself. To read again in the future and think back." So here I am. This post is not for anyone, but for myself. To read again in the future.

The first important thing that I learned in CS3216 is that "execution matters". It's not about how skillful or knowledgeable a person is in a programming language or how many great ideas a person has. But it's rather about how he or she approaches a problem (a project) and solves (execute) it.

For example, my final project is on The Mood Diary. It is a very simple application but we have managed to attract more than 18K users. Many people told us that we got it right in our execution and we are happy with our progress so far. Nevertheless, I personally feel that the Mood Diary is not really a success although It cannot be considered a failure.

There are still a lot of things to do to make the Mood Diary a success.

1. Currently it still doesn't have a money making aspect (need a good biz model)

2. There is a need for cuter and more varying icons (need a good designer)

3. Monthly active users need to reach 100K (a threshold as Prof Ben has mentioned)

4. Rewrite some parts of the app to improve user experience (Use more Ajax for smooth transition and change the flow of UI in some cases)

5. Need a really good lock-in feature to make users coming back to the apps

6.

7.

The list will go on and on. So there is still a long way for us to go. Whether the Mood Diary will become a success or not will depend on how we execute the above list and more.

The second important thing is that UI and Design of an application really matter especially if it is an CBU (cute but useless) application like the Mood Diary. There are so many applications which are similar in functionality. As a result, users are spoilt with choices. UI and Design become deciding factors for users to choose which application to use.

Lastly, I learned that it's necessary to try random things and believe that it will somehow work out. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't. Nevertheless, it is better than sitting at a chair and thinking what to do without doing anything.

For the first Facebook assignment, I would like to thank the whole group for the wonderful experience. I really had a great and exciting time doing the Boomz cart project. It was my best experience with group projects in NUS so far. It was very unfortunate that we didn't get to continue it for the final project.

For the Facebook seminar, I am grateful to Orry for researching the application and doing the presentation.

For the wave assignment, I would like to thank Wye Mun for single handedly writing the application. Wye Mun inspired me to learn JQuery which became very useful in my final project.

For the final project, I would like to thank Hong Jun for being always ready to help despite his busy job interview schedule. His cute crayon-themed emoticons did the magic and had managed to attract many users. And I am grateful to him for writing most of the reports and designing a wonderful poster for the poster presentation.

Overall, I would like to thank Prof Ben for my wonderful experience in CS3216. It is my most exciting and enjoyable module in NUS so far. I hope that I will be able to transfer what I learned in CS3216 to projects which I am going to undertake in the future.