Portfolio Development Blog
This is my personal blog for the module Portfolio Development. It is a documentation of what I have done throughout the weeks of the module. It will show the progression of the project weekly.
Week 01
Getting started
During Week 1 everyone was given the choice of choosing a 'theme' to kick start their pr
ojects. I chose "Automaton and the Disadvantaged" for the theme. After choosing, I was directed into a Teams call with other students that chose the same theme as I. The lecturer in charged of the team briefed us on the module and instructed us to brain storm ideas regarding the theme and put them on a padlet. Next we had to vote for the ideas we think are the best and the top 5 ideas would indicate the 'team leaders' for this module. After that the team leaders would have to pick teammates based on the mini resumes we did beforehand. These mini resumes did not include our names hence the team leaders had to choose blindly. The results of the teams were to be announced on week 2.
Week 02
Getting to know the team
During this week, we were introduced to our teammates. My team members were Brandon from FI, Hugo from FI, and Jing Wen from IT. Once we were done with introductions, we got on the trello board to start brainstorming more refined ideas to get a sense of what we wanted to do for this project. The lecturer also came in to help us with some of the idea visualization. At the end of the discussion we decided to do something simple that would help the disadvantaged. We decided that we wanted a mobile application that could do Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text. This app could help the disadvantaged communicate better. Since I was the only one with prior knowledge on how to make a mobile application, I immediately started working on it while the others do more research on how we could help the disadvantaged even further.
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At the end week 2, I have managed to build a basic mobile application that could both do TTS and STT. It was a prototype so show how it could work. After I was done, I showed it to the rest of the team for them to test and give feedback. There were errors and bugs my teammates found and I was quick to rectify them.
Week 03
Meeting teammates in person
During this week, Our team was allowed to meet in person for discussion together with our lecturer. It was the first time we've met each other in person. On that day we discussed on how we could further improve the app and how we could make a intuitive UI for the disadvantaged to use easily. During the discussion one of the team members mentioned that we should have a pinging feature that allows whoever using the app to ping others who has the app installed. This could be used in situations where the disadvantaged could be stuck in a situation where they need help. Upon further discussion with the lecturer who suggested Bluetooth to communicate between devices, I found that Google's Nearby API does just that. By the end of the session I already knew what I had to do to improve the app while my team members work on other things like the UI.
Week 04
Week before hackathon
During this week, there was not much to do and I continued working on the pinging feature while my other team members made preparations for the hackathon. I ran in to many problems and it took me a few days to make the pinging feature work properly.
Scenario 1
Scenario 2
Week 05
Hackathon Week
During this week, We were given 2 and a half days to complete our prototype so that it can be presented during the last day. During the first day I continued working on the application making sure that there were no bugs or error. I also implemented some features so that it could more accessible for the disadvantaged. During the second day, I worked on implementing the UI that my teammates came up with and at the end of the second day we did a trial run simulating a scenario where the disadvantaged could use our app to order food or another scenario where the disadvantaged can call for help at the bus-stop. During the last day, before the the presentation we practiced before hand to make sure the presentation goes smoothly.
Week 10 & 11
Term Break
During the term break, I decided to get started on the Database aspect of the application. CaringFocus requires an online database because when a helpee pings for help and a helper recieves it, the helper should be able to view details such as name, phone number, location and image for indentification. These data has to be stored on a online database for uploading and retrieving. That is why i opted for Firebase with it's easy implementation.
Week 12
Start of new term
During this week, I started to work the background process feature as before this helper's had to have to app opened to allow them to recieve pings. In order to solve that the background process feature had to be implemented so that helpers can start the process and leave the app and still be able to recieve pings form helpees.
Week 13
More development work
During this week, I worked on allowing helpers to recieve a notification when they recieve the ping from a helpee and show them details page when the helpers click on the notification. This is to allow the helper to easily identify the helpee. This feature is possible because of the Firebase database I implemented in the term break. I have made sure that helpers only recieve pings from helpees and not other helpers this is because when helpers click on the notification to view the helpee details they actually ping back a unique message that only the specific helpee can recieve. This is done to alert the helpee that somone has recieved their ping and is on the way to help them.
Week 14
Research
During this week, I did not do much devlopement because I had to start working on my other assignments but I did do some research on a voice assistant that could work in our app. I found that Alan AI was suited to our app because I can give it specific commands to run directly on the app itself such as giving it commands to navigate through our app. This would be very helpful for helpees that have diffculties navigating through our app.
Week 15
Implementing Voice Assistant
During this week, I implemented the Alan AI into our app, it was a pretty striaght foward procress with their easy to follow implementation. The only issues with this assistant is that I am unable to change the wake word and I have limited amount of times i can use this feature unless i pay using real money. If I had more time I would like to learn how to create my own AI voice assistance.
Week 16
Final Week
During this final week, I cleaned up some of the codes and did last few minor changes to the UI. This version of the application should be the final one before the presentation on Week 17. The team also started preparing for the slides needed.
Week 17
Presentation
This week was our presentation, everything went smoothly and accordingly. Many construtive feedback was given by the lecterer. I feel that my team and I has done a greeat job for this module as a whole. This marks the end of the module and this blog thank you for reading.
