One of the most challenging aspects of studying abroad is understanding how the other country’s educational system works well enough to apply to your top school, get admitted, and get a scholarship or funding. Having grown up in Spain and completed my Bachelor of Engineering in the UK and my Master of Engineering in the US, I’m familiar with how overwhelming this process is.
Questions like “What tests do I need to take?”, “Can I take them in my home country?”, “What Visa do I need?”, “How can I get a scholarship?”, “What’s the student culture like over there?”, “What…
The Social Animal is a non-fiction book written by David Brooks, an American journalist for The New York Times. The book uses the story of two characters, Harold and Erica, to explain scientific findings on topics such as the influence of the environment in our success, our unconscious mind, the bias in modern culture, and more. I read The Social Animal last summer. Before doing so, I knew our environment played a vital role in our chances of success — whatever success may mean for each of us — but I’d never thought of exploiting that fact.
When I moved to NYC from the UK 8 months ago, I knew one person in the city’s tech sphere. To change this, I set myself a goal: for 6 months I would find successful people in tech and try to get a 30-minute call with them. I prepared 3 to 4 questions to find out about what they do, the skills that have contributed to their success, and the lessons they’ve learnt. In total I reached out to around 200 people and got 50+ calls with engineers, entrepreneurs, researchers, CEOs, CTOs, and managers.
To give back, I’ve compiled the…
At the time of choosing my graduate school I was an undergraduate student in the UK, where I’d moved from my home country Spain. During my years as an engineering student, my friends and I often thought of products we could build to solve some of the existing problems in society. We’d start building the product but had no idea how to start getting it out there or if people were even interested in it, which led us to giving up.
I often watched videos and read books about engineers turned entrepreneurs. I remember staying up one night watching techie…
A common struggle among the 30+ parents we’ve interviewed is the difficulty in motivating their young children to complete chores such as helping at home, doing their homework, taking care of pets, etc. Many of these parents successfully use rewards such as screen-time on the iPad as motivators for their children. We decided to merge these two concepts into a new product: Star Quest.
Star Quest is a gamified goal tracker for children. In this game, the child is an astronaut that can explore different planets, each of which has new games that can be individual or multiplayer, connecting children…
At wēbē we are creating a product in the teen’s mental health space. To understand potential users, I downloaded some trending apps for mental health tracking and used them for a few weeks. Yesterday I finally deleted the last app, and it felt A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.
Where do I start?
When I first installed the app, I was staying on top of things — logging my mood, writing my thoughts, doing breathing exercises, etc. Every morning, midday, and evening I got a notification to complete the activities and log the progress. After a few days, receiving so many notifications and having to…
This week, I’d like to take a couple of minutes to reflect on what we’ve learnt so far at wēbē.
We started our journey last month with the idea of creating a product in the children’s mental health space. Since then, we have interviewed 20+ users, and identified a few pain points:
- Pre-teens and teens with mental health disorders often have difficulty adhering to treatment and logging their progress on a daily basis.
- A large number of therapists log patient information on paper, which is time-consuming.
- Bullying increases the risk of developing a mental health condition, yet many bullying incidents…
Last week our team wēbē @ Cornell Tech had a Sprint Retrospective. In Scrum, the retrospective is an opportunity to stop, reflect and learn from the Sprint.
When you have a successful Sprint and upcoming deadlines, it’s tempting to cancel the retro. You think: “We did well so we don’t have much to talk about, plus we’re pressed for time”. I was guilty of this last week — with 6+ other deadlines piled up, all I wanted to do was spend time working towards them.
I’m glad we ended up meeting because it made me realize that, even when the…
Pitching a product is easy — pitching one that people remember is difficult. Think about the last presentation that struck a cord with you. Why was it?
Personally, I remember a talk on the importance of creating a community around your product.
As an engineer my work revolves around algorithms, but in my free time I enjoy reading about social psychology and how communities interact. For years I believed these books’ knowledge would stay in my memory under “curiosities”, rather than help me with my “engineering work”. But this talk made me realize it’s crucial to understand your user community—…
Who hasn’t heard the phrase “fail fast” in the start-up environment? I know I have. I must say, however, that today is the day I finally understood its meaning.
At wēbē, we are working on creating a product to help parents better understand their children’s emotional and mental health. Our initial idea was to create a toy that interacts with children aged 3–8 and collects data on their emotional state, which the parents can then visualize on their phone to identify concerning trends. With this idea in mind, we set out to interview children therapists, mental health experts, and parents.
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Eva Esteban
Computer Engineering Intern @ OpenBCI. Previously Robotics @ Cornell Tech. Excited to build new things! evaesteban.com
