Isaac’s Experience & Feedback at Hyrac’s CCV 2017

When you roll out a competition for the first time, you of course have expectations, but may not be sure of the outcome. Read about our first competition here.

After months of developing applications with the guidelines we had given, we finally had winners. We had a sit down with Isaac Tunduny, one of the winners from our competition to pick his thoughts on the process.

How did you react when you first heard Hyrac Tech? Either on Facebook or in general the website.

I came to hear of HyracTech through social media, Whatsapp specifically. My initial reaction was that it may be one of those competitions that call for students to take part and share their ideas. I came to realize that Hyrac Tech also provides a platform to learn and interact with others. This realization became more profound when I got in touch with some of the students who were participating in some of the programs that Hyrac Tech provides such as hackathons.

What motivated you to join the competition?

My motivation for joining the competition was to gauge myself with other students from diverse institutions, and also to improve on my newly learned skills in programming. I was just starting to learn some of the technologies that we eventually implemented on the project. This competition motivated me to test my skills in a wider area of application. Another thing that motivated me to join the competition was that I had an overflow of ideas and it happened that one of the ideas aligned itself to one of the theme of the competition.

How did you select your team / partner?

One of the greatest challenges that I faced during the competition was that of selecting a team. I needed members who were:

• Dedicated to their work
• Willing to spare their free time so as to work on the project
• Had a good understanding of technology and had interacted with different technologies
• Came from different backgrounds so as to foster diversity in the group

Apart from the above characteristics, I also wanted my team to meet the national gender distribution rule, that is, the one third gender rule.

Observing the above, I selected the first member, who needed to be of a different gender, and also needed to have knowledge in design patterns.

The second member just needed to have knowledge of business procedures and marketing techniques. These attributes were necessary for the development of the application and the eventual completion. Being the team leader, I needed to lead the team by showing them the way. Hence, I took the major role in the coding of the application with some assistance from the team members.

What tips do you have for future contestants?

Being a competitor is one of the hardest thing to do. Though we often compete in today’s society in almost all aspects of life, my advice to any contestant is a simple Portuguese phrase, ‘a luta continua’, in English it means ‘Keep on struggling’. Contestants should do their best no matter how the competition seems to be. It doesn’t matter if your idea seems simple than the rest of the contestants. Just stick with it and be true to it. Simple ideas often succeed because they are not complex in implementation.

During the 3 stages, which one was your favorite? (Business planning, designing, and developing)

The best stage of the competition in my opinion was the designing phase. I had to learn a lot about what the user experience needs to be. We all as a team had a lot of discussions on how we should let the user interface be. Since the competition was primarily focused on ui/ux, we also focused on it but we just didn’t stop there. We went a step ahead to also design the backend of the application.

Throughout the competition, what skills were you able to develop?

I was able to develop several skills during the competition such as:

• Team collaboration
• UI/UX design and development
• Basic API development and integrations
• Modular application design among others.

How do you plan on spending the prize money to further your project?

I plan on spending the prize money on furthering some of my personal projects and eventually launching them. The immediate project is due for launch by the end of March 2018. The prize money has helped me acquire some of the items and services that I require for its launch.

Thank you Isaac, It was great having you in the competition, we wish you all the best in your launch. We are here because of people like you!

I enjoy competition. I enjoy challenges. If a challenge is in front of me and it appeals to me, I will go ahead and conquer it. Conor McGregor