REFLECTION — WEEK 4
Unfortunately, this is the last week of class. It almost felt like just last week that we started class. I didn’t expect it to get over so soon. But saying that, this class has taught me so much more than I thought it would.
When I registered for this class, I did have some expectations. But this class has definitely exceeded those expectations. I believe that this class has definitely introduced me into a different world of coding. As mentioned before, I was only a c++ programmer, which I felt limited me to try any other language. Although python may not be my favourite language to code in, being able to use my knowledge and interest has definitely made me more open to try different languages.
Prototyping our conversational agent from low fidelity to high fidelity was also a good way to approach the projects A1, A2, and A3 because it enabled me to take my learning step by step. Being able to learn the basics and challenge myself on how to apply the basics to achieve a working prototype was very important for me. I think that I have grown as a designer in terms of being patient and also using my existing knowledge to help myself learn more and apply it to my design.
Organising code is also something that I learned through this class. I learned how to neatly organise code and also how that can help not only make the code easier to understand, but also easier to correct errors. Functions made it a lot easier to organise repetitive code.
Working in groups also helped me a lot because it made me work on teamwork and also it was good to teach and learn from my peers. Arsh and Rashi were great teammates and we have all equally contributed to the success of our project. We have all learned from each other and taken efforts to teach and help one another learn. I’m really happy that we were able to work together well and also tried to incorporate everyone’s idea. I can still remember the joy when we had completely finished our code and how happy we were. We were also determined to work till the last day to try to add as many different changes that we could to make the code more efficient.
The feedback session was the most important for me. It gave me an insight to how much we needed to improve. Being able to answer all the questions and also hear everyones feedback was a good opportunity to understand our project from another person’s point of view. To see Gaurav’s feedback as well made us really happy because he gave us constructive feedback and I believe that gave rise to some of the changes that really helped build our project.
Having our facilitators Gaurav and Venkat teach our class made it easier for me to pick up the language. Since the number of people in our class was more than expected, it was nice to have two faculties who helped us throughout. Although sometimes they would refuse to help me solve my error, it pushed me to figure it out by myself and this I am very thankful for. I made me learn and appreciate patience. The videos and movies that they showed us in class also did help me, by opening my eye to a different perspective.
I think this class has opened my mind about the different things coding can achieve. After this class, I do believe that it is important that some designers should know coding. Prototyping and making your ideas come to life is the greatest feeling in the world and to see how we have progressed and how much we have improved throughout these five weeks has been incredible. I always had people tell me that designers don’t need to know how to code, but this class has really changed my perspective on that.
I can say that I am now not a c++ programmer but a developing python programmer. I wish to take this further and I want to explore what all I can do with this language and see how my design capabilities can expand.
