Author Archives: Tony Chi

Meeting Minute 2—-Tony, Goutam, Samson

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 Date: 11/23/2014

Start Time: 6:00 pm

End Time: 7:00 pm

Location: meeting called to order at 6:00 PM by Tony Chi, Skype.

Attendees: Tony Chi, Goutam Seepersaud, Samson Gong

Objective: To discuss application features and first presentation.

Last class meeting

  • Everyone is recalling what we did on the last meeting
  • Discussed about what needs to be improve on survey conducted in class
  • Tony suggests to ask professor for permission to make an announcement to class so we could conduct the survey before final presentation
  • Tony also said by since the last survey wasn’t successful,  we should do it one more time to improve our app according to feedbacks 

App Feature

  • Tony asked the group for suggestions of what else should include in the app
  • Goutam said that we should add department location to the app
  • Samson suggested to add campus map and phone directory of city tech
  • Goutam say we should look into other college’s mobile app for advice.

Presentation

  • Goutam and Samson came up an idea of adding video clip of our app to the presentation
  • We all agree to prolong it for final presentation if possible due to the time shortage
  • Samson suggested to embed emulation of app such as map in the video clip
  • Samson said it is better to use note than type it out when presenting
  • Tony said powerpoint should be highlight of ideas
  • Our group decided to have Samson start out the presentation, Tony is going to explain features in the app, Goutam is going to talk about survey that helps improving our app.

Meeting adjourned at 7:00 PM

Date: 11/24/2014

Start Time: 9:00 pm

End Time: 9:00 pm

Location: meeting called to order at 9:00 PM by Tony, Skype.

Attendees: Tony Chi, Goutam Seepersaud, Samson Gong

Objective: Continuation of  first presentation.

 

Presentation

  • Goutam suggested to display a screenshot of each feature for a slides
  • our group discussed about how many slides to fit in the presentation
  • Tony showed app features screenshot he did so far

Meeting adjourned at 9:30 PM

Minutes respectfully compiled and submitted by Tony Chi

Progress Report 3–Tony, Goutam, Samson

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Our last meeting in class, We discussed the problem we had in regard to the survey from the peer reviews, the powerpoint that we are going to present, and the prototype of the application.  During the discussion we have decided for Samson to write the agenda, Goutam will do the minute, and Tony will be working on the application’s prototype.

This week’s off campus group meeting, Samson created the agenda and Goutam had taken the minutes for our online Skype meeting on Sunday. During our meeting we’ve discussed our result from our peer review’s survey and analyzed it. We created the new survey and discussed how the new survey will benefit our app’s development process. Tony shared the development of the (NYCCT) app he built.

Samson and Goutam will work on the powerpoint. The topic of the slides was determined on Sunday’s meeting. Tony will show the progress of the application for the presentation. Due to the incomplete powerpoint, Sunday’s meeting was extended to Monday night.

On Monday, we continued our meeting. With the completed powerpoint, each group member will prepare on their role for the coming presentation.

For our next class, Our group will be presenting to the class our progress on our final project. We have new survey for the class and a new prototype of the application. Lastly, before Tuesday midnight, our group leader, Tony will review and submit the documents to the blog and dropbox.

Meeting Minute 1—Tony, Samson, Goutam

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Date: 11/14/2014

Start Time: 8:00 pm

End Time: 8:50 pm

Location: meeting called to order at 8:00 PM by Tony Chi, Skype.

 

Attendees: Tony Chi, Goutam Seepersaud, Samson Gong

Objective: To discuss further research, review our sources, and share ideas.

Work Assigned

  • Samson is going to be minute take for this week.
  • Goutam made the agenda to be discussion for this week online meeting

Last Meeting Conclusion

  • According to class discussion on sources, Tony decided to conduct more research on different areas
  • Samson suggested that we should not be only focus on technical side of the app but the market side of it as well.

Layout of App

  • Everyone agreed since the application would be iOS (Apple) we should stick to their theme and style (square icons).
  • Tony downloaded several college mobile app to his iphone  and compare the similarities and differences
  • Tony shows some awful mobile apps like John Jay College and Baruch College, also the good one like Queens College, MIT, and Stanford, etc.
  • Goutam suggested that we should add Gallery to the app.
  • Samson says he was thinking about adding food nearby function to the app, but it was disapproved because we will be stuck with technical issues which may end up wasting times.

Researches (Sources)

  • Goutam shared a link that shows how other mobile phone app survey conducted

http://www.slideshare.net/MeganKoval/market-research-smartphone-app

Next Class Meeting

  • Tony will make a simple version prototype and have it ready for next class
  • Goutam will bring the survey and have it approve from Professor Belli
  • Samson will bring his research information to class

 

Meeting adjourned at 8:55 PM

Minutes respectfully compiled and submitted by Samson Gong

 

Meeting Agenda 1—Tony, Samson, Goutam

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Meeting Date: Friday,  November 14, 2014

Start time: 8:00 pm

End time: 8:50 pm

Location: Skype Chat

 

Attendees: Tony Chi, Goutam Seepersaud, Samson Gong

Objective:  To discuss further research, share ideas, and

Schedule

8:00 to 8:10                 Discuss last class meeting

8:10 to 8:20                 Assigned take to group member to be complete

8:20 to 8:25                 Discuss about our progress so far we have done

8:25 to 8:45                 Discuss direction of research

How to create a survey

Exchange ideas of what needs to be on the app

8:45 to 8:50                 what each is going to bring next class

Fix next meeting time

Next meeting date: Friday, November 21, 2014, 7/8pm

Role/Responsibilities

Note taking – Samson Gong

 

 

Progress Report 2—-Tony, Samson, Goutam

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Before our meeting on Friday, November 14, we had a short in-class discussion about what our group is going to accomplish to the next week. During the discussion we have decided to make Tony Chi as our project manager, Goutam writes agenda for next meeting, and Samson takes minute on what will be discuss at meeting. We all came to an agreement that agenda and Minute responsibilities will be shifted every week among each group members. Due to incompatibility of each group members schedule, our group decided to held synchronous meet online through Skype every week, not only that, we will be using WeChat (mobile application used for sending instant message) to share ideas during unofficial chatting.

So for this week group meeting, Goutam created the agenda and Samson had taken the minutes for our online Skype meeting on Friday. During our meeting we discussed on how the layout of our application should be, what feature needs to be appearing on the app and what make a mobile app attractive. We also shared some research links during that meeting, and some of them are very useful towards making a decent mobile app.

On Monday, Tony shared a simple prototype of the application. The application is very simple but clean. It has features like weather, direction, link to City Tech official website, contact info, and social media connection. We decided to leave it simple as it is because we want to move further after we get feedback from the survey. The Application is subject to change base on the survey that we are going to conduct at the end of next class. Goutam will be in charge of survey, but Tony and Samson will be assisting with the survey. We were able to complete our primary goal of creating the prototype.

For our next class, Goutam will bring the survey and other source materials; Tony will bring the simple prototype and other materials; Samson will bring his research materials. Lastly, before Tuesday midnight, our group leader, Tony will review and submit the documents to the blog and dropbox.

Group Discussion—-Tony, Samson, Goutam

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For discussion today, our group have decided to make Tony the project manager and Samson the minute take for this week; the minute report is going to be rotated among group. we also decided to make a survey form for students to fill out, the survey form is going to include short answers and check boxes.

we plan to meet on Friday night at 8pm to discuss our project through Skype. for the division of labor, Tony will be working on prototype after we got feedback from students. Samson and Goutam will be creating a survey for next week.

Class Note 10/29 (Tony)

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Class note for following weeks

11/5——- Derrick                                                  12/3——-Rene

11/12 —–Samson                                                 12/10——Lian

11/19——Ray                                                         12/17——Ivan

11/26——Deniel

Due Next Week 11/5:    Final Project Proposal From Each Group

Class Work: Free Writing #1

mid-semester reflection:

  • reflect on first half of course (discussions, class works, assignments)
  • what have you learned/enjoyed?
  • what are you still struggle with?

Reflections

  • Instruction/manual- looking at how its made
  • memos/letter- helpful for professional work
  • active/passive voice- awareness of tone, credibility
  • summarizing
  • blogging- public writing, see other’s writing
  • reverse outline
  • reflection letter- practical and useful
  • career material- research, find out field and prospective jobs

looking forward:

  • what would you like to pursue (issues, projects, research) for your final project?

Free Writing #2

  • Final Project Ideas

Free Writing #3

  • Collaboration

Final Collaborative Project Groups:

1. Enrique, Ivan, Iurii                2. Lian, Derrick, Chris, Deniel              3. Jason, Ray, Vince

4. Ogulcan, Rosa, Calvin              5. Samson, Goutam, Tony

Final Project

  • 50% of final grade
  • grade is collaborative
  • every group submit one proposal for approval
  • groups are encourage to meet outside of class–synchronous/asynchronous meeting, transparency, accountability
  • keep track of progress/minutes/report
  • research, annotated bibliography
  •  infographic
  • each group will have conference with Prof. Belli
  • peer review
  • presentation
  • final report
  • individual reflection

Collaboration

  • communication
  • schedule
  • consencus

Website Review–Tony, Chris, Deniel

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People use websites as a main source of information these days, and it is mandatory for any business to have one if they are to compete with other businesses. Factors such as usability, navigation, clarity and accessibility help to determine if a user will respond well to a website. If these guidelines are not met, the user may have an adverse experience and choose to search elsewhere.

One of the websites reviewed is the City Tech homepage, at first sight the webpage has a simple layout which means the load time wouldn’t be very long. The background is clear so there are no distractions and the font sizes are no too big or too small making the text easy to read without needing to zoom in/out of the webpage. The only images on the webpage is a slideshow which has appropriate images that is simple enough to not cause any problems while loading. As for the information on the City Tech homepage everything seems to be well organized, the drop down box shows a variety of quick links that would be very useful to any user. The problem with the City Tech homepage is that the FAQ might take a while to find because users would actually need to search the website thoroughly in a series of other links. FAQ is very important and it should be easy to find on the homepage of any website, it wouldn’t be very useful if the users has to dig into the website to find it. The content on the City Tech website is useful while being easy to navigate from, it has appropriate images for its purpose, but the only issue is that some information such as the FAQ needs to be on the homepage.

Another website that is reviewed is Ling’s cars leasing website, and soon as the webpage loads any user would notice how distracting it is. There are flashing images and unnecessary animations all over the webpage, the background should be simple so it would not interfere with the content. The fonts are not consistent and there are a lot of unneeded texts. Since there is so much activity going on this website it may cause issues loading or will just take some time to load. There are no FAQs or help tabs on this webpage and even if it did have no one would even notice it due to the amount of unusual and excessive activity happening on the webpage. Even this website’s source code contains unnecessary text in it. Overall this webpage is terrible in every way possible only thing that it achieves is that it is very distracting.

Writing studies tree is very well organized website. There are links for the about page, to explore more to discuss and get help. You need to be a user to gain full access to the site so we were unable to delve deeper. There is an FAQ section as most good sites should have. The home page says what WST is but it does so using large words. Since the website is targeting writers and persons related to the field, they should have no problem understanding it. The average person would probably not know what it means without the use of a dictionary however. We had to read it over and over before we really got an idea of what they did so there is room for improvement in terms of simplifying the wording. We clicked on “Try the full network” thinking it would help and that just complicated matters further. We weren’t sure what exactly we were looking for. Overall, it fits the criteria of a decent site based on the links provided to us. The layout and color scheme is fine. The headings have clear structure and I’m sure people who use the site regularly find it to be good.

Amazon was one of the sites chosen because of how popular they are. From the onset it was clear why they are the leading website for buying products online. Everything presented to us was useful, usable, findable and desirable. They had a search bar at the top of the home page, and as you start typing, suggestions would be provided. You have the option to search by department which is useful if you are not sure exactly what you want. When you click on a product key details about it would be presented along with a picture, the price and a rating of course. Following this is a section showing products frequently bought with that specific item or related to it. There is a customer questions and answers section which is very useful when shopping online in addition to a review section done by customers just like yourself. Millions of people shop online every year and the environment given by Amazon’s website shows why so many people chose them for a great and reliable shopping experience.

MIT is a top ranked technology school among all, but when I surfed through their website, we were kind of disappointed by what we had seen. Both left and right navigation bars on home page are laying on top of the background picture, which make the whole page very messy and difficult to differentiate between contents. The website uses darker color tone to outline which make it very gloomy and outdated. Also the navigation bar is too packed, we would recommend drop down menu so that very thing would look cleaner. In terms of user experience and usability, we think the website isn’t organize enough for user to grab inform on the first two clicks. Another thing is how they organize or use picture on the webpage; pictures are tightly placed next to each other in the same area, this would cause confusion when using looking for specific ones. We also compare website in pc with mobile device, the website isn’t very accessible in mobile device, for those smaller screen devices, you have to scroll left and right, up and down rather than fit everything into one screen in order to browse the whole page. This is very annoying which bothers me a lot. Overall, the experience isn’t quite comfortable.

OpenLab is an educational website as well, but the experience is absolutely difference comparing to MIT. First impression of this website is clean, comfortable, organized, and modernized. The navigation bar is very clear and clean, it didn’t contain any extra information. The contents are organized into specific categories which make it very accessible. The contact page is very unique because the user needs any help, they don’t have to type receiver inform in the message, it will automatically send the message to the right place and right person; this is another side of good accessibility. The information is very straight forward and usable, you do not need to click excessively to go to where you want. Overall, the user experience is excellent.

In conclusion, from doing this assignment we can properly differentiate between a great website and a bad one. Everyone in the group is a CST major so we all have previous experience with HTML and web designing etiquette. With that being said, the information from the links provided in addition to the review of websites done should benefit us in the future.

Source:

City Tech
Lings Car
Amazon
MIT
OpenLab
Writing Study Tree

Summary of “The Flight From Conversation”

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“The Flight From Conversation” is an article written by Sherry Turkle. The article discuss about  how technology today changing our ways of communication from face-to-face conversation to social media connection.

In the beginning of the article, the author introduce her credibility of studied technologies of mobile connection for the past 15 years. Then she point out the idea of “alone together”.  Throughout her 15 years study and research, the author discovered that many people barely talk with each other even when they are next to each other, even friends and family member doesn’t communicate face to face as much as it used to be before. She also emphasize that although many young people in company and student in college library are working and breathing under the same atmosphere, but they are in their bubble.

The author also stated that people today are accustomed to what social media had impacted us in our daily life. Texting, Email, Facebook, and Twitter has gradually replaced oral communication. They allows people even more flexibility of editing and presenting themself in the social media world. as people switched over to online connection, they tend to loose their motivation and ability to self-reflect.

Another message the author mention is that during her research, she found out that many youngsters are tend to talk with an “artificial intelligence program” instead of their parents because machines are always stand by, always willing to hear from them, and most importantly “never have to be alone.”

In the last part of the article, the authors give few suggestions of how to avoid being alone together at home and at work. Also she urged to start conversation with one another.

 

Source: The Flight From Conversation, By Sherry Turkle.

 

 

Owner’s Manual–Tony

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Since I am computer science major, most of the time I have to deal with different types of devices. So I decided to look for something that is computer related. Printer is a device that I use in daily life, either for homework or for personal printout. Brother is well known in making printers for both small office and enterprise.

I found a manual for brother laser printer model number HL2140, HL2150N, and HL2170W. The manual looks very professional and straight forward to me; it starts out with definitions of bunch of symbol that may be appearing throughout the manual. It informs users with safety precaution that may happen when using it, and tells you how to prevent those situations and how solve them in first position. Follow by emergency is the table of contents which is very helpful when the manual is about a hundred and thirty pages long. You can easily spot any information you need to pull out when need them. Manual has several pictures that shows view of the printer from different directions, which is a plus in clarity; the pictures labeled with numbers and each numbers has its corresponding definition for it.

In terms of the accessibility, I think the manual is very accessible because pictures are large enough to be seen and the manual also show you the real scene of installation environment. In addition to that, if you are having trouble with fixing any problems that might occur you can always refer to the table of the content to spot the right chapter for troubleshooting.

The usability of the manual is also decent. The printer itself would make your life easier as it has several automate mode to configure the user preference. Go down to mid section, the manual will tell you what operating system is compatible and drivers needed to install. Years later, if your tire of that printer, you can also always do a clean uninstall for different version of operating system and drivers. It also recommended couple software if you need more services from the printer than just printer, scan, and faxing.

Overall, I think brother’s user manual is very clear and helpful about quick access of information, straightforward pictures, and user safety.

Brother Printer User Guide—HL-2140, HL-2150N, & HL-2170W