Blog Post #8

I have long been aspiring to work for multi-national companies, and many of the companies I associated with had diversity in human resources, such as employees with various cultural backgrounds. Once I lived in the area where international expats from many countries temporarily rent houses (several months to several years, typically), and I, at that time, wished I would be able to hold the same type of position in future.

When I was working for a holding company, I was under a boss, who got near to his retirement date. The man was sent to more than 23 countries as an expat. He was, by our employer, required to learn foreign languages, cultures, and histories of many different countries, of course. Interacting with so many people having varying socioeconomic backgrounds and value systems, he was mentally strong and showed amazing adaptability to difficult situations in which people normally get bewildered, which was astonishing, considering the fact he was nearly 70 years old at that time. I still remember how he was, and he was definitely one of the individuals who directly inspired me.

Now, living overseas and in an international community, I learn foreign languages every day. I use Duolingo, an famous app for learning basics of foreign languages. First, I honestly did not expect much from this app and was planning to use it as a supplemental learning material. Some reviewers also complain about “rote memorization”.

But I noticed learning a foreign language requires boring repetitions, and this app can help ease this tedious learning processes. The app kept recommending, “making friends”, by following others, but I ignored the notifications first. But now I have been inspired by some people whom I follow and who follow me — we cannot chat or do any direct communication with them, but we can cheer up each other by clicking buttons for our achievements, which is surprisingly encouraging. Also, we can track progresses of “friends”, which makes me stay motivated. Of course, we cannot solely rely on this app — we need to read books in order to understand complex grammatical structures; however, I feel lucky I can use the app and share similar interests with others.

Working globally is difficult sometimes. Conflicts occur and the fundamental resolution is actually not very easy. Building trust is time-consuming and requires so much patience. But still it is rewarding.

Blog Post #7

Since the terminology, “AI”, or Artificial Intelligence had been spawned, we have being seeing the related topics on media and it has been said that the use of AI has been witnessed in many fields now, such as robotics, virtual assistance, SNS monitoring, and so on.

Although the technology probably can save a lot of money for corporations where the majority of their employees are doing tasks that can be easily automated, there are quite strong public opinion and concerns that human beings will be deprived of more and more work by AI in the future.

If we look back on the past, even simple computer programs replaced many tasks that were originally done by more than 1 person manually. When I was very young, I did a part-time job at an accounting firm. The owner sometimes took a trip down memory lane, and then shared her stories about the workplace in the past.

Nowadays, we take it for granted we have office software such as Excel, but at that time, the owner said all the tasks were literally done by hand (e.g. with paper and pencil, and a simple calculator), and one task often required more than one person to be completed. So, the owner used to hire more people — even if the average wage (inflation-adjusted) for each employee was not as high as the one a current employee is entitled to. The owner also said that was like “work sharing”.

Of course, we cannot idealize the past, getting high on nostalgia, but being in a society where more and more things get automated, then people may feel a sort of ostracized.

Although I cannot recall the source, I read a blog article written by a lawyer a couple of years ago. The lawyer insisted that, although nowadays many lawyers often depend on AI technologies for researches, only humans can wisely decide how to effectively use the found information, considering various situations for the ultimate users. Still there seem to be fields AI excels at (e.g. processing a lot of information and extracting only useful ones) and fields humans are good at (e.g. creatively using / combining the information). And I really wish AI can bring positive outcomes for our future.

Blog Post #6

Since the onset of Covid-19 pandemic, so many of us have been getting used to working remotely, utilizing various tools that allow us to communicate online. Even students in non-online curriculum were opting for learning online (and only show up in person for lab sessions, for example). One of my relatives, who is a male in his 50s, has recently been asked to download a chat app for work by his employer. The app is widely used by young people, and he was laughing he never ever expected he would use that type of app. Once he gets used to the app, he finds it more convenient than a regular email — with the app, he can join meetings, send messages, and exchange images of high quality instantly using a camera.

So, we have often been using online meeting tools, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams nowadays. Basically, I think having a casual business meeting over Zoom is a good idea — we can avoid unnecessary commuting, which can save significant amount of time, can get rid of some psychological stress of employees, and also save money (e.g. the use of meeting rooms, extra utilities fees, and so on).

At the same time, I read some downsides of online meetings, especially, when those meetings involve people who have just met. Being unable to fully feel non-verbal cues, eye contacts may be too close (in a human’s vision) and too intrusive on screen. Besides, we may excessively rely on the voice tone of the person to get a feel for the atmosphere of the meeting. All those awkward situations may perplex someone who gets used to (and prefers) meet-ups in person and face-to-face communication. So, establishing genuine rapport may be difficult for some people if the communications are strictly online-based.

Personally, I like virtual meetings; however, I thought I would need to be more careful in how I communicate in those meet-ups.

Reference: “The Disadvantages of Online Meetings” by Ellis Davidson

Blog #5

I used to volunteer for healthcare institutions and a nursing home for more than 7 years, and was always interested in how senior citizens can maintain an active lifestyle. Fortunately or unfortunately, we all get aged and many of us desperately want to live as independently as possible while we are breathing on this earth. At one of the facilities, I found many seniors tried to be physically active, participating in exercise groups and volunteer activities.

When those people are in independent-living units, they can fully rely on their physical capacities. Unfortunately; however, some cannot avoid suffering from a sudden episode of disease (both acute and chronic) and end up living in skilled-nursing units, which significantly limits the residents’ physical activity levels.

Sometimes, I see articles that emphasize an importance of learning technologies for seniors. Not only does those articles emphasize the importance of learning new technologies for stimulating brain activities, but also the technologies (in this case, I will limit the technology to one of typical communication tools, such as SNS and chat app) can help seniors connected to their families and possibly explore new friendships.

It seems that some of the communication app can be good at accommodating those seniors who are handicapped, allowing their users with limited physical capacities to use apps relatively with ease. They may offer larger icons and buttons, so shaky hands can easily select and tap them, and also easy navigation structure for completing tasks. Accessibility has been greatly considered by the developers, which inspires me.

Blog Post #4

As I mentioned in the previous post, I tried a quite number of chat / discussion apps released in Google Play in order to familiarize myself with common features and also to find out typical user behaviors.

One of those apps is wonderfully designed and has been attracting many users and showing high response rate (probably the app’s name was Whisper — although the app is considered one of the risky apps for kids). While the app’s features are not very applicable for our project, the efforts of the developers to make the app enjoyable were noticeable. When we post our comment, a beautiful graphic background is automatically inserted and the fonts used are also visually attractive. Probably, the number of letters is restricted and only meaningful/pinpointed comments are allowed. After the comment is posted, I somehow felt like I did something good for the day to others in the thread.

Of course, as written in many articles in the past, I witnessed some communication apps that have been used obviously for formidable purposes — for example, some users with malicious intents post comments that are targeting kids. In my area also, there has been warnings about crimes children are possibly drawn to (e.g. abductions associated with organ harvesting, sexual exploitation by predators). Some chat apps that are not strictly regulated and have enticing features for kids can stealthily become a hotbed of crimes.

But, what moved me was conscientious people’s reviews left for those apps in question. Quite number of people left one-star reviews for those apps, giving warnings to potential victims. I felt that those reviews that reflect people’s sincere concerns and cares are also a part of the entire communication channels in a way. Those caring reviews clearly showed the commenters’ strong will power– what kind of society they want to ultimately create, and those chat apps may serve as platforms to express true-self.

Blog #3:

This week, I was researching some applications that can be inspiring for our project. I downloaded some communication apps and actually tried them out myself. It was interesting for me to find out that, even though the main concepts of those apps are almost identical (e.g. express yourself, discuss issues, connected to people around the globe, share and vent your emotions, and so on), they typically attract different types of people.

Although many of the similar apps do not explicitly state that they are designed for people with a particular cultural background and also the apps’ overviews clearly indicate they are for any users who have a good command of English, some of those apps tend to attract people who communicate in a certain language and people sharing similar cultural heritage.

Being intrigued, I was trying to analyze those apps’ features, hoping I would discover their secret recipe to win popularity among their fans. However, it was an unsuccessful attempt in figuring out the reasons just by trying the app and examining each feature carefully. Words of mouth.. maybe. Those apps may have been introduced in media that supports and advocates a certain group of people.

But the fact those apps are presented in English language seems to mitigates the “exclusiveness” often associated with a group of people in minority cultures. Nowadays, I see so many people freely leave comment in their native languages in English communication platforms and, thanks to translation functions, we all can enjoy exposure to diversities on this earth.

Blog Post #2: During this module, we had our first meet-up to discuss about our Team Standards. First, we shared some ideas on Google Doc and then had a synchronous meeting. Since all of us have already been familiar with most of the terminologies such as project goals and meeting logistics — we learned in previous classes, the entire discussion relatively went smoothly, compared to an initial discussion I had back in software engineering 1.

But, of course, we seemed to have different viewpoints and ideas on a couple of those standards. I think that the synchronous meeting (not just with chat) was a good practice for all of us so that we could kind “gauge” our personalities / personas. Also, the meeting itself gave us an opportunity to figure out how to best approach our teammates to establish a rapport but at that same time, analyze the most appropriate way to resolve any future conflict(s).

In one of my previous group projects, we could not avoid hostility among teammates. We were a team of five, and two guys were apparently unhappy with the tasks they were assigned to. The two guys indirectly expressed dissatisfaction during a team meeting, but reluctantly accepted the assignments anyway. After that, the two skipped the next meeting, which was obviously intentional. Until the end of term, we could not resolve the strained relationship although, on the surface, we all tried to get along.

I am very aware that type of incidents can happen anywhere, especially at workplaces, so to some extent, we need to get used to them and just weather the storm under certain circumstances. But also, I wished we could do more and do things differently to resolve the conflicts, not just ignoring the massive degree of discomfort. Once I was talking straight to a “team leader”, but that did not make much difference. We all hold different value systems, which often bring about subjective perceptions of norms. All we can do is probably to keep learning from our experiences, relying on external resources as needed.

I want to appreciate all the conflicts I had with others in the past, since they were giving me opportunities to grow.

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Blog Post #1: Hi, this is my first post for the class project.

What got I started with this CS degree was to simply fulfill one of the requirements for a master degree I wanted to pursue at that time. Honestly, I had little motivation to become a software engineer when I applied for this program. I have an engineering background (not software), and wanted to explore a new field in a hardware device.

But through this programming education, I have been impressed by the fact that we all have been protected in so many ways by dedicated programmers who are willing to work on daunting tasks, solving problems. Luckily, I have met a couple of programming mentors in the past two years and could be exposed to their various expertise.

Due to my family issues, I have been living overseas in the past 3 years, and unfortunately witnessed a number of tragic incidents, especially ones involving kids who are not monitored as closely as in the US. This week, one child has still been missing in a park 5 min away from our home.

Local people use anti-crime apps a lot in this area and share their experiences along with formal warnings from the police on the app. After taking a mobile app class, I can now imagine how much efforts have been put into this in background and cannot thank enough to programmers and other employees who maintain the system.