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.