More on Maisha Meds coming soon!

Scribd gave me the opportunity to split my time there between working as a product manager and an Android developer. This allowed me to improve my expertise on the Android system, while also developing new skills in product management, UI and UX design and usability.

My role as a product manager was focused on finding frequent problem areas for average users, as well as identifying areas in which we could improve usability and functionality for our heaviest users. In order to isolate problem areas for our average users we chose to conduct usability interviews both in person and using usertesting.com.

To identify potential areas of improvement for our heaviest users we conducted a series of in-person interviews in which we asked them about which features they used, how they used them, and what they would improve or like to see.

The largest feature I worked on as an Android developer was the the UI and UX for the “my library” tab, which is where users can save books to their library, and download them for offline, as well as the back-end for downloading and saving both books and audiobooks. This involved integration with the third-party audiobook API Scribd uses, collaboration with other members of my team working on the audiobook implementation, and refactoring the existing save-to-device architecture.

I started with an Android app that was largely unusable. Although many of the core features had been developed (primarily the main list view and networking) the majority of the app was not functional due to out-dated api calls, broken UI elements or crashes that hadn’t been fixed. I started by making the app’s main screen usable and refactoring to use fragments. I then worked iteratively to build new features, refactor old code and improve the UI and UX. I had to make sure the architecture was well implemented, the codebase remained clean and the app was consistent with the other platforms. Working independently, I had to hold myself to high standards. Given that the target users were largely not tech savvy I had to work hard to build the most intuitive UI I possibly could. By the end of my term the app was release ready

Yelp was my first experience working for a company with an internationally known brand and a single product. As a member of the comparatively smaller Android team, my code had a noticeable impact on an app with millions of daily active users. Working on the Yelp app also gave me the opportunity to learn a huge amount about how large apps are built and maintained as well as many of the common problems that can occur during the development process. On a broader level I gained an understanding of the many technical and business challenges that a company with over 100 million users has to face.

The majority of my work was focused on the client side of the product and therefore the challenges of the job were centered on providing users with the best possible experience. From a technical perspective this meant I had to have a solid understanding of everything from the android layout system to effective fragment management. I also had to make sure that everything was backwards compatible because a large enough portion of Yelp’s users are still using pre-gingerbread OS versions. The net effect of my work at Yelp was to give me a huge amount of confidence in my ability to write Android apps.

Xtreme Labs was my first full development position and provided me with the opportunity to work with some amazingly talented people. Over the duration of my employment my coding ability improved more than it has at any other time in my life both from an architectural and theoretical perspective. This was largely due to pair programming which allows co-op students to learn from full time employees at a much faster rate.

The duration of my time there, with the expectation of two weeks working on an Android project, was spent on an iOS library built as a layer on top of core data (see above). This allowed me to become very comfortable with Objective-c, the iOS platform and Xcode. Because the library was back end I only spent a little bit of time working on UI components. Nonetheless we had to build a sample app for the library so I did gain some experience on the front end components of iOS. In addition to the above I learnt a huge amount about writing clean code and producing well architectured apps. I was quickly able to implement architecture decisions with confidence, my code readability improved and my code reuse was reduced significantly. Overall this was an amazing term, I learned an incredibly amount, worked on an amazing project and had the pleasure of being part of a great company.

GroupThinQ was my first co-op job, and provided my first exposure to a professional software company. My role there was split between web development and marketing and I spent roughly equal time on each. Due to the structure of the company I had to teach myself the vast majority of the development environment and as a result improved my ability to learn new systems quickly and efficiently. While an employee there I was given the opportunity to develop many features entirely on my own. I was given control of everything from the graphical implementation, to the server side code that held everything together. Many of these features were my idea, and due to the small size of the company, I was able to see them to fruition. This had particular significance as I was able to design my marketing plan around the features, and alternatively, the features around the marketing plan.

The biggest challenge for marketing Q was differentiating it from the multitude of other task and project management web apps. This meant starting with a SWOT analysis to get a feel for the competition and to asses Q's own strengths and weaknesses. We decided we wanted to stress usability, flexibility and ease of organization (to view more details please visit groupthinq.com ). I was then given the task of updating the website with our front-end programmer, and starting social networking campaigns that would stress these three key components of the plan. I also worked closely with the business development officer (Kevin Taylor), to change the feature development queue to better reflect the new marketing campaign. GroupthinQ provided me with an excellent introduction to the professional world. I am eager to test my knowledge and skills in a new setting.