Hi, I’m Yusof Bandar 2nd Year Computer Science Student currently on a Summer Internship with DigitalLabs for 3 months. Throughout my time here I will be uploading weekly diaries detailing my feelings and thoughts. Keeping a diary allows me to reflect on what I have achieved during the internship and to share my experiences with other students and devs (hope you enjoy).
My Internship requires me to build a single page web app for a chemical engineering research group, Marloes Peeters Group. The web app will connect to a server and allows the research group to view and analyze the data they have gathered.
First Week at Digital Labs
My first week at DigitalLabs, I fully designed the system’s look and how it will work while learning to work in a small team. It felt satisfying that within a week I went from zero to designing the whole system.
On my first day, I was feeling nervous not knowing what to expect. This was my first internship and first time working with a software company. When I arrived I was greeted with a warm welcome by the whole team who helped me set up my workstation. Once I was settled in the office I was excited to start working on the project.
6 Weeks
The first lesson DigitalLabs taught me was how easily and quickly a project can fail, after discussing what I will be doing for the next 60 days I quickly realized that I only had 6 weeks of development time, compared to previous projects this was not a lot.
As a developer it’s extremely easy to want to implement every feature that pops into your head, it was important to stop this happening and focus development time on the core features. Throughout the whole week, I would design part of the system using tools such as Trello and Pencil, get feedback from the client then fix any problems. At first, this may seem frustrating but it isn’t, I enjoyed how every day the project became more and more focused on its core elements disregarding any useless features, at end of the week the whole system was designed.
Meeting with client
Similar to my first day I felt nervous to meet the client for the first time, none of my previous projects involved clients. I showed the client the user stories I had written and discussed how I think the system should work, the client provided feedback where I noticed some forgotten user stories. It was gratifying to discuss my and the client’s queries as it helped me understand what the client needed from the system.
It was good to establish a relationship with the client. DigitalLabs explained the importance of communication between the client and I, as each part of development we rely on the clients feedback. We decided that the client and I should meet everyday to discuss any problems and changes to the system, this allowed us to catch problems early rather than in the 6 weeks of development time.
Whiteboarding
Once the user stories were completed I had to work out the main features and how the system would look, to do this Laurie and I used a simple method, whiteboarding, instead of using a complex software which could be cumbersome and slow. For the whole system we drew down how each feature would work and uploaded records to Trello.
It was a really enjoyable experience, by using the whiteboard we could quickly test and reject ideas, as well as being able to see how the system will look, once the system was drawn I created the system wireframes. I learned that sometimes it is better to use pen and paper, it allowed for quick prototyping with minimal cost for mistakes, rather than a computer program.
Conclusion
Overall my first week at DigitalLabs was extremely entertaining, learning a lot about myself and how a small startup operates. The constant reminder, “only had 6 weeks of development time” was helpful, reminding me to focus on the core features getting rid of any feature creep. Not everything was smooth sailing though, the inevitable did happen this week, forgetting to save my work. That day was a bit frustrating (To be fair it was my fault) but I learned an important lesson about keeping backups. Hopefully the next few weeks turn out as interesting as this one.