DEV Community: Khushi 🌼

Outreachy: Wrap-up

Khushi 🌼 — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 07:11:00 +0000

Welcome to the final blog of the Outreachy series!
This one is based on my overall experience with Outreachy!

One fear I had

So initially, seeing previous year statistics, I was quite worried that since selection ratio is so small, I might not get selected, even after giving my best and investing ~2 months during the entire process.
But nevertheless, I got started and gave my best in every step of process, and eventually got selected 🎉

One amazing thing that happened

The best part of this internship was that I got to work on a real-life project, actual apps that are being used by actual people; this was a big deal for me since I had only done personal projects before Outreachy and had no industry experience 😬

Mentors' support

The mentors were extremely supportive and sweet, clarified all my doubts and helped me with resources, tips and motivation, whenever I felt I was lacking the will to do a certain task.

Skills I developed

I got to polish and implement my UI/UX skills on the ODK-X apps, and even got into Android Studio, trying to implement my design changes/suggestions.
I learned how to manage async communication with my mentors, and how to communicate my difficulties and struggles. 💪

Next steps

I proposed some design changes in the apps, defined some styles, and further built the design guide.
In future, the styles and other changes can be implemented, and the developers would be able to use the design guide to make consistent app UIs.

That was all, folks! I had an amazing time being a part of this awesome community. Highly recommend applying for Outreachy if you get a chance. 🙌

Outreachy: Career opportunities

Khushi 🌼 — Tue, 02 Aug 2022 07:27:00 +0000

Welcome to blog 5!
This week's blog is about career after Outreachy and what direction I want my career to go.

My degree is in computer science and engineering but I transitioned from software development to designing in January 2022. Since then I've been working on my skills, making small projects etc and then eventually applied for Outreachy!

I'll be graduating in 2023 so looking for a 4-6 month internship during first half of 2023 and full time roles post graduation in June/July 2023.
I want to work as a Product or UI/UX designer and I'm currently learning the necessary skills via Outreachy and a cohort-based-course (10kdesigners)

I'll be available for an internship from December 2022 to June 2023, post which I'll be available for full time roles.
I have 3 months experience working as a remote intern with Outreachy, and would prefer remote roles, but open to relocating as well.

Thanks, that's all about me.
Checkout my work or reach out to me for any questions or opportunities.

Outreachy: Modifying Expectations

Khushi 🌼 — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 09:34:27 +0000

Welcome to blog 4!
I'm half way through my internship 🎉
This week's blog is about my project timeline and a progress report of what we've achieved so far, and the plan for the second half of the internship.

Goals met so far

In the initial week, I discussed with my mentors and put out a feedback form for the ODK-X community to get some insights from our users/customers. Over the next 3 weeks I worked on the feedback, curated a google doc with all my ideas and suggestions w.r.t icons, spacing etc, and designed some screens with suggested improvements.
Based on the feedback from my mentors, I'm currently re-iterating on the designs and looking to implement them in coming weeks.

What took longer than expected

Gathering feedback and working on it took more time than we planned initially, and that is still work-in-progress.

Plans for second half of internship

I've designed a few screens, which I will implement in Android studio in the coming weeks, alongside which I'll be working on making the style guide more detailed and improved.
I'll also be creating a repo/collection of all the icons, illustrations etc to be used throughout the applications.

Second half of the internship is going to be more intense and fast paced, quite excited for what's in store for me.

Outreachy: Explaining my project

Khushi 🌼 — Sat, 02 Jul 2022 13:23:11 +0000

Welcome to blog 3!
So this week's blog is about explaining my project and community to my audience 🤔

About my community

ODK-X, produces free and open-source software for collecting, managing, and using data in resource-constrained environments.
A major advantage of ODK-X apps over traditional data apps (like Microsoft Excel) is that they are available offline on mobile phones 🙌

About my project

I'm mainly working towards improving the UI and UX of the mobile apps, which means we want to further simplify and enhance the app experience for our users and field workers.
We aim to achieve it by making the look and feel of the apps better and making them easier and more intuitive to use.
The scope of my project also covers helping the developers develop better apps for ODK-X, that is, we aim to create templates, libraries, and a style guide, which the developers can refer to, for creating consistent good looking apps 😎

My doubts and confusions

Initially, I was confused as to where and how I should start.

Should I just start creating mock-ups based on my observation?
Or ask my mentors?

But then we discussed and realized that we are working for the users, so asking the users would be the best thing to do!
And that's what we did; we created a feedback form and circulated it amongst our users and got a lot of good feedback that we can work on 😌

Currently, I'm compiling the feedback and trying to understand the problems and come up with solutions.
All-in-all, I'm enjoying my project! 🥰

Outreachy: Everyone Struggles

Khushi 🌼 — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 10:24:00 +0000

Welcome to blog 2!

A vocabulary term I didn't know before I applied to Outreachy

Even though I've been into open source for more than a year before applying to Outreachy, I just somehow didn't know what FOSS stood for (I know it's kind of funny and embarrassing). It stands for 'Free and open-source software (FOSS)' and the meaning is pretty self-explanatory I believe 😋

I just saw this term everywhere and was a little confused for several weeks, before I just googled it!
Sometimes, knowing or learning something new is that simple: googling, or asking a friend or mentor 💁‍♀️

I also did not know that I could contribute to Open-source as a designer. When I eventually got to know that Outreachy (as well as GSOC) has some UI/UX related projects, I was very happy and all pumped up to contribute 💪

So, another learning here is that Open-source is not just for developers/coders, you can contribute to Open-source as a designer, writer, community manager and much more 😎

In a recent meeting, our mentors discussed how important good commit messages can be. It's like a very important log of all the changes made, along with the reason and thinking behind those changes. So writing good and detailed commit messages is very important.

For the past 2 weeks, I've been trying to gather some feedback through a google form, which is a painfully slow process as it gets very difficult to get a form filled by people who use the app.
Nevertheless, giving up is not an option; we shall see how this goes in the future!

Outreachy: Introducing myself

Khushi 🌼 — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 08:52:42 +0000

Hello everyone!
I am Khushi, doing my undergrad in computer science at IIIT Guwahati. I have been into web development for the initial 2 years of my college life but recently shifted to UI/UX and product design 🎨.

I have been recently selected as an Outreachy intern for the May-Aug'22 cohort 🎉. I'll be working with ODK-X on the project “User interface uplift for mobile apps” with my mentors Ben Green and Caroline Krafft.

My Core values:
Courage and Communication

I remember when I applied for Outreachy last year, even my initial application did not get shortlisted which somewhere made me believe Outreachy was a very big (unachievable) goal for me. Eventually, I got over that fear and self-doubt and decided to apply again this year with double the amount of hard work and confidence, which surely worked in my favor 😁🎉. Similarly, we often tend to self-reject or underestimate ourselves, when we really just need to be a little courageous and show up!

'Communication is the key': Truer words have never been spoken. I feel that good and clear communication can solve anything and even bring you great opportunities. Clearly asking my doubts and communicating with the mentors for help definitely helped me draft a good proposal for Outreachy and helped my mentors to get to know me better as well 😅.

My motivation to apply to Outreachy:
I already knew about open-source and Outreachy but did not expect to find any design-related projects here. That changed when I found a fellow product designer on LinkedIn who had interned with Outreachy in the past. Talking to her opened a whole new door for me and made me apply to Outreachy, mainly focusing on design projects 😌🙌.

All about GitHub Campus Experts 🚩

Khushi 🌼 — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 09:20:38 +0000

I've got quite a few DM's on LinkedIn and Twitter regarding how and why I became a GitHub Campus Expert. So here's a short blog answering those questions.

What is the eligibility?

You should have GitHub Student Developer Pack, be 18+ and enrolled in an educational institution with at least a year before you graduate (which means you can apply in your pre-final year at max and anytime before that).

When do applications open?

Applications open twice a year, in February and in August and you get a month to submit your initial application. You can apply and get updates here: https://apply.githubcampus.expert/

What is initial application about?

The initial application consists of 2-3 essay type questions regarding your community and how you think GitHub can be helpful.

What are the next steps?

After the GitHub teams evaluates your initial application, you might be asked to upload a video resume for them to know about you as a person and what motivates you.
If the team finds you fit after both parts of the application, you get to go through the GitHub Experts Training.

What is GitHub Experts Training?

It's a series of modules on topics like public speaking, technical writing, and software development to make you develop the necessary skills to be a Campus Expert and conduct events smoothly.

What are the benefits?

You and your community get global support and exposure. GitHub and fellow Campus Experts will support your community events by providing funds, swags and prizes. You get to be a part of an awesome community and network and off course the lovely swag kit.

My Swag Kit	My Profile Page on website

Scrimba JavaScript course

Khushi 🌼 — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 11:59:31 +0000

So I completed this free JavaScript course by Per Harald Borgen from Scrimba to brush up my JavaScript knowledge before I start with React (from Scrimba again 😌)

This course was a breath of fresh air as I was drowning in tutorial hell, unable to gain practical knowledge and confidence, which the interactive 'scrims' provide; it's genuinely an awesome feature, keeps me attentive and interested.

Per was very encouraging and explained everything very well, all the mini tasks were perfectly challenging and full of learning. I think this is the first ever course on the internet that I have completed 🤣, and I think we all can relate with this.

Here's the link of the course: https://scrimba.com/learn/learnjavascript

Along the course, we developed 3 simple apps:

Subway Passenger Counter
Blackjack Casino Game
Chrome Extension (to save leads/tab URL)

And covered the following concepts:

const & let
strings
numbers
booleans
objects
arrays
functions
methods
for loops
logical operators
mathematical operators
JSON
Math object
DOM manpulation
getElementById()
querySelector()
addEventListener()
innerText
textContent
innerHTML
conditional statements
truthy vs falsy values
template strings
localStorage
debugging with Google

PS: Finally wrote my first ever blog, because Per told me to do so at the end of this course 😎