martes, 12 de febrero de 2013

app project



While I'm warming my hands on a steaming cup of tea, I'll try to give you some briefly ideas about what I've been planning to develop since I started Spring Semester in Cardiff uni.

First of all, you may notice I've just given up writing in spanish, my native language (I will explain you in the following paragraphs), so as it's been a long time I didn't post anything here.  There were good excuses for it, such as new projects I've been planning to develop, and enjoying to travel around the UK too. So I think both are quite good reasons to stop posting at least for a while.

I've always told you about positive aspects of living in Cardiff. It is not that I just wanted to post about how incredibly things are going and forget about the rest, but I preferred to tell you the good things because I AM truly having the best time of my life and, in the end, I would NEVER regret my decision to come to Wales. However, I must tell you it was sometimes hard and I didn't tell you the 'worst' part of it because, even it is not that dramatic, it would be unrealistic if I wouldn't tell you there were little obstacles sometimes (even I insist it's not that bad). It has been fully related with the academic world, uni.

When I first arrived to Cardiff in Autumn Semester, I truly felt misfit sometimes just in terms of university stuff:

- My classmates did have their own group of friends because they knew each other from other years. It is hard for anybody to adapt in a new environment of people you don't know, so imagine it is in a different country, culture and language. Whilst it seems it can be terrific, it wasn't. There were other Erasmus or International people in the same situation as me and I didn't have problems at all. I must say british people has always seemed incredibly nice and warm to me, and I was surprised how things changed in a few when I intentionally forced myself to make an effort and speak to others.

- Essays were a new thing to work through as in Spain we don't have an specific way to deliver our work. I really had troubles to get used with it. I also had to make an effort to understand the british accent (as I have always been in a US English Academy, it was so hard to understand people in the first place. And imagine welshy students!)

- I had to double my time when writing essays and portfolios. As I normally write in spanish or catalan, it took me ages to write something with sense. I really had Google Translator as my unequivocal tool in life for several days.
Teachers didn't make a difference between foreign and native students. You are required to write in a correct form. Grammatically I had mistakes as I didn't practice english for TWO YEARS! Ok, I watched loads of movies, programs and Tv series twelve hours a day in english, but come on, it's not the same.

All I wanted to say is that it was a bit hard to achieve purposes in terms of uni and modules stuff, but I've passed my exams so I am happy even though I could get better marks.

Now I return back to the start which is the main object of my post. So maybe this little turbulence of 'being in-adapt' encourages me now to start the Spring Semester with such a different new perspectives. And the new modules seem to be much more better in comparison with the others I had before.

There is a new module I want to introduce you. The Social Media Trends has been one of the modules I chose to do this semester, and I think it's going to be a very productive and also inspirational module.  I hate when modules are based in lectures in which you will have to memorize all the information to do an exam because you end up forgetting everything you've been trying to memorize just to pass the exam, and not because you're truly enjoying it. So it's time to focus in this new project and developing ideas!

In this module we will need to 'design and develop a form of digital communication that addresses a business need'. We can develop it in many different platforms: blog, tumblr, pinterest or an app... As long as they better satisfy the market needs, you can choose whichever. Me and my classmate decided to do it like an app because the app will be for travelers who want to discover which places they are able to find typical food through every country in Europe. We want to create like a big community to share information about restaurants or places to enjoy a recommended typical food places. So it will be like a huge restaurant searcher of 'real' food from every country.

Here I'm going to post all the process and you will be able to see how we build this new app for travelers. We still have to decide the name of the app and also look for what kind of apps already exist and analyze the competence to improve our own app.


Hope you're going to enjoy the new project. See you! xx