Software Engineering & Computer Science Overview

I completed the IBM Front-End Developer Course in 2023. The course entailed 8 modules to cover all of the essentials for a foundational knowledge of what it is to be a software developer and the core principles involved. This course greatly helped me to fill any knowledge gaps that I had, having not studied a Computer Science Degree, and has only made me more eager to pursue a career in this field.

The capstone project of the course entailed creating a medical appointment booking app from start to finish. I had to design the UI in Figma, write static HTML pages and then convert these into React Components with full functionality linked to a provided backend. The project was a great way to cement my knowledge and was an overall very enjoyable experience.

Design & Prototyping

I completed an Internship Experience offered by the Bright Network in 2023. Alongside a series of lectures from industry professionals, Bright Network partnered with Lloyds Banking Group to set us a capstone project. This involved planning and designing a tool, platform or app that would aid SMEs in working towards the goal of Net Zero.

I designed and prototyped a business management tool that provided a platform for employees to track their carbon footprint, educating them on becoming more environmentally friendly both in their place of work and their daily lives, and provided tools to enable the business to become paperless. I also implemented an employer section which displayed the ways the employer can streamline their business' carbon footprint. The platform encouraged engagement from the employees through rewards to those who achieved the most each month, as is shown through graphs and a leaderboard.

This task gave me invaluable experience in designing a project from scratch to meet a brief and enabled me to really develop my UI & UX design skills. It was a perfect opportunity to learn how to use Figma to create application designs and prototypes.

Data pipeline & flow management

I completed work experience with Sentium Consulting in 2022. I was tasked with creating and implementing a data pipeline app in Python to take in big datasets from external APIs, clean & transform the data, and store it in a database. The workflow needed to be managed and tracked by Prefect, for ease of debugging and tracking the data.

I gained experience working to external deadlines and delivering a product to an assigned spec. I also worked in an Agile Workflow Environment and developed skills composing Python and working with large datasets, all of which were new to me at the time.

Overall, the project went well and I performed the task to the required standard; this was a great learning experience for me.

UI & UX Design, NextJS

I have developed my own personal website to function as a portfolio of my projects and experiences. It uses NextJS to provide simple & efficient routing as well as fast page loading. I have used Styled Components to write CSS, which has been very intuitive with its componental nature. This project has been invaluable experience in UI Design and I hope to continue developing and refining the site in the future as my portfolio expands.

UI & UX Design, User Auth, Data Management

Early on in my university career, I encountered a problem - there was a distinct lack of free online vocabulary tools that weren't riddled with ads that compromised functionality, and the premium options didn't offer learning methods that suited me. I therefore endeavoured to create my own vocab learning platform that would allow me full creative freedom when deciding how I want to study. I designed a ReactJS front-end and constructed an ExpressJS backend connected to a postgreSQL database.

At the time, I had little UI/UX experience, and so the design is a little rough around the edges; however, its strengths lie in its functionality; I designed my own learning algorithms that enabled the user to choose a learning method best suited to them, and be tested on the words it deemed they were most rusty at. Furthermore, a user is able to view their progress in graphs and see which words / wordlists they were struggling with most - a feature that none of the online platforms had.

I have not been the only user of the app; some of my fellow classists have also used it and given me feedback. This aided me in the development process as it enabled me to look beyond my own needs and design a range of features to suit a wider audience.

Throughout this project, I gained experience creating a Rest API, a React Frontend and have developed skills in database management and using the Prisma ORM.

Full-Stack JavaScript Web-App

In 2021, I designed and began developing a board game, and it has always been my dream to publish it. I decided to develop a digital prototype to allow me to test the game and I intend to create a fully functional demo web-app to aid with advertisement when I do publish.

Creating the prototype was great practice for my coding as the project presented me with many tricky and complex puzzles and problems that I have had to tackle in order to accomplish the desired game mechanics. As it is a real-time multiplayer game, efficiency within my code was vital alongside well-ordered state & data management. Furthermore, I had to learn about user authentication and realtime databases.

I used an ExpressJS back-end hooked into Google Firestore to manage the user and past-game data, and a React front-end linked to Google Firebase for all of the real-time functionality when playing the game.

I am eager to get started on making the demo, as I have since greatly developed as a programmer and designer. I have also created physical prototypes and all but finalised the card design, and so hopefully publishing is not too far away.