What it do, what we do!?
Last week, our team lead, Alex, presented a summary of our project progress so far. He presented some of the more technical aspects associated with software development (such as version control and site deployment) and the tools we’re using to make that happen (git, Jenkins, etc).
What went well?
Essentially, we’ve doing well for the semester and are now at the point where we can dive into the code and make some changes happen! Everything is set up with Django and Jenkins so that the website is built nightly and hosted live on here.
As such, changes to the project are as simple as git pull, commit, push. We still have the bullk of the work left to do, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out soon enough!
What was challenging?
The most challenging aspect for this week has been getting the team to work together. Now that we’ve started diving into the code, we’re having each member specialize on a certian aspect of the project: UI, data analysis, graph plotting, etc. As such, we’re getting to the point where each member is the expert in his/her area, so making larger changes requires closer collaboration than before. This has proved to be a challenge, but with definitive goals, we will overcome it!
What’s up next?
We’re planning to use the resources at the Berkman Center to learn about what visualizations are useful for social science research. Not every social scientists is going to need the same type of graphs ; we want our product to be intuitive and intelligent, so we need to learn more about what’s actually in use out there in the wild.
We’ll also want to learn what languages/libraries are used most frequently by social scientists. While we’re focused more heavily on data visualization, at some point in the process, we’d like to provide the social scientists with access to the manipulations performed on the data. Knowing what background knowledge they have will be helpful for us
Take care, and keep a look out for eyeData!
-Luis