This blog post is the one that hopefully makes up for the missed ones during the last month. It was a bit of a hectic period, and I did not update my blog during these weeks. With this post, I will talk about what happened over those weeks, and what my final thoughts for the semester are.
During the month of April, we didn't really have learning time in class, as there was an optional class during one week, and then we had practice presentations. As such, the majority of what I did for class is focused around working on my project. Since the last post, I managed to get the API working like I wanted it to, and I created the noise search feature. I explained how it works in the final paper, but the short gist is that I use another API to find related words to the search query that was made by the user, and display those results shuffled in with the actual results. This creates a feeling of confusion, and a feeling of noise existing in the search. Besides this feature, I also spent some time testing how the site looks and works with some users, and made changes to the design accordingly. This, in addition to writing the final paper, is how I spent the last few weeks of school time.
In addition to practice presentations in class, I got to demo the site during the IDM Student Showcase. I got some positive feedback on the site, and quite a few people who were confused by what exactly it does. I think the demoing was also helped out by the fact that I was next to Nathan's project, and so people were already in the mindset to accept projects that make them ask questions. I was pretty proud of the fact that a lady whom I was talking to was interested enough in how it works to ask me if I would like to freelance a similar project for her.
With all of that said, the semester came to an end. I still have to do my presentation tomorrow, but after that, I will be officially done. It feels a bit surreal that it has already been 3 months since I started writing this blog, and that the journey has come to an end. It is definitely a bittersweet feeling, and I am glad that I got to do this project. Thanks for the semester.
-naz
