快應用比賽

by Rafael Melo

通過拉斐爾·梅洛

我的應用如何在國際學生比賽中獲得第三名 (How my App won third place in an International Student Competition)

I developed an App that won third place at the IEEE Mobile Applications Development Contest 2017 (IEEEmadC 2017) among 40+ equally great Apps developed by students all around the world. It was an amazing experience that made me open my mind to new ways of seeing things and to my skills as a developer.

我開發了一款應用程序，該應用程序在2017年IEEE移動應用程序開發競賽( IEEEmadC 2017 )中獲得了第三名，該應用程序是由世界各地的學生開發的40多個同樣出色的應用程序。這是一次了不起的經歷，使我對事物的新見解以及開發人員的技能敞開心mind。

Here are three things that I believe made my App be chosen among so many interesting and really good applications from students all over the globe and that I’m sure can make your App do it too.

我相信以下三件事使我的應用程序從眾多來自世界各地的學生中被選中，這些應用程序非常有趣并且非常好，而且我敢肯定，您的應用程序也可以做到這一點。

1.選擇一個對您自己和您周圍的人有用的想法。 (1. Choose an idea that is useful for your own life and for others around you.)

The first phase of the contest was the idea phase. More than 200 groups submitted amazing ideas and I was one of them. But just like most people, I had many ideas that I thought were great. How could I choose one and focus on that?

比賽的第一階段是構思階段。 200多個小組提出了令人驚訝的想法，而我就是其中之一。 但是，就像大多數人一樣，我有很多我認為很棒的想法。 我該如何選擇一個并專注于此？

In my city Salvador Bahia, we have many beautiful beaches and are mainly known as a touristic city of Brazil. But most of the year our beaches are polluted because a majority of our rivers receive sewage waters resulting in the beaches becoming dirty. The bright side is that the beaches are perfectly suitable in summer. But when it rains and mostly during other seasons, they become unsuitable with sewage water.

在我的城市薩爾瓦多·巴伊亞(Salvador Bahia)，我們有許多美麗的海灘，主要被稱為巴西的旅游城市。但是一年中大部分時間我們的海灘都被污染了，因為我們的大部分河流都接收到污水，導致海灘變臟了。好的一面是海灘非常適合夏天。但是當下雨時(主要是在其他季節)，它們變得不適合污水處理。

Some people just ignore this fact and keep going to the beach risking getting many diseases from the high level of E.coli bacteria in the water. Others just avoid the beach and lose out on one of the most amazing things our city provides. We have really beautiful warm beaches, and some people including many foreign tourists just don’t know about it.

有些人只是忽略了這一事實，而繼續去海灘冒險，因為水中的高水平大腸桿菌會感染許多疾病。其他人則只是避開海灘，而錯過了這座城市提供的最令人驚奇的事物之一。我們有真正美麗的溫暖海灘，有些人，包括許多外國游客，根本不知道。

Most people don’t know that the government measures the level of E.coli bacteria in the beaches and posts it on the internet weekly.

大多數人不知道政府會測量海灘上的大腸桿菌水平，并將其每周發布到互聯網上。

When I discovered that, the idea just popped up - an App that returned information on the level of E.coli bacteria on each beach to the public. This would provide tourists and general public a way to know of which beaches to visit. I knew that this idea would not only help me but others as well.

當我發現這一點時，這個想法就突然出現了-一個向公眾返回每個海灘上大腸桿菌水平信息的應用程序。這將為游客和公眾提供一種了解要參觀哪些海灘的方式。我知道這個想法不僅會幫助我，還會幫助其他人。

When the first phase ended I received an email telling me that my idea was one among the 40+ selected. It was an exciting feeling. But I knew that I was about to compete with more than 40 groups of people from around the world and all I had was an idea.

第一階段結束時，我收到一封電子郵件，告訴我，我的想法是所選40多個想法中的一個。這是一種令人興奮的感覺。但是我知道我將要與來自世界各地的40多人競爭，而我所擁有的只是一個主意。

2.明智地選擇工具，然后使用您已經知道的工具。 (2. Choose your tools wisely and go with what you already know.)

The second phase was development and my idea had to become an App in three months, I didn’t have a group and I had to choose how I would build it.

第二階段是開發，我的想法必須在三個月內成為一個應用程序，我沒有團隊，我必須選擇構建方式。

The first thing I thought was that since it’s a mobile App competition I should maybe build an Android App with Java or an iOS App with Swift. But the problem was, I didn’t know Java or Swift. I only had sparse knowledge from what I studied in some classes of Java and I’ve never really done anything with Swift. I was tempted to learn one of them for the competition but I had a really short time.

我首先想到的是，因為這是一場移動應用程序競賽，所以我應該使用Java構建一個Android應用程序或使用Swift構建一個iOS應用程序。但是問題是，我不了解Java或Swift。我只是在某些Java類中學習過的知識很少，而我從未真正使用Swift做任何事情。我很想在比賽中學習其中之一，但是時間很短。

So I took the smart decision to use what I already know. I’m a web developer intern and the main language I’ve worked with is JavaScript. So I decided to use a hybrid platform built on Apache Cordova and it worked. In the first two months I had built almost everything from the front-end and some of the back-end just using JavaScript. The fact that I was comfortable with the language helped me in every aspect.

因此，我明智地決定使用我已經知道的內容。我是一名Web開發人員實習生，并且使用的主要語言是JavaScript。因此，我決定使用基于Apache Cordova構建的混合平臺，它可以正常工作。在頭兩個月中，我幾乎只使用JavaScript構建了從前端到后端的幾乎所有內容。我對語言感到滿意的事實在各個方面都對我有所幫助。

I know that running from something new sounds awful for developers like us. But I believe it’s about knowing the right time to discover something new and the right time to use what you are comfortable with.

我知道，像我們這樣的開發人員，從新事物開始聽起來很糟糕。但我相信，這是要知道正確的時間來發現新事物，以及正確的時間來使用自己喜歡的東西。

A teacher once told me that,

一位老師告訴我，

Most people fail at some objective because at the most crutial time they decide to try something new instead of what they already know.

大多數人出于某種目標而失敗，因為在最關鍵的時刻，他們決定嘗試新事物，而不是已經知道的事物。

In the end of the competition I was glad that I listened to those words.

在比賽結束時，我很高興聽到這些話。

3.您的應用程序適用于人類而非機器-請不要小看設計。 (3. Your App is for humans not machines - Don’t underestimate design.)

My App was almost complete, and I decided to ask my friends what they thought about it. Most of them didn’t like it, and I was less than one month from the competition deadline.

我的應用程序即將完成，我決定問朋友們對此有何想法。 他們中的大多數人都不喜歡它，距比賽截止日期還不到一個月。

It was, in their words, ‘ugly’ and they couldn’t understand how to use it.

用他們的話說，這是“丑陋的”，他們無法理解如何使用它。

I was frustrated: I built an app that I thought was good, but if people couldn’t understand how to use it and they didn’t like it, it was worth almost nothing…

我很沮喪：我開發了一個我認為不錯的應用程序，但是如果人們不懂如何使用它，而他們又不喜歡它，那么它幾乎一文不值……

So I made the decision to study a little about design, something I thought my entire life that was unnecessary and superfluous. I used what I learned to improve my App so people would be interested in using it. Since I’ve never had classes in my university about design, the Internet was my best friend and I started my journey on something I had never studied before.

因此，我決定研究一些有關設計的知識，我認為這是我一生中不必要且多余的東西。我使用所學的知識來改進我的應用程序，因此人們會對使用它感興趣。由于我從未在大學里上過與設計有關的課程，因此互聯網是我最好的朋友，因此我開始了從未有過的研究。

Design is a universe of it’s own. There are so many fields and theories that you can’t possible learn everything in such a short amount of time. So I decided to focus on two things, user experience and color theory. After some study and a lot of trial and error, I’ve finally reached something that people started to compliment.

設計本身就是一個宇宙。有太多的領域和理論，您不可能在這么短的時間內學到所有東西。因此，我決定專注于兩件事， 用戶體驗和色彩理論 。經過研究和大量的反復試驗，我終于得到了人們開始稱贊的東西。

It wasn’t ugly anymore and everyone could understand how to use it.

它不再丑陋，每個人都可以理解如何使用它。

It blew my mind.

這讓我震驚。

To me that was the part that changed my way of seeing things. Design is something really important and it should be taken seriously. After all, it’s about how users interact with what we create, and users are the most important piece of every system. Without users there is no application. This competition changed forever my idea about design, and it’s something I will carry with me on every project I’m a part of.

對我來說，那是改變我看待事物的方式的一部分。設計真的很重要，應該認真對待。畢竟，這是關于用戶如何與我們創建的內容進行交互的，而用戶是每個系統中最重要的部分。沒有用戶，就沒有應用程序。這場比賽永遠改變了我對設計的想法，在我參與的每個項目中，我都會帶著這一點。

At the end of the judging phase I received another email, this time telling me that my App had won the third place, the Computer Society Special Award. I was really happy, not only because I felt like my efforts led me to something great, but because I was one person when I entered the competition and a completely different person when it ended.

在評審階段的最后，我收到了另一封電子郵件，告訴我我的應用程序已獲得第三名，即計算機學會特別獎。我真的很高興，這不僅是因為我覺得自己的努力使我取得了巨大成就，還因為參加比賽時我是一個人，比賽結束時我是一個完全不同的人。

These are the three things that I think made my App win third place at the IEEEmadC 2017 competition. What really made the judges like my App only they will know, but I do believe that these three things — choosing the right idea, right tools and App design made a difference — and I wanted to share that with people. This experience changed a lot of things for me, and I hope I was able to share this feeling.

這是我認為自己的應用在IEEEmadC 2017競賽中獲得第三名的三件事。只有讓他們真正知道讓評委喜歡我的App的真正原因，但是我確實相信這三件事-選擇正確的想法，正確的工具和App設計會有所作為-我想與人們分享。這次經歷對我來說改變了很多事情，希望我能夠分享這種感覺。

I would like to thank IEEE for the opportunity and for making so many students come together to build great things, to all the judges for the hard part in choosing only three among so many good Apps and to my girlfriend and friends that helped me so much with the design part.

我要感謝IEEE的機會，并感謝如此多的學生聚集在一起，共同開發出很棒的東西，感謝所有的評委，讓他們在如此眾多的好應用程序中僅選擇三個，并感謝我的女友和朋友們給我提供了很多幫助與設計部分。

Here is a look at all the winners.

看一下所有獲獎者。