STEPS was the finale event for CS3216. This post is a summary of what we did for the event, and what we learnt.

Our Booth

It’s customary to give stuff away during STEPS, but we felt it would be a waste of money. We’d spent a considerable amount on posters and giveaways but felt that the response couldn’t justify our expenditure. The Return on Investment (ROI) was too low. In the context of our application, we felt that giving stuff away during STEPs wouldn’t be able to help grow our user base, or at least wouldn’t justify the costs. Instead, we decided to display some of the things available on GiveForFree. The main attraction was Prof. Zhao Jin’s Spacerail, a rollercoaster model with marbles swerving around the track. We also had plenty of books contributed by various professors, as well as clothes and accessories contributed by Patrick’s girlfriend.

Didn’t use the poster

I don’t think anyone actually got close enough to take a look at the poster. There were four of us, and we rarely had more than 4 ‘visitors’ at any one time so it was much easier to get us to explain rather than to read the poster.

When we explained GiveForFree, we would use our phones or our laptops to do a live demo rather than explain via the poster.

Feedback for GiveForFree

I was a little thrown off by some guests who started by asking what front-end framework we were using. This was especially awkward since we weren’t using anything other than Bootstrap, jQuery, and some JS libraries thrown together. Patrick told me afterwards that these were probably recruiters looking to hire front-end developers. These people left our booth pretty quickly after hearing about our lack of a front-end framework.

As for those willing to listen to our pitch, most were pretty receptive towards the idea due to the charity element. The only ones who were critical and provided serious feedback were the TAs and graders. None of the guests asked about the viability of the application, and whether we were confident of getting and retaining users, which I feel is a real issue.

Little Wins

One of the people we spoke to wanted to keep in touch to explore if we could onboard a charity that her mum runs. Hopefully, we can work can work something out after finals!

Final Thoughts

STEPs marks the end of our CS3216 journey. I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders right after Prof Colin announced that we didn’t need to submit a report for the final project. It’s been an exciting journey, but it’s a relief that it’s finally over.