GSOC 2015/Student Application anuradhaw

Contact Information

• Name: Kalpani Anuradha Welivita
• FAS Account: anuradhaw
• Fedora userpage: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Anuradhaw
• Email Address: anuradha.12@cse.mrt.ac.lk
• Blog URL: http://anuradhanotes.blogspot.com
• Freenode IRC Nick: AnuradhaW

Why Fedora?

I was motivated to work with the Fedora Project mainly because of my interest to join the Design Team of Fedora and work as a long-term contributor. As the work Fedora does in designing truely matches with my interest and passion towards designing and UX/UI, I look forwards in committing myself to the Fedora Project.

Furthermore I would like to get involved in FOSS development and open source my design ideas and work I do, while getting to know other designers involved in the Fedora project and learn new things by interacting with them. As The Fedora project is a large and diverse organization which is willing to give support to the new contributors who are willing to learn and do things I would like to join Fedora.

Past involvement with the Fedora project/other open source projects as a contributor

This is my first time in participating and getting involved in a FOSS related project.

Participation in the past GSoC programs

This is my first time in participating in GSoC.

Contributing/supporting the Fedora project after the GSoC 2014 program

I am very much willing to contribute and commit myself in supporting the Fedora project. I have developed my interest in the UX/UI and Human Computer Interaction related areas and hence would like to be a part of the Design Team of Fedora and work as a long-term contributor.

Why choose me

From my childhood I have developed a great passion towards Arts and Design related stuff. Even after being privileged to be selected to the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, my passion towards designing never ended. I started looking for newer aspects related to design stuff related to Computer Science and found the fields UX/UI and Human Computer Interaction as fields that draws my interest.

I believe if we have passion towards something, we can make the maximum out of it. Hence I will be a developer with passion, commitment and with never ending thirst to dig deep and find the best solution.

And I'm interested in contributing towards FOSS because I have reaped many things out of FOSS which has helped me to learn a lot of new things related to my areas of interest and Computer Science. Therefore I need to be a part of the FOSS community and help the new people who are like me wanting to learn things new and give them support.

Also I am currently a 2nd year undergraduate in Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa and I have been involved in programming since end of year 2011. I have experience in both Desktop applications as well as web development since I have been involved in a number of projects carried out in our university.

You can view my Skills and Abilities and the Projects I have done by visiting my user page at Fedora.

Overview

Ask Fedora is a well known knowledge base to provide support for the Fedora users all over the world. It also a support forum where we can question things and answer as well.

As quoted from the Fedora GSoC project ideas page, "Over the years of its existence, AskFedora's popularity has increased and there are 11,000+ questions that have been asked on the website and has 12,500+ contributors as of today." This shows the popularity of Ask Fedora and with time it has reached to the point to have a complete UX and UI overhaul in order to provide a good user experience for the users.

Now the period where the programmers considered only the back end of the applications needs to be perfect is over. Currently numerous type of research activities are carried out in the fields of UX/UI and Human Computer Interaction to search means of providing better user experience. In such an era the need to provide a better user experience for Ask Fedora is critical.

Some drawbacks in the current interface design of Ask Fedora

Poor use of color schemes

Lack of consistency in the user authentication page with the other pages.

Lack of attractiveness

At the bottom of the footer the links to about, faq, help, privacy policy and give feedback gets unnoticed and hence never being used by the users.

What the project fulfills

The above mentioned problems will get solved and the users will be provided with a consistent and responsive interface to interact with Ask Fedora.

Ask Fedora will be attractive and will use a good color scheme which will make the user experience better.

Experience in me in order to meet the project requirements

• I am a student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa (The most sort after university for Engineering studies in Sri Lanka) and I’m studying in the 2nd year with a Grade Point Average of 4.1 out of 4.2.

• I have expertise in languages HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, Java and C and I am currently mastering Python and DJango which is necessary for the development of this project

• I have built web sites using HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript (One of the hosted web sites : desolator.loomhost.com)

• I am currently learning how to develop responsive websites

• I have sufficient knowledge about the Git version control system and has used Git for many projects. (My GitHub URL: github.com/anuradha1992)

• I have been in the mentoring program for GSoC 2014 which was held in our university in order to provide pre-knowledge of the importance of contributing towards FOSS development and how to make myself present in the mailing lists etc. I was mentored by Mr. Andun Sameera Liyanagunawardana who was a 2 times GSoC winner and an active open source contributor. (Can view his recommendation on me in my linkedin page here: linkedin.com/in/anuradhawelivita)

• I have my blog here at: anuradhanotes.blogspot.com. I have written few articles about cloud computing etc. and I am willing to blog about the progress of this project continuously.

Final Deliverables

The main of this project is to improve the UX/UI of Ask fedora and the final outcome of this project would be a consistent, totally responsive complete overhaul on the UX/UI of Ask Fedora with a complete round of testing and bug fixing done.

Future development might include doing a research on the use of Ask Fedora by using a web analytic tool and find the areas which are most frequently used by the users and the areas which seems to be getting unnoticed etc. and do further improvement by using the results.

My current approach towards the project (Within 3 days of time from 22nd Match 2015 to 24th March 2015)

• I have studied the mockups provided regarding the project and have built a rough web interface according to them. You can view it at: askbot-anuradhaw.rhcloud.com

• And in order to get familiarized with the askbot code base I have a cloned it from (github.com/ASKBOT/askbot-devel.git)

• I have also cloned the source for testing repository from (github.com/fedoradesign/askbot-test)

• I have installed OpenShift rhc Client Tools and have learnt to create a new Python web project using that.

• And also I have learnt to communicate in mailing lists and IRC channels as well by subscribing into the Fedora summer-coding mailing list and Fedora developers mailing and as well as to IRC channels

• And I have studied the AskFedora redesign plan as provided in the following document: suchakra.in/random/redesign-plan.pdf

How I plan to implement the proposal in sync with the redesign plan given in the document suchakra.in/random/redesign-plan.pdf

This is the web interface created by myself according to the UI mockups provided by the AskFedora Redesign Effort project.