5th Edition
99X TECHNOLOGY
99X Technology Interns
Internship as a User Experience Engineer
Hybrid Mobile Application Development Workshop
From Umeå to Colombo
A Swede’s Experience at 99X Technology Tech Talk Video Tutorial Series
Internet of Things as an Intern
Internship as a User Experience Engineer The interesting part of this internship is that we are always allowed to do extracurricular activities in addition to core work. We get to experience sports events, hackathons and different initiatives such as ‘Geek Masters’. The Geek Masters program has enabled me to harness my communication skills. It is open to any person here at 99XT. If you ever hear of this program, I really recommend you to join it. You will definitely have a wonderful and very useful time with the Geek Masters program. I was also able to participate in the Mobile Enablement Hackathon. There, we had to come up with a market winning idea. The best part is that my team won it and it was an unforgettable day which will stay forever in my memories. You’ll always have the best memories at 99X Technology. We call ourselves ‘Xians’. The word alone is enough to build up a long lasting bond. Thanks to the flat organisational culture here, we never feel that we are different, even when you work
Janindu Ranawake Trainee UX Engineer
It is a great opportunity if you get the chance to work on what you love. User Experience Design is one of things I love to do and the internship offer that I received at 99X Technology as a User Experience Design Engineer has been a really great opportunity. As a student at the National School of Business Management, I was able to explore UX concepts such as interaction design and lean concepts while doing my studies. This experience led me to discover the world of UX.
with management or project leads. I have worked with many project leads and they have never let me feel even once that I’m not part of their Xian family. I would say that this internship program is the best place to start your career. It will lead you to the success that you will seek throughout your life. And I think this internship is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Life here at 99X Technology gets better every day and is full of excitement. Everyone helps you whenever you want. You always feel special when you work here as an intern and I was lucky to get customer exposure right from the beginning. It is a rare chance that interns get during their internship period and I have been privileged to have that. I have worked on three projects so far and what I have understood is that being accountable for your work will enables success every time. It is always a challenge when you work with the customer directly. Every day, the challenges you face are different. Building up good user experience is not an easy task. You constantly have to identify the user’s needs and represent it in a very usable manner. Page
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Hybrid Mobile Application Development Workshop
Hybrid development combines the best (or worst) of both native and HTML5. Hybrid is defined as a web app, primarily built using HTML5 and JavaScript, which is then wrapped inside a thin native container that provides access to native platform features. PhoneGap is an example of a popular container for creating hybrid mobile apps. For the most part, hybrid apps provide the best of both worlds. Existing web developers have become gurus at optimizing JavaScript, pushing CSS to create beautiful layouts and writing compliant HTML code that works on any platform and they can now create sophisticated mobile applications that don’t sacrifice the cool native capabilities. In certain circumstances, native developers can write plugins for tasks like image processing. Bringing this scenario to the real world, the ‘DevOps’ Community of the National School of Business Management (NSBM) organized a workshop based on the theme ‘Hybrid Mobile Application Development’ in collaboration with 99X Technology. It was an informative session for all the students present. The event was open to all state and private higher education institutes in Sri Lanka and hence, the event created a platform for students from University of Moratuwa, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, SLIIT, Kothalawala Defense University and Open University of Sri Lanka who were eager to learn about hybrid mobile applications. The crew from 99X Technology vividly explained the topic through four sessions – Hybrid Mobile Development, Quality Aspects of Mobile Development, Lean UX in Mobile Development and Test Automation and Non-Functional Aspects of Mobile Development. A Senior Developer at 99X Technology, Hybrid Mobile Mobile Developer, UX Evangelist and the Co-Founder Page
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of YEETUP.COM Kosala Nuwan Perera commenced with an introduction to the wide ranging topic and the stack behind hybrid. Furthermore, he briefly explained about using lean UX to design winning apps and how to fake it, make it and ship it. The participants were guided by 99X Technology Tech Lead Suranga Bandara 99X Technology Senior Software Engineer Rashmika Nawaratne to build a code camp mobile app as a hands-on training for the undergraduates. Quality Assurance (QA) in mobile applications, what it really means and how can it be done were realistically demonstrated to the audience by 99X Technology QA Lead Tharindra Jayamaha, who provided substantial answers to questions raised by the audience about QA. As the last session of the Hybrid Mobile Application Development Workshop, Kishan Navaratne and Automation Engineer Ruzaik Refai demonstrated automating tests and led us through an exercise about shipping quality mobile apps faster. They also clarified many. Additionally, everyone who participated in the Hybrid Mobile Application Development Workshop got free laptop stickers from 99X Technology as souvenirs. The DevOps Community would like to express their gratitude to the academic and non-academic staff of National School of Business Management, the undergraduates and all the participants who through their valuable support made this workshop a successful event with the participation of more than 100 participants. Special thanks also goes to the resource crew of 99X Technology for making the workshop more significant.
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A Swede’s Experience at 99X Technology a lot about the UX process. I completed a UX project, from identifying the target group to drawing design suggestions and deciding which one to choose. At the beginning of the internship, I participated at a UX conference where people from work and even people from other companies shared presentations on user experience. When I was working for the project team, I participated in useful discussions on how to improve existing products and how to build new products. It was hard to find solutions that every member agreed on, but in the end, we usually came up with good ones. The difficulty about these projects was that I did not have the opportunity to talk to the real users of the products, since the customers are those who have the contact with users. Luckily, we had good communication with the customers since there was a scrum meeting every workday and even a customer meeting in Bangkok. There was one experienced UX designer on the team as well,
Sandra Waldenström Trainee Software Engineer
I had a five month experience at 99X Technology in Colombo. There were two teams I had the privilege to work for. I learned a lot about user experience, product engineering and the Sri Lankan culture. These five months were a great experience for me and I am so grateful I got the opportunity to work for them. 10th February 2015 was the day I took a flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka to stay there for five months. This period included studies and an internship at 99X Technology. It was my eighth semester as a student in Interaction Technology and Design. Interaction Technology and Design is about user experience and how to design to improve user satisfaction. 99X Technology is a product engineering company located in Colombo, with customers from my homeland’s bordering country, Norway. I was delighted that I got the opportunity to work for 99X Technology. I was looking forward to learning more about the development process and to see where in this process I wanted to put my focus. I joined two teams at 99X Technology, the UX team and a project team with different competencies that worked with customers. Both teams gave me different experiences. When I worked in the UX team, I learned Page
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who shared a lot of his UX experiences with me. Aside from office work, I had some really fun times with colleagues from the company. There were a lot of events I participated in, among them a New Year (Avurudu) celebration. I tried traditional food, played traditional games and I was a competitor in the New Year pageant. Another activity I tried was badminton, which was held every Wednesday. 17th June 2015 was my last day at 99X Technology. I worked with different projects and now I can say that I know how to plan and start a UX project. I also know that I would love to work with user research and analysis. Most of all, I am more confident when it comes to talking about work and speaking in English. 99X Technology is a company with talented employees, all of whom are appreciated and valued.
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From Umeå to Colombo on a project team of different competencies where I worked on revamping a web application. During my time at 99X Technology, I worked with user research to improve user satisfaction. I also worked on creating different design solutions for the UI and I learned more about front-end development. In addition to serious office work, I had some really fun moments at the company. One of my favourite events was the UX conference. Another thing was the New Year (Avurudu) celebration in Wadduwa where I tried traditional food, played traditional games and won the New Year’s pageant (Avurudu Kumari). I’m very happy I ended up at 99X Technology, not only because of everything I learned there, but also because of my amazing colleagues who were so nice, helpful and caring.
Maja Andersson
Trainee Software Engineer
All in all, it turned out I was right to begin with – Sri Lanka really was my greatest adventure! All the places I got to see, people I met and the things I experienced. Thank you for being a part of it, welcoming me with open arms and making my time in Sri Lanka memorable!
My name is Maja, I’m 25 years old and I am, by Sri Lankan measures, a blonde girl from Sweden. I’m following MSc in Interaction Technology and Design at Umeå University in the north of Sweden. For my sixth semester, I decided to go to Sri Lanka as an exchange student at the UCSC. Aside from taking classes in economics, marketing and user interface design, I also had the amazing opportunity to do an internship at 99X Technology. Since I’m studying interaction design, which is about user experience and how to design to improve user satisfaction, I was put in contact the UX group of the company that work together on certain matters and are assigned to different teams in the company. To meet them and learn how they work was the most valuable thing for me during my time at 99X Technology. Instead of always relying on the traditional UX process from university, I also learned how to work with Agile and Lean UX methods. Since the university can’t cover it all and the updating of education is slower than the development of new methods and theories, it was valuable to be exposed to the actual business side of it, and to meet people from these areas of work and learn directly from them. Aside from the UX group, I was also assigned to work Page
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Internet of Things as an Intern The development of a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) based model car park at 99X Technology allowed me to get involved in all the phases of IoT. The RFID-based vehicle identification method allowed me to understand how hardware can interact with each other through IoT. Updating the servers with RFID data gave me the experience of interacting hardware with the internet, as well as with using cloud/fog computing with IoT. Additionally, I learned about how big data analytics can be used with IoT to consider the possibilities of developing a network of RFID-enabled car parks while offering customers loyalty benefits.
Hasitha Pathirage
Trainee Software Engineer IoT or Internet of Things to me was just about connecting each and everything before I joined 99X Technology, but at 99X Technology, I learned that it actually is the combination of hardware, Internet connectivity, cloud/fog computing and big data analytics. Furthermore, I was able to explore many marvelous and endless opportunities that arise from implementing Internet of Things. The greatest experience that I have gained from my internship was developing Internet of Things gadgets and models.
The Internet of Things awareness session conducted at 99X Technology also gave me the opportunity to share my knowledge with fellow colleagues and we were able to gather more wonderful ideas that can be further developed through IoT. It has really been great being at 99X Technology, the best place to work and get involved in Internet of Things, the greatest revolution of the era.
Tech Talk Video Tutorial Series
Lahiru Dhananjaya Trainee Software Engineer
Tech Talk video tutorial series is an initiative by 99X Technology aiming to decrease the technical gap between the universities and the industry.
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The basic idea of having tech talks on a monthly basis is to give university undergraduates a basic knowledge in technical areas. The motivation behind having these sessions on a monthly basis is to introduce the basics of various technical areas to university students. A survey was conducted among university students to track their awareness of current technology in their academic studies. We surveyed over 100 participants and found out that most of them were keen to know more about trending technologies such as NodeJS, AngularJS, Android, iOS, etc. Currently, we have planned to run this series for one year and continue the tutorial series with the help of all interns. As of now, we have released three tech talks, which have been posted to YouTube and have received highly positive feedback so far. Moving forward, we aim to make these tutorials more advanced and present them to the all universities. To view these and more, check out our Facebook page, Dotitude.
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The fun we had...
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only
connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference. Steve Jobs
https://www.facebook.com/Dotitude
”