Apple Developer Academy
While working with Mafindo , I got a very wonderful chance to join Apple Developer Academy @ UC Jakarta, located at the very heart of Jakarta. I always have a huge dream of knowing how big corporation works, especially multinational one, especially Apple because what I have in mind when hearing Apple is innovation and great design. This is one of the reason I leave Bali to pursue something in Jakarta, which is to grow myself and become the person I always wanted to be, and luckily, I arrived at Apple.
Apple have a very high standard when doing their thing. Everything is crafted to the highest degree and with passion and love. Every single product goes to many iteration and evolved from time to time. This is the core learning in academy, we open our sense to the world, have a careful look about the problem, do a lot of research, formulate a solution, refine it (or sometimes revoke it) again and again and again until we bring something not just good, but great to solve the problem. What you have to create had to have certain distinguishable value, one which makes it stand against other product or service that are already there.
In academy the learning structure is done through Challenge Based Learning (CBL) which gets more serious (or I could say hard) over time. I'm not just learning how to code, AI could do better job at that. I learn a lot of stuff and meet a lot of great people and got a lot of opportunity ahead of me. Everyday in academy is a new and wonderful thing to do, it's a lot of fun, and I genuinely think that this period might be some of the best year of my life.
So what I do you might ask? A lot. We are actually prohibited to explain the whole learning phase, but here I'll show some of my work.
Hola Dawg
Of course in Apple we have to create an app, and no one could build app unless they learn the basic of it. But before we go any further, you might ask: "What in the world is Hola Dawg? That sound very unserious".
Yes, it is lol. The reason behind it is that we want to create something compelling, something funny, and something that make us excited to work on. Hola Dawg is an app that help us match with foreign language speaker so that we can learn language easily and in a more fun way. Think of it like Bumble meet HolaDoc. That's why we named it HolaDawg combination of parody to HaloDoc, Hola as in Spanish "Hello", and Dawg as in slag of friend in English. The result is an app prototype, made in Sketch. Every one of us in the team create our own version of HolaDawg, with our own design and our own code.
Sleepy Sheep
My next project might be a little different from HolaDawg, because it is more well prepared, well served, and made together as a team and help a person achieve better quality sleep by practicing breathing not individual anymore. It's Sleepy Sheep, an iOS app that exercise and fine tuned music. We take sheep as the main theme because sheep usually correlate with sleep, and some people like to count sheep before sleep to sleep faster.
My main role in this project is UI/UX Designer, in which i plan, create nice looking User Interface and design how user will mostly use the app. Aside of design, I also help in code in which is implement the design to code, mostly the tips and trick part, and implement navigation to the main app. Pastel color was chosen to this project to help bring the playfulness and the calmness of the theme.
Bonus: Luna
Technically this is not a part of the curriculum but we as a community create this project to help us understand more about game development. The community initiate a GameJam, where we got 4 days to develop a game. I personally with no knowledge on how to develop a game, do this for the love of the game.
The main theme of the GameJam is chain, which could be anything, from actual chain, chaining in combo, or other interpreation of chain. I really want to develop a game since I was a little, and now got a chance to do it. The role I pick for this game is game designer, where I design the concept, mechanics, levels, and many other thing. Because we want to push our understanding of game hook first, what I have in mind is Celeste but chained togeter.
After forming a group to work on the project, we finally materialize our concept into game called Luna, where there are two girl got chained togehter in a dungeon and have to escape while chained. The lore is simple, they are accussed of being a which because of their pink hair so the people in the village lock them together.
Developing a game is hard, especially if you have no prior knowledge or experience in developing a game before, and more it's because you only got 4 days to complete it! Insane. All of my week spent on working on the game with little rest and heavy stress. I also help with the programming because we need extra energy on that part and it was exhausting. But in the end, I am proud of what we made and thankful for the opportunity to do it
