This week's lesson provides very useful project management information, which gave us a more concrete way of approaching the assignment than the haphazard attempts of just hacking away blindly before that. It couldn't have come in more timely, but I guess it was all planned. At least we were on the right track in thinking of having starting with an MVP first :)
The content was mostly relevant and useful, but what really got me thinking was prof Ben's mention of extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation. I think the environment being created in CS3216, with its high concentration of passionate and capable people, coupled with an intense schedule to follow, has been fairly successful in providing a high level of extrinsic motivation. It certainly challenges the limits we might have previously imposed upon ourselves, and perhaps bring about intrinsic motivation and a higher sense of self confidence. However, is this new resolve cultivated through the module sustainable? Once the module ends and we find ourselves going back into the normal environment, do people slowly revert back to their previous state or find themselves lost without the high level of extrinsic push they experienced?
Also I was wondering, why was it that after the module and getting the A, Caleb and his gang, or the other app example mentioned that now as a 2million user base in Brazil, why did these people with their good ideas not pursue it? Especially in Caleb's case, he had a certain level of validation with 13000 users. It certainly seemed a worthy pursuit.
Was it because they didn't believe the idea? If it was the idea itself they had doubts about, why did they not seek further validation? It would seem like a complete waste to throw the idea out just like that. Or was it because they were more concerned with the grades in the coming semesters? Was it because it would be hell all over again, to continue the project and potentially grow into a successful company all while studying? Were they worried that taking this path they might burn out, or lose motivation along the way, and end up doing badly, both academically and in refining the application?
I'm really curious to find out all these. Please share your thoughts/opinions!
I think the environment being created in CS3216, with its high concentration of passionate and capable people, coupled with an intense schedule to follow, has been fairly successful in providing a high level of extrinsic motivation.
ReplyDeleteCorrect. It's called peer pressure.
Was it because they didn't believe the idea?
There are two sets of people. I think there's some confusion.
There was Caleb and his gang who were ALL freshmen when they took CS3216 and did FarmWars. They were simply "distracted by school" and your prof here wasn't quite brave enough to encourage them to drop out of school and develop the game fulltime. Sure, they might have become Zynga and I might get a Board seat and be plenty rich; but they might also fail and get killed by Zynga, then how? :-)
There last year, there was a team who built this app called Mood Diary (https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=361574998650), who didn't continue developing the app despite its initial success. This was the app that had this Brazilian version that had 2 million users. Why didn't they continue? The team didn't quite get along and they didn't quite believe in their idea. Life is complicated. :-)
That's really such a pity. True la, it would be a huge gamble to drop out in year 1. Probably will face resistance from parents as well. Then again, anything worth having carries certain amount of risk. How do we decide if the risk is worth taking? Or do you think we are (in Singapore in general) still just very risk averse?
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