This week went pretty well but commuting to Champaign, IL is beginning to wear on me. I enjoy the time I spend in Champaign! However, I am tired of the time it takes to travel there. Just the other day I was thinking about the amount of time I spend in the company van. Traveling from Bloomington, IL to Champaign, IL takes about an hour. Each day I travel to Champaign I spend two hours in a car. I’m required to go to Champaign twice a week. That means four hours out of my week go to sitting in a car. After my eleven week summer internship is up I will have spent over forty hours riding in a vehicle. That means I will have spent a week’s worth of time sitting in a van!

I participated in the State Farm’s second annual Hack Day. It was one of the most fun filled days I’ve spent at State Farm. Hack Day is a 24 hour event devoted to software developers that are encouraged to prototype innovative ideas that they’d like to show off to the rest of the company. Generally, the goal is to develop an idea that may persuade State Farm to acknowledge a new type of technology or consider developing different types of software within the organization to make business more efficient.

Without going into any details, I spent a over 12 consecutive hours helping the Creative Services department develop an idea focused on helping people during and directly after natural catastrophes, such as hurricanes or earthquakes, occur. I spent a lot of time programming and I ate a lot of free food. 🙂 Throughout the day I consumed seven donuts, spaghetti, a sub sandwich, a barbecue sandwich and various juice drinks. Hack day is a great way to encourage employees to share their ideas.

This week was extremely similar to the past three weeks. I spent a lot of time programming. At the end of the week I demoed the iPad app. The only difference between this week and previous week’ was the impression my team’s iPad app left on those I showed it off to. As I mentioned in an earlier post: pretty things work better.

I’m getting a fairly unique experience this summer, I’m a software designer, code monkey and a business analyst. Typically software shops separate the following disciplines: software design, software development and requirements owner. This summer I’m all of the above. It’s great experience and I have acquired a lot of respect for each job. However, I realize why these jobs are split up, the combined responsibilities consume A LOT of time! Quite a few days fly by and I don’t write a single line of code… I keep reminding myself that I’m more than just a software developer this summer.

Today, I was taken back to my Object Oriented computer science class from two years ago. Professor Oden said, “pretty things work better”. He was right! Over the last 3 weeks I’ve been developing an iPad app. Initially I focused functionality and I didn’t worry about the aesthetics. Over the last week a lot of non-techy interns and full-time employees haven’t really been impressed with my project, that is until today. Today, I focused on design and it seemed like magic when peoples’ opinions turned 180 degrees. Employees who didn’t think much of my app are now drooling over my software because it’s easier on the eyes!

Update: 6-18-2010

As a follow up. I showed my iPad app off to a full-time employee who happens to be my end-user. She was astonished by the newly skinned app, and said it was nearly good enough to be our final product. Thankfully we still have a lot of time to polish the app off and she was excited by the fact that we can refine this HR recruiting app to be the best it can be!