CADI began in May 2014 with six students studying Android app development. By that summer, it had become an inter-university club, and a web-development group followed later in the year. I founded CODE FACTORIAL that year to support the clubs and took responsibility for the wider organization. A January 2015 ITDaily report traces those beginnings and identifies me as its founder and representative. ITDaily report
The names describe different parts of the organization. CODE FACTORIAL was the umbrella for the IT clubs; CADI was where students learned development and worked on team projects. An internal introduction describes the educational aim as helping developers understand design and designers learn development. Writing a program belonged alongside deciding who a service was for and how it would work.
From apps to web development and connected hardware
By spring 2015, there were four groups: CADI-A for apps, CADI-W for short web projects, CADI-B for programming fundamentals, and CADI-E for embedded systems and the Internet of Things.
Each new group needed an appropriate course of study. For CADI-E, the plan was to start with C and the structure and operation of Arduino, then use sensors and relay modules to build a basic connected system. A sensor reads conditions around it; a relay switches power in a circuit. In a March 2015 interview with The KUKY, I explained the intention to make Arduino and Raspberry Pi approachable for students with little software or electronics experience. The KUKY interview
Having separate groups also raised the question of how they would share what they learned. In an April 2015 Electronic Times interview, I said I wanted more exchange among the four groups. The report put CODE FACTORIAL’s cumulative participation at about 300 and its active membership at about 100. Electronic Times interview
What I looked for in a team project
CADI combined classes and study sessions with team projects. The introduction, last modified in March 2016, describes a six-month program with a two-day, overnight Burning Camp for concentrated development and a Demo Day for presenting the results. Its timeline also records the integration of the four clubs into the fourth cohort’s Frontier program in October 2015. The operating structure changed over time.
Two midterm reviews I wrote for fourth-cohort Frontier teams show what that work involved. One team had identified an everyday problem and surveyed people about practical conditions for using its proposed service. I praised the clear problem definition and comparison with existing services. My reservation was that the survey results had not been brought together into a useful summary. I asked the team to go further and explain what it would change in the service design because of those findings.
The interface presentations needed work too. One team had arranged its UI—the screens a user sees and operates—as a map of icons and short labels. It was difficult for a newcomer to understand the sequence. The other had used Oven, a screen-prototyping tool, to show its interface, but the overall service flow was still hard to grasp quickly. I suggested that both teams walk through one person’s use of the service and connect the screens in a storyboard or an app flow diagram.
There were questions to settle before development as well. I asked one team to check whether it could actually obtain and use the data it needed, identify the constraints on implementation, and revise the plan accordingly. For the other, I recommended narrowing the initial feature set and describing the service in one sentence. I also asked it to survey prospective users before the final presentation and feed the results back into the design. Both reviews called for a more realistic development schedule and a clearer plan for operating and sustaining the service financially.
Team-built apps and an open seminar
Some projects reached the press. An April 2015 JOB&JOY feature described CADI-A’s 50 university students and three apps built by student teams: 칙칙콕콕 for train-travel information, 논더치페이 for splitting expenses, and 요고봐라 for current-affairs information. JOB&JOY feature
CADINAR brought in speakers from outside the clubs to discuss planning, development, and design. Its name combines CADI and seminar. The second event took place at D.CAMP in Seoul on March 28, 2015. The surviving running script introduces me as CODE FACTORIAL’s representative, then sets out the opening and an explanation of the clubs. I discuss the preparation separately in the second CADINAR article. Archived event page · Yeungnam University’s 2016 retrospective notice
As the study group grew, my work came to include running the organization and reviewing team projects. In reviewing the proposals, I considered how a new user would move through the screens and how survey findings could shape the design. I also asked for a narrower initial feature set and a reassessment of the development schedule.