Reflection on Group Work

Last week, we spent time before Wednesday lecture to collect information on realistic projects we can work on. There were multiple things we took into consideration:

• The number of existing PRs
• Frequency that PRs are closed
• Is the creator active on any platform?
• Are the documentation well written?
• Is the project written in a language we can all write in?

We went through multiple project choices that could’ve worked but didn’t meet the criteria above. As an active user of Twitch, I knew about the existence of multiple community built software and extensions that were open source. Frosty is an open-source Twitch client for iOS and Android that was created by an active member of the Twitch community and commonly used by content creators and viewers. It was an excellent project choice that is beginner-friendly and could directly benefit from new features.

Current obstables

After deciding on Frosty as our project, the plan was to complete the development setup before our scheduled Friday meeting and colloborate on writing the wiki page for our group. We all encountered the same problem of the app not being able to read the .env file when launched, causing the API to reject the connection. We identified the issue over the weekend and got the app to successfully run on our computers.

Hopes for Group Project

I’m hoping to work on a project with an active, beginner-friendly community. If there are any concerns over unclear documenation or unintuitive setups, I’d prefer to address them by speaking directly with experienced contributers. I strive in busy, collaborative environments that push me to adapt. Projects with overextended documentation but limited communication channels can feel discouraging.

From reading different project evaluations, I’ve noticed that each project maintains a unique codebase and structure. One potential challange for me is when features are heavily compartmentalized and presented as “user-friendly”, but make it difficult to understand the system as a whole. I value being able to see the bigger picture of how everything works together.

Group Presentations

Many groups created creative browser extensions, though none were tools I’d personally use on daily basis. Regardless, the projects were a great way to show how simple ideas can meaningfully improve a user’s browsing experience.

We created QuickHistory, a browser extension that lets user their most recent or large portions of their search data without going through all the steps. I have a tendency to steer away from ideas just thinking about how multilayerd and complicated they can get. However, my teammates were great at coming up with a strong foundation to build on, and the process of adding features became very easy when I saw all the resources possible. ~ Because our project was relatively small, our presentation felt much smoother than most of my past presentations. We introducing the idea, demo’d it, and were open to questions about how it worked under the hood. I typically get nervous when I’m not entirely confident about the information, which causes me to stutter or lose my train of though. I thought other presentations had small issues with timing, manuerims, and nervous laughter but I still struggle with that in other projects.

Git Exercises

Before the Fall 2025 semester, I had very little experience using Git. I was enrolled in a DevOps course where I had to quickly learn it’s basic functions in order to work on a semester-long web application project. I used it every day and encountered common issues that taught me how to troublshoot problems and better understand version control workflows. However, the lecture on Git introduced command shortcuts that I wasn’t previously using.

Project Evaluations

My group worked on investigating Exorcism, a free to use project that is meant to easily introduce students to various coding languages. Despite the user-friendly nature of the website, looking deeper into the repository showed how complicated and multilayered it is to contribute to such a large open-source project. Exploring the documentation and contribution workflow helped me understand the level of organization and structure required to maintain a project at this scale.

Progress towards Open Source Project

QuickHistory allows users to efficiently summarize and delete their browsing data.

After having used the Chrome for Developers resource to build my first browser extension, my team begun thinking about creative, yet simple ideas for this project. I had the idea to create a one-click button that deletes your most recent search to simplify the Chrome workflow, since the current process is tedious. Everyone had very different ideas based on their own interests but after considering the scope and complexity of each idea, mine was chosen. Alan came up with additional AI-powered features that provide brief summaries about the users search history, such as most visited and high-usage cached pages.

Working on a MERN stack app in my Agile Software Development required leadership and communicaiton skills to succeed in a group of four. I was surprised by how easily those skills tranferred and helped improve the groups workflow. They made conversation flow more smoothly and made work delegation clear for anyone joining the project for the first time.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Open-Source

When I hear the term “Open Source”, I think about projects that are open to the public so people can contribute to them. I assume “open” doesn’t mean completely unstructured, since there still needs to be an organized workflow to ensure contributions are consistent, high-quality, and traceable.

One advantage of open-source is that it allows contributers with different levels of experience to make meaningful aimed at improving the user experience. This can build strong communities that are willing to fix complex bugs, add large-scale features, and write clear documentation. It’s an easier way to modify source code without needing to contact privatetly owned companies. An advantage to closed-source projects is that they offer protection against bad actors who might find vulnerabilities in the publicly accessible code.

Projects

CellProfiler is an open-source software that I frequentely used during a research internship to rapidly quantify microscope images.

7TV is another open-source platform I use while watching streams on Twitch, a live-streaming platform. It’s a browser extension that allows broadcasters to add custom emotes that viewers can use in the chatroom.

WatchParty is a communication platform used to share your screen in a private room. It has a chatbox feature, profile custimization, and videa/audio enhancment features to improve the overall streaming and viewing experience.