Work Experience Strathclyde University

During the February holidays, I attended Strathclyde University for a week to gain some experience in the field of computer science.

 On the first day, I was given an introduction into Swimbeam which is a project that was in its final stages at the university. The goal of this project was to allow swimmers to perfect their strokes using equipment out of the water and monitor their progress digitally. I was tasked to investigate the functions of an accelerometer which is a key device for monitoring the movements of the swimmer. Then I was given some R Shiny code which plotted different data collected related to the motion of a swimmer. I had to add lines to this diagram which would replicate the perfect hand and arm position for each stage of a stroke. On the second day, I focused more on the user interface of the application and how the data collected could be presented in a meaningful and useful manner. I also looked into cheaper alternatives for the accelerometer device (NGUMI) being used by the team. On day three, I continued with the programming task which entailed calculating co-coordinates for points to ensure that the line represented the desired angle. Additionally, I suggested using a Microsoft tool called Power Bi which allows for data to be presented in an interactive and visually appealing way. This was useful as there was so much data that the team collected that hadn’t been processed so far. Day four was when I did some more programming in HTML and CSS to change up how the current user interface looked and make it more consistent. On the final day, I continued working on the lines and making the gradient of the line more visible and also adding arrows so the direction of motion was clear to the user. Overall, this was a very interesting and rewarding experience and also gave me insight into university life.