Hey all –
It is 2007, and a happy new year to all! With the new year comes a brand new edition of Imagine Cup culminating with the World Finals in Seoul, Korea, and a second edition of the Interface Designer track – welcome!
I am Unni Ravindranathan (call me Unni) and I will spend the next few months with you on this forum, Live Messenger, or any other means of communication you can find answering any questions you have about this competition. If you were at last years’ Imagine Cup finals in New Delhi, India (which is the country that I come from), I might have had a chance to meet with you – I served as a Judge for this track.
About me. I have a Masters in Computer Science from Virginia Tech where I was doing research on information storage and retrieval. Since graduation, I having been working at Microsoft as a Program Manager (almost 3 years now) for a product called Microsoft Expression Blend – likely you might have heard about it, but if not you def. will over the next few weeks J. I maintain a blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/unnir where I try to write about things the Expression tools and Interface Design which is something I am greatly interested in (have to admit it has been a while since I got some free time to write a blog post). You can also get in touch with me any time on e-mail at unnir at microsoft dot com (please add Imagine Cup somewhere in the e-mail subject line – else I am sure to lose your e-mail in the 100s of them I get every day, and I would really like to try to reply to each one you send). However, it is always nice to ask questions on the forums as much as possible not only because it helps others, but you also get faster responses.
About the competition. If you participated in last years’ competition, you are all set. The rules are basically the same – only the expectations in terms of the quality of work you have to produce have grown! If you did not participate, do not worry. Most of the rules are explained well here, but we will go over everything in detail over the next few weeks. All of you probably know that the applications and interfaces you have to create have to focus around the theme for this year’s Imagine Cup – Education. Now would be a great time to start thinking about the interface of your dreams. Now would also be a great time to start thinking and learning about the various technologies available to you – be that Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Forms, ASP.Net, AJAX, whatever. You have the complete freedom, which is the cool part about this competition.
I was totally amazed by the work students did last year, and I am sure we will do much better this year. We all know the value that a well designed user experience adds - be that in software or hardware. But don't be afraid to rethink what is already out there - be innovative and imaginative. Let’s do it!
Take care,
-Unni
