↓Skip to main content

Week 2 in Review

·527 words·3 mins
Author
Sean Blundin
Data Science & Business @ Northeastern University
Table of Contents

Week 2
#

As the days become more familiar and less intense, I’ve found that I’ve settled into life here in Leuven. As a group, we’ve found our favorite affordable lunch spots, settled into project work, and improved our median bedtimes. With about 17 days left, I’m looking forward to making the most of my remaining weeks here.

EU Parliament Building
Illuminated buildings in Grand Place for the Brussels Jazz Festival on Friday.

My Contributions
#

Since our first team blog post, our project has undergone significant change, transitioning from a simple data visualization app to a “stack overflow of policymaking”; a discussion board for the latest policies proposed by politicans. Throughout this change, I have greatly contributed to our team’s success in the following qualitative ways:

Overview

  • Constant communication with professors
  • Digesting team brainstorms into actionable plans
  • Redesigning major components of this blog in coordination with our feedback
  • Selecting 6 new OECD data sources
  • Co-designing full-site wireframe with Michael
  • Drawing simple rough draft of ER diagrams

To further highlight a few of these, I’ll go into detail below.

Redesigning our Team Blog
#

In line with the feedback we recieved, I took the initiative to fix aspects of our site, and built out further functionality:

  • New menu bar with About page, Tags page, and link to GitHub repo
  • Revised tags for all individual and team posts
  • Configured proper author headers for all posts

Furthermore, I wrote the majority of our second team blog post, and assisted team members with revising their author descriptions.

Selecting New Data Sources
#

Jointly with Michael, we took our brainstormed approximate feature set and searched the entire OECD database for the exact tables that would be the most accurate, relevant, and fully filled for our models to excel. We passed these selected data sources off to our data team (Paulo and Sam) for API calling and cleaning.

Wireframing
#

Michael and I put considerable effort into our wireframe, which now encompasses the entirety of our website (as currently planned). Though we spent extra time designing our app’s features and UI, we believe it presented us with the opportunity to truly envision what our product should be. Now that we have finalized these plans, we can continue with next steps at a faster pace.

Discovering Leuven
#

One of my favorite moments of this past week was a jog I took towards KU Leuven’s sports complex. Located in the the south just outside Leuven’s road ring, the facilities are surrounded by the closest real forest to city center. Seeking to discover a new place for basketball games, I was pleasantly surprised by the surrounding forest’s beauty. As I continued to weave between old trees on a gravel path, I heard music literally emerging from the woods. Jogging towards the source of the sound, I was thrilled to discover a massive concert that KU Leuven had organized for its students. I took this as a welcome break from my jog and listened to some amazing live music for a delightful hour.

Experiences like these seem to keep emerging in my time here in Leuven. It’s really a magical place. I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead!