Smart Campus Employee Reviews for Research Assistant

What do you like about working at Smart Campus?

"Presenting ideas with the rest of the lab and discussing the pros and cons. Given flexibility in schedule to balance course work and producing something to present later. Research-oriented and great place to nuture ideas that can produce next-generation social mobile computing applications."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Be patient, be creative, don't be afraid to speak your mind if you have a good idea, and expect the Principal Investigator to change his mind about many things that are a work in progress."

What don't you like about working at Smart Campus?

"Project planning is a mess. According to my advisor we follow a Spiral process approach to development. Although much of what we do is produce UI mockups day by day and get his feedback on what works and doesn't. Instead of writing requirements down, creating use cases, and producing a Vision document or an SRS (Software Requirements Specification), we continue mocking up what we think the application should be and then start writing specifications for the coders. I've suggested to my advisor a year ago about starting requirements writing but he insisted we continue with his approach."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Adopt requirements engineering principles towards the development of applications such that the programmers don't sit around doing nothing while waiting for the UI designers to get mockups fully approved by the Principal Investigator."