I’m Jagori.
I am a QA person and have around 10 years of experience testing and managing QA activities of various web-based and mobile applications and more recently as a QA manager for an ed-tech gaming company. Being in QA I am thus quite detail-oriented and strive to figure out the root cause of bugs.
A few years back I was living in Australia, Sydney with my husband where he got transferred by his company. While living there and looking for a full-time role in QA, I started freelancing with some software companies as well as started volunteering online with Wikimedia. All throughout my career I have been passionate about learning new technologies and picking up new skills.
Volunteering with Wikimedia required me to learn Git, Cucumber, a little bit about Ruby. Back then in India manual testers were in great demand and Selenium was slowly picking up. I decided to spend the time learning automation skills and techniques using Selenium Webdriver and also got myself ISTQB certified. Getting certified was a huge plus as I learned so much about testing by reading books. I learned about Continuous integration using Jenkins. I also did some free online courses from Coursera on Android programming just to get a basic idea of how it works. I wouldn’t say learning all these were a waste of time although I may not have become a master but knowing these gave a boost to my confidence.
But it wasn’t enough to land me a job. I started volunteering at a local library and started teaching the elderly and library visitors topics related to IT. It depended on what they would like to learn so it would range from subjects like learning about how to use an Android phone, transfer files, and photos from iPad to computer, sometimes it would be teaching how to use a laptop or teaching Scratch app to teachers. It was motivating to see the joy on their faces and I made a lot of friends as well as a purpose in my life. I learned a lot again out of this for instance I learned to tweak my teaching content in the manner which would help the elderly to remember and also have fun while learning.I made use of big fonts since I found that they found it hard to read small letters on a laptop, plus I taught them about safe surfing habits. Overall it was fun.
At about the same time, the library coordinators approached me with another project of theirs which was a virtual tour of the library. They already had a 3D model in place. With some research and learning, I was able to convert the Unity project to an Android compatible app with a google cardboard headset. All the learnings of Android I could put to use here although it wasn’t enough. I had no knowledge of Unity 3D, c#, forget Google cardboard, and 360-degree cameras or how to use them. I attended event meetups that were free and slowly got to learn about the various VR headsets even HTC Vive and Microsoft hololens and the more I learned the more I was amazed and pulled towards it.
Eventually, I ended up creating a 360-degree tour of the library by making use of a software called Kolor Panotour which takes a series of auto stitched panoramic photos (snapped using Ricoh Theta S camera) and created a website out of it. This project was appreciated at the library and I delivered a short presentation of it to the library management. The whole experience of researching the right software for creating photo tours, exploring cameras for taking photographs, coordinating with various people, installing the app on the Android device, and seeing it through the Google Cardboard headset in a few months was amazing.
Although I am still thinking about how we can best use VR to depict a library. Reading a book in VR is not at all comfortable. Soon after, we moved back to India due to family reasons and I was undecided for some time as I had a good experience in QA and I could continue pursuing my career in that or maybe continue to enhance my knowledge in the new domain. For some time I pursued Udacity as I really wanted to learn more about Unity,c#, and VR. While I was pursuing this I got a job offer from a gaming company in my old domain and because I really wanted to start working so I decided to join and since it was a gaming company I thought it would give me the opportunity to learn new things and enhance my knowledge further.
After about 10 months I had to quit unfortunately because of health reasons and it was then I decided to move ahead with Virtual reality and AR.
I have a fair idea about the applications of VR but I haven’t yet thought over any specific application that I would like to deliver. Whatever form or shape my endeavors take I hope the end result reflects my passion for the subject.
Right now I have enrolled in a course from the University of Colorado from Coursera on C# in Unity and I intend to learn and improve my fundamentals. From there I would like to brush up my fundamentals on VR which I have lost touch with over the last few months. Over the next few months, I will keep sharing whatever I am learning here on this blog which will keep me motivated.
Besides learning new technologies I also did a beginner’s course in Mandarin during my stay in Australia and I love to sketch and paint using watercolors.
I look forward to hearing from you and any suggestions/advice on the best programming practices or any topic related to VR/AR.
What do I code today? 