Crafts in Designing





In life, there is the need to design your in and out to enable you to know what you are made of, capable of and can define. The same applies to the study of Computer Science and one of its study fields, which is Product Design. With Product Design, imaginations are transformed into reality.

Design is a strategized way for the construction of an object or system for the implementation of an activity. It can be expressed in the form of a prototype, product or process.

Life is all about putting words into actions and in product design you need to create a scope and make wonders out of it.

The design adds to the importance of contributing to the building and maintaining the environment, it produces resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the life cycle of the product's aspect and ensures the products are not overburdened with non-essentials.

In this article, we are going to dive into Product Design and what it actually entails in the computer science atmosphere.




Product Design

Product Design is the process of creating a new product to be sold by a business to its customers.  Essentially, it is the generation, design, and development of product ideas through a series of processes. These processes include the creation of an idea, determining the feasibility of the product, testing o the product and finally launching it into the market.

Every Product Design process consists of the imagination and creation processes, as well as the testing and the launching process. All these processes sum up in a chronological manner so as to make the overall design process a success.

The study of product design has increased rapidly since it has resulted in creating aesthetic and quality products, and has created awareness in identifying poor from well-designed products. IT schools have made it a priority to get good designers for every area of the product design process, so if you are finding a school to help you in this area look no further and apply to DevWorld Tech Academy. They have all the capabilities to turn your dreams into reality.




DevWorld Tech Academy

DevWorld Tech Academy is an IT school with a well-equipped and organized environment of study located at Ashaley Botwe  School Junction in Accra  where  they handle course such as ;

Artificial Intelligence
Data Science
Cloud Computing
Game
Software, Mobile & Web Development
Programming
Cyber Security
Computer Ethics




Under their faculty of Design, they have a wide range of current and well-structured programs that are taught by industry professionals. The programs are:

User Experience Research and Design
Graphic Design & Graphic Design Elements
Graphic Design Elements for Non-Designers
User Interface Design
Interaction Design
User Experience Research and Design
UI / UX Design

Graphic Design & Graphic Design Elements User Interface Design




The school brings in unique methods where students pick products and try to change the outlook or layout to make it suit better to their definition, the school helps students with flexible learning procedures and aids them in areas they find difficulties in. This method shows how unique and exceptional they are. Click here to visit their website and learn more about them.

it doesn’t matter who you are or where you from. As long as you believe in yourself and have the desire for improvement, you can also make a difference.

DevWorld Tech Academy has made plans in changing the old system of handling the situation around Product Design by implementing hard work, world-class knowledge and readiness towards students to be able to handle the flaws in designing a product. The number one unique thing they do is always asking them to believe in themselves and their capabilities so as to not make them lose hope and drop out of the course. This helps product designers grow in numbers in the nation and the world as a whole.

In a brief discussion with the director of DevWorld Tech Academy, it came to our knowledge that the school has targeted measures to help build a better world and an environment-friendly ecosystem of products through the impartation of world-class product design knowledge and skills into their students. This will help increase the number and quality of product designers in the country and beyond. According to the director, at DWTA, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you from. As long as you believe in yourself and have the desire for improvement, you can also make a difference.




Importance of Product Design

Good product design comes with a lot of benefits hence, it should be the focal point of any business or company that is product-oriented. Here are some of the benefits:

1. Good product design attracts more customers thereby granting a company an edge over other competitors in the market or niche.

2. It is also important because it brings together three important issues; the concept, the package, and the process, thereby ensuring the end-product meets market standards.

3. Good product design fuels the growth of a business by enhancing profitability and turnover. This is because it transforms the needs and wants of customers into the desired shape and value of the product demanded.

4. It makes the life of the consumer easy and comfortable as a result of introducing products that are aesthetic and ergonomic.

5. Good product design is important in replacing ushers innovations and replaces outdated ones.




Always keep in mind that a successful product designer puts the customer first by satisfying the needs and wants such as the quality of the products, performance, reliability, durability, aesthetics, and cost. These are the main factors that influence good product design.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) is the ability of a computer program or machine to think and learn, they work on their own due to inbuilt encoded commands. That’s how John McCarthy came up with the name “Artificial Intelligence “in 1955. AI, sometimes called Machine Intelligence, has the end goal to empower machines to mimic and display the natural intelligence displayed by humans to carry out tasks and make decisions.

There are different types of Artificial Intelligence. These are the Reactive Machines, Limited Memory, Theory of Mind and Self-awareness. The technology is mainly fueled by very exciting sub-technologies; Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

Machine Learning focuses on developing computer programs that can access data and use it to learn for themselves, while Deep learning deals with the processing and usage of the data acquired for decision making (Like how the human brain works). These two technologies act as the lifeline on which Artificial intelligence exists.

AI has become a very hot topic globally and every nation is doing its best to catch up with its advancements. In Africa and Ghana as a whole, the state of learning and teaching artificial intelligence wasn’t encouraging till Google introduced the first-ever (AI) lab in Africa; Ghana to be precise.




Google AI and AI Research Labs
Google AI
Google AI's Logo

Google AI (formerly known as Google Research) is Google’s artificial intelligence research and development branch dedicated to the research and development of AI platforms and software that will facilitate AI applications. According to Google, the sole aim of Google AI is to conduct research that advances the state-of-the-art in the field, apply AI to products and to new domains, and to develop tools to ensure that everyone can access AI.

Numerous tools have come out of this venture such as TensorFlow, Google Auto ML Vision, DeepMind and Google Assistant. All of these tools have proven to be extremely useful to the world of AI with some such as TensorFlow becoming an industry standard.

TensorFlow, being the most acclaimed among the pack, is an open-source Machine Learning library that helps developers to develop and train Machine Learning (ML) Models. This tool has now become an integral part of the work of any AI developer due to how it has made the development of ML-powered applications easy and time-efficient.










AI Research Labs

Just like how they did with Android, Google wants to position itself as an industry leader (which I think is a good step) in AI. This was made clear in a recent announcement stating that they have planned to position themselves as an AI-first company.

They plan to achieve that by building research centers across the globe in places such as Tokyo, Zurich, New York, and Paris. Ghana recently became one of the beneficiaries by receiving one of such centers from Google in Accra.

Headed by Muostapha Cisse, a Senegalese AI expert, this was the first AI lab to be opened and operated in Africa, with the aim of providing the facility that will give professionals here the platform needed to properly explore AI. This was because, the major Artificial Intelligence experts and organizations are mostly based in North America, Europe, and Asia.

This was a huge first step taken by the tech giant to support researchers with the tools and environment necessary to develop and manipulate research knowledge within Africa, starting from Ghana.




Why Ghana?
A tourist in front of a popular landmark in Accra




One sure question that popped up on the minds of most people after Jeff Dean (the Google AI and Google Brain team lead) announced Google’s AI Lab plans in Accra was, “Why Ghana?”

That was a potent question since there are countries in Africa that are more advanced in terms of technology such as South Africa, Egypt, Uganda, and Nigeria. However, Google was looking at different factors. according to Jeff Dean, Ghana was chosen due to its robust network of academic institutions as well as infrastructure. Ghana arguably has a good number of some of the prime educational institutions in Africa. This factor was a very defining one as far as the AI research lab is concerned.

Other factors included Ghana’s relative stability in terms of electricity, security and internet infrastructure. Whilst we cannot completely decipher the reason behind Google choosing Ghana, the reasons stated above are good enough.




How DWTA Is Charting The Course Alongside Google.







Despite the above, there is still work to be done. This is because for the lab to be useful to us, we need to have skilled professionals in the AI field to harness the power of the lab and turn it into useful solutions.

Sadly enough, the adoption of AI in Ghana, especially by the education sector is very low, as most Information Technology schools don’t teach (or do not teach it well to meet industry standards) the course. This brings us to DevWorld Tech Academy (DWTA), one of the very few schools here in Ghana that teaches world-class, practical and project-oriented courses on Artificial Intelligence.

The best thing about DWTA is that we do not just teach theory and award certificates. Rather, we teach practical skills alongside hand-on projects that ensure our students actually know what they are doing

DWTA offers a wide range of programs on the latest and useful technologies, thus making sure the human resource we have in this country also get the necessary skills they need to solve new problems.

Some of the programs offered are:

Artificial Intelligence, Data Science & Cloud Computing Game
Software, Mobile & Web Development
Digital, Graphic & Product Design
Programming
Cyber-Security & Computer Ethics

Under the faculty of Artificial Intelligence, there are study programs like ;

Algorithms

Applied Data Science with Python,
Big Data
Cloud Computing
Introduction to Google Cloud Technology
Algorithms and Algorithms for Battery Management Systems

Data Structures and Algorithms
AI Foundations and Deep Learning
Machine Learning
Data Science with Python (Intro, Applied, Advanced)
Big Data, Data Insights, Data Engineering and Machine Learning on Google Cloud Platform
Cloud Computing, Data Insights, Data Engineering, Machine Learning with Tensor Flow and Developing Applications with Google Cloud (all on Google Cloud Platform)




The best thing about DWTA is that we do not just teach theory and award certificates. Rather, we teach practical skills alongside hand-on projects that ensure our students actually know what they are doing. If you are finding it difficult to find the right IT school for your ward or yourself as a student look no further than DevWorld Tech Academy.

Artificial intelligence, if properly harnessed in Ghana and Africa as a whole, will be immensely helpful to the economy as well as human resources. From the problems we face in our agricultural sector to the health sector, even to the educational sector and all the sectors in between, can be effectively tackled and solved by the application of artificial intelligence.

This is one of the key reasons why DWTA has introduced the course to train up capable, highly skilled and knowledgeable individuals who will leverage the platform given to us by Google to create solutions and refine existing ones to address the many problems we are facing.

As already stated, from problems we are facing in our agriculture industry (pest control, fertilizer application issues) to our health sector, the finance, and even education, AI can be deployed to find solutions to those problems. This if done, will boost the economy by creating employment for the youth, cutting out some costs among other benefits.

DevWorld Tech Academy is situated in Ashaley Botwe — school junction, Accra with a conducive teaching and learning environment. DWTA has qualified and experienced teaching staff who practice what they teach. This enables them to teach the students effectively with hands-on practical projects on what is actually working in a real-life setting. Click here to visit their website and learn more about us.











How AI Is Shaping The Future
An image of a futuristic city design




While AI is still some miles away from the conscious machines portrayed in the various science fiction movies we watch, the creation of algorithms that can learn, understand language and mimic some aspects of the human mind have led to huge advances. Today AI is being used in hundreds of different industries, from business to education to healthcare to communication and even transportation to make processes easier, faster and smarter.

These are just some of the ways in which AI is changing certain aspects of our lives for good:

In The Finance Sector
Banks are using it to detect frauds and also predict changes in the stock markets. If you are in the financial sector, you will understand how huge this is.
Insurance companies are employing AI to help them produce policy quotes and assess claims.
Companies are using AI-powered systems to find and recruit the right people for their companies with spine chilling precision
In The Health Sector
Machines with the capability to identify images are helping doctors spot diseases and getting insight on how to tackle them
AI has empowered whole new branches in medicine, one being Precision Medicine. Precision medicine allows doctors to treat people with a more individualized approach, enabling them to find better ways of treating a patient’s unique medical condition.
AI is helping surgeons to carry out surgical procedures with bang-on precision.
In The Transportation Sector
Algorithms are using machine learning to help self-driving cars to navigate our complex roads, drastically reducing cases of accidents.
Even on flights, AI is being used by air traffic controllers to keep us safe both in the air and on the ground.
Drone taxis are being created and powered by AI to combat carbon emissions, deal with traffic and reduce the building of expensive infrastructure.

Obviously, there are a lot more points that I have not included, for the sake of this article. However, one thing for sure is that artificial intelligence has the potential to completely revolutionize life on Earth (for the better, obviously) and all we can do is to keep our fingers crossed and anticipate!

Top Tech Companies

 Google, Facebook, Apple, and Google. These high-ranking companies each get millions of curriculum vitae every year (with evidence provided). So it’s right to say they have a good process for choosing the best job candidates. But what are these processes and how can you imitate them when you are also hiring for your business?

In this article, I will share with you ten quick and tactical tips from some of the top companies out there that you can deploy anytime there be a need, to help you hire the quality of employees you need to grow your business. Let's dive in.

1. Start Phone Screens 15 Minutes Before, 15 Minutes Later, or Ignore It.

image source/Unsplash




REASON? To get people who are always on the lookout for the job

Every individual can respond to a variety of explorative questions when you contact them at a convenient time. And what occurs if you reach out to them when they’re still in bed or unavailable, in the gym class, or on the toilet? This is how the best tech companies find people who are dressed for the job at any time needed.







2. Plan the Meeting Time as Puzzled and Unaware as Possible

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   REASON? To locate people who don’t need commands

 Make arrangements that both the interviewers and interviewees have no clue on what’s to take place at the examination. This is a proof showing who will attain the ladder since no one has a motive what will be happening.










3. Plan for Something Unexpected or Bad at the Presentation

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REASON? To spot the way the candidate works around situations

Intentionally put up the candidate’s presentation in a hall where the gadgets don’t function (this can be any hall). So when the candidate can adapt around and doesn’t mind coping, then it’s a good sign she’d be comfortable working with. A plus is given for candidates who produce a Plan B, Plan C, and Plan D, which comes in very useful in the tech world. 




4. At The Examination, Process Lots of Misinterpretations 

image source/Getty images

REASON? To identify egoistic and quick reacted candidates 

If the candidate’s last job was at DevWorld Tech Academy, say “How long were you at GT!?” Record the reaction of the candidate and the tone as well when he corrects you. Is he a jerk about it or does he keep his calm? This is how tech companies find out what a candidate would portray in working when the problem inevitably hits the fan.







5. Instruct the Candidate to Solve Your Own, Identified Problems

image source/Unsplash

REASON? Because you need a solution related to this problem

Tech companies usually make candidates find solutions to real problems they are currently facing. This is a great way to get some unpaid solution with such problems. This also helps you know how efficiently and quickly they solve problems.

 




6. Make the Examination Frequently Move Through Different Rooms

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 REASON? To locate people who are still joyful, even when they’re stressed

Never let your job candidates get it easy in the process of the examination. This is how you identify people who are uneasily happy plus move around the fact that no conference halls were produced for the whole day.







7. Request the One Question Repeatedly

image source/Getty images

 REASON? To test steadiness

In the tech world, repetition is a good thing. During the examinations, don’t fear over inquiring the exact question repeatedly because you keep forgetting. This is a great tool for testing the candidate’s regularity. Candidates should only be wildly irregular with their answers when been examined for senior roles.







8. Conduct Two Examination With a Good Cop / Bad Cop Attitude

image source/Getty images

 REASON? To locate people who can do different work at the same time under pressure

Place the candidate in the center of a conference hall with examiners at both ends of the table. Is the candidate able to confidently direct her attention to both interviewers while correctly answering each question at the same time? Or is she tired and thinking why she even said yes to this examination? This is great shows of how the candidate will perform when faced with a problem.




9. Throw a Question, Then Start Typing Very Loudly

 REASON? To locate people who stick focused ignoring all distractions

Give the candidate a question. When the candidate starts answering, start typing noisily by tapping the keypad angrily. Stop and feel remorse and say you’re on the same page, but just jotting ideas down. You could be taking notes, or you could be writing an email to your estranged father, doesn’t matter. Steal a glance at a time and see if the candidate can remain focused on the question or if he gets lost. This will help you find candidates who don’t let tiny distractions get in the way of finishing their job.




 10. Few Months After the Examination, Contact and Give Out An Opportunity to the Candidate for a Job She Didn’t Apply For

REASON? To locate determined people

This is a great way to clear out people who openly didn’t want the job in the first place but had to apply because they were desperate. Does the candidate struggle to get the job he had always wanted? Does he take the opportunity because he thinks it’s the best he can find due to circumstances? Or does he ignore the opportunity because he already got himself another work whiles waiting over the months? This tactic is a good way to fish that out. This also helps know that the said person could be interested in the job offered.