Hello!

Since this is my first blog write-up in Hashnode, let me just introduce myself before I bring you on a journey related to my Final Year Project (FYP) or anything else as a matter of fact 😂. My name is Vinitha and I'm a computer science student, majoring in Artificial Intelligence (AI) from UOW Malaysia KDU Penang University College. Although being a computer science student, my passion also involves art and design.

So, why Blogging?

Well, I have loved writing ever since I was young. I felt that I could express myself best through words and I think writing has become an important part of me. I started writing in primary school around 12 years old by keeping a diary. Since then, I have continued my writing journey through diaries and journals (Does essays in school count? 🤣).

..... Fast forward to the present time .....

With that being said, I still love writing despite being busy with college, assignments, and stuff. Since I'm mostly online, I thought blogging would be a good idea to rekindle my writing skills and passion. Oh! And not to forget, while I was networking on LinkedIn, I happen to find someone with the same interest in blogging while being in the tech industry. His name is Muhd Rahiman (Ray), a Software Engineering student from University Malaya. I would like to thank him for inspiring me through his fantastic work, projects, blogs, and in pursuing his passion. Thank you, Ray... 😀 This is his Hashnode handle

Now back to the main content!

Today marks my 3rd day in my 4th semester. Apart from that, today is also the beginning of my FYP, which is a requirement of my course. In my institution, we call it Individual Project (IP) which is literally the same thing as FYP but we have to do it individually. To give a brief overview of this project, there are two components which are Research (FYP1) and Development (FYP2, which will be continued in the next semester). This explains the number "1" in the title FYP(1) as currently, I am in the first step in this project which is research and proposal writing. Hence, there won't be many details about the project at the moment because I'm still in the initial phase of the project. However, I still have some sharing such as the preparations that I have taken before this semester even began. 😋

1) Finding Ideas 💡

To be honest, my preparations for FYP began on the first semester itself. I know... I know... That's way too early to even think about it. The reason being is because I know how I would react to last-minute preparations ( Panic-Mode: ON! 🚨 ). I tend to think a lot about things that require my commitment and I always want to put my best foot forward in whatever decisions it may be. FYP is considered a big thing for me and I don't want to mess up the first step itself which is the ideation part. Being a picky person, I started observing my surroundings, trying new apps/websites, and basically just searching for cool but doable ideas. I gathered my ideas over time and 2 weeks before the FYP begins, I started filtering out that gathered information, ideas and did small studies to get insights about the projects. The whole findings were documented in an Excel file, which I think was easier to just organize the information that I had at that time. This is how it looks like...

It is quite brief but it had the important points I needed to start thinking about the details of those projects. From a bunch of ideas, I scoped into 3 main ideas, just to make life easier. I really liked all 3 ideas and it was a tough decision to choose 1 out of 3 (Imagine having a bunch of them... 🙄).

2) Brainstorm & Discussions 🧠

The next step I took was to approach some of my lecturers to discuss my ideas and see what they think about it as well as to get some feedback. Thankfully, my lecturers were kind enough to spend their precious time with me and just chat about my ideas and concepts. It was a very casual discussion but I gained so many insights, feedback, and information to further improvise the projects. At this time, I also started deciding on my supervisors who will be monitoring my project.

3) Choosing the Topic 🤔

The brainstorm and discussion session was very meaningful and I am glad I did it earlier before the semester even began because I was able to test out my ideas and see which one was more doable within the given timeframe. Testing out certain things and learning some basic concepts before the FYP helped me to choose the topic which gave me the most confidence. Therefore, the topic that I have chosen to do for my FYP is an "Emotion Detection System based on Text".

The basic idea is to have a journal/diary-like system (Most probably a website/app) that takes users' texts as input and predicts the emotions associated with the text. The output would be the emotions such as Joy, Fear, Sadness, Anger, etc... In addition, these data will be collected to generate useful visualization for users to learn about the mood pattern and behaviors. To advance this idea further, the system involves two categories of users namely Patients and Doctors. Patients will be able to do the things mentioned previously whereas doctors will be able to monitor their patients. This will be helpful for doctors such as Psychiatrists, Therapists, and doctors which require the need to check for patients' emotions. This is the general idea of the topic.

4) Research the Concepts/Tools required 📖💻🛠

Once the topic is decided, I went on to research some concepts involved to develop this system. Some of the things that I ventured into were Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Natural Language Processing (NLP), Sentiment Analysis (SA), Emotion Detection, and Psychology. I even did some practices and learned from online tutorials to further understand the topics and get hands-on to figure out and plan on how to develop and implement the system. This step gave me a rough idea of how the project should be carried out, the activities involved, and some potential ways to develop the system. This also mentally prepares me for the upcoming challenges that are soon to be faced during the development phase. 😅

There we go... Those are some of the steps I took to prepare for the FYP. Its kinda long but every step was crucial to smoothen the processes during FYP, for me at least... 😁

What's Next?

That's all I have for this Introduction log. I am planning to write and share my FYP journey on a weekly basis. However, that entirely depends on the level of workload I have and the progress I've made in the coming weeks. I am excited to share my stories of FYP and hopefully, create a fun experience to follow along. Last but not least, if you read it till this stage, you are amazing! Thank you for spending your time reading through my log and I hope it had impacted you in some way (...or just had fun reading through it 😂). It means a lot to me...

See you again till next time!