Google Season of Docs 2021 Applicant: Souvik Biswas

I am Souvik Biswas, currently pursuing a Bachelor of Technology degree (2018 - 2022) in Computer Science & Engineering from the Indian Institute of Information Technology Kalyani. Also, a freelance technical writer of Codemagic and LogRocket Blog, and a passionate mobile app developer.

I love open source contribution and even have a number of projects of my own which are available on GitHub, you can find them here. Maintainer of the Flutter package video_trimmer. Have contributed to a number of organizations in the past, and had been a part of Hacktoberfest 2018, 2019 & 2020.

I have worked on over 70 technical articles having 500K+ views which are published on various platforms including Medium, Codemagic Blog and LogRocket Blog. Apart from that, I have also worked on 2 ebooks which are published by Codemagic.

You can connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

I am an applicant of GSoD 2021 for the Wechaty organization for improving their tutorial section of the documentation and make it more beginner friendly.

GSoD 2021 Project Proposal

Open source organization: Wechaty

Project: Create easy to learn tutorials for beginner users of Wechaty

Name: Souvik Biswas
Email: sbis1999@gmail.com
Website
Github
Medium
Linkedin
Project length: Standard length (3 months)

Technical Writing Experience

Freelance Technical Writer - Codemagic Blog

Have written over 60+ articles and contributed to 2 ebooks published by Codemagic.

Topics of the articles consists of Android, Flutter, React Native, DevOps, CI/CD
Contributed to Flutter Libraries ebook and CI/CD for Mobile App Developers
Have written a comprehensive Cheatsheet of Codemagic YAML

Freelance Technical Writer - LogRocket Blog

Started writing articles related to Flutter framework

New concepts introduced by Flutter 2.0
Integration of Flutter with various services
Comprehensive code walkthrough

Technical Writer - Flutter Community

Published various articles, mostly consisting of code walkthroughs. The articles have received over 350K+ views on Medium.

Each article has a supporting sample app open-sourced on GitHub
Covered various important concepts in Flutter
Testing in Flutter
Code-signing and delivering apps to different platforms

Technical Writer - ProAndroidDev

Written articles on various UI and Navigation components used in Android.

Building complex layouts
Using Navigation component in Android
Kotlin’s new features
Code walkthrough

Technical Writer - Journal

Have written article on VR on web

Building VR apps using React360
Integrating React360 VR apps in Flutter
Deploying to GitHub Pages

Research Work

I am a part of a research group of our university, working on new post-quantum encryption schemes and Blockchain. We have submitted three research papers for publication which received a very positive feedback from the editors and would be published soon. We are currently working on a new consensus algorithm which would be compatible with IoT devices.

Links to some of my most popular articles

I have worked on over 70 articles published across various sites including Medium, Codemagic Blog, LogRocket Blog. Have contributed to 2 ebooks published by Codemagic.

These were some of the articles, you can find more here. Apart from this, I have also done a significant amount of contribution to the Codemagic Documentation.

Abstract

Current State of Wechaty Tutorials

Users come to Wechaty website seeking how to use Wechaty to build a chatbot application for solving their problems. Unfortunately, the learning curve is not friendly to our users, they always struggle with setting up with their development environment, can not get started with the simplest example source code, and find it hard to know what they can do with our API. This problem leads to us losing lots of new users, increased number of questions asked in the community, and lowered user satisfaction.
The current version of the Wechaty Tutorials is not properly structured.
The tutorials on the website needs improvement, and should be beginner friendly.

Proposed Work

Update the Tutorials to include a step-by-step guide (easy for beginners to follow) for achieving the final goal of building a bot.

The Tutorial project should:

Allow the user to learn by doing
Get the user started
Make sure that the tutorial works all the time
Ensure the user sees results immediately
Make the tutorial repeatable
Focus on concrete steps, not abstract concepts
Provide the minimum necessary explanation
Focus only on the steps the user needs to take
Work with the contributor team to update the documentation on the Wechaty site.
Add easy to follow video tutorials

Each of the documentation page should be structured in a particular format (so that users get familiarized with the format and would be much easier to follow). And, each of the tutorial pages for building a bot should contain an interactive CodeSandbox at the end (consisting of minimal code and TODO steps) where they can apply the knowledge that they gained by following the tutorial, and build a bot totally by themselves!

I have included a detailed structure (further down the article) of each documentation page that I propose to be followed for every bot building tutorial.

One more thing that I noticed in the Tutorials is the lack of a defined goal that the user should expect to achieve at the end of that step-by-step guide. So, there should be a clear description of the goal in the introduction of each tutorial.

Contributions

Some contributions that I have done to the Wechaty GitHub repo are mentioned below:

Update Getting started - Running locally instructions (#763)
Update the vorpal demo screenshot (#780)
Add instructions and interactive sandbox for Vorpal (#779)
Update vorpal with wechaty doc (#772)
Update Getting started - Running locally (#757)
Improve Vorpal docs (#791)
Update images to use normal Markdown format - Vorpal tutorial page (#802)

Project Goals (Timeline)

Before May 1

Familiarize myself with the current version of the user documentation of Wechaty, and identify the parts that require improvements.
Make contributions to the Wechaty repository adding some improvements.

Community bonding

Set up a communication channel and time (due to timezone difference).
Refine my goals and set expectations on both sides.
Discussing about the structure of each tutorial page in documentation.
Finalize the order of editing the tutorial sections.
Discuss about the best way to add the interactive CodeSandboxes

Documentation Period

Wechaty repository here

As per the discussion with the community members, start working on a tutorial page - adding the improvements, properly structuring the pages, adding interactive CodeSandbox, adding video walkthrough (if necessary), adding relevant screenshots and defining a goal in the introduction of the tutorial (so that users have the idea of what they will achieve at the end of the tutorial).

A proposed structure of the tutorial documentation is as follows:

Introduction (also include the goal of the tutorial)
Try out the bot (CodeSandbox)
Requirements (tools required to follow the tutorial)
Usage (code snippet - for users who may be searching for how to use the bot in their project, and doesn’t want to go deep into the step-by-step tutorial)*
Video tutorial (optional)*
Getting started (Quick introduction to the required tools and how to setup their development environment to get started building the bot)
Building the bot (step-by-step guide for building the bot, with a CodeSandbox at the end having minimal code and TODO steps where users can try building the bot by themselves directly on the documentation page without installing any tools on their local system)
Running the bot (commands for running the bot locally)
Bot demonstration (commands that they can use with the bot, and maybe a GIF showing the invocation of some of the commands on WeChat or WhatsApp)
Conclusion
References

*Require some feedback from the community members

Week 1 : (1st May - 8th May)

Start by adding missing content to one of the tutorials (maybe Vorpal first as I have already started contributing to that page)
Try out the bot (CodeSandbox - already added: #779)
Update the step-by-step guide to have more technical details on how to build the bot, adding brief explanation of each function used
Add a CodeSandbox at the end with the TODO (as explained above)
Structure the tutorial properly as per the proposed structure given above

Week 2 : (9th May - 15th May)

Update the Tutorials: Overview page by adding information about what are the different types of tutorial available that then can go through (keep updating this as new tutorials are added to the docs)
In the Getting started overview page add information about what are the different ways that can get started with Wechaty bots.
Include the CodeSandbox of the Ding Dong bot to the Quick start page, so that users can try out the bot directly.
Short videos may be included for running the Ding Dong bot using GitPod and Google Cloud Shell.
Update the page with screenshots or GIF of the Ding Dong bot running on a device (WeChat / WhatsApp).

Week 3 : (16th May - 22nd May)

Add getting started examples for Polyglot Wechaty (multi-language) as per the conversation here.
Update the page structure and include CodeSandbox for the bot (if necessary).
Add screenshots / GIFs to this page.
Device screenshots / GIF after running the bot.

Week 4 : (23rd May - 29th May)

Check any improvements that can be made to the Usage with Docker page, and add any missing section (if required).
Verify the examples run properly on Wechaty Docker.
Make the page consistent and follow the proposed structure.
Add screenshots / GIF of the running Docker instance (if required)

Week 5 : (30th May - 5th June)

Add instructions to the Usage with Heroku page.
Structure this page correctly.
Add screenshots while updating the instructions.

Week 6 : (6th June - 12th June)

The Using Plugin with Wechaty page can be divided into several sub-sections each consisting of a tutorial for one Wechaty Plugin Contrib Package.
Adding information and step-by-step tutorial for each plugin.
Include a CodeSandbox to try out the bot.
Add screenshots and GIFs where necessary.

Week 7 : (13th June - 19th June)

Continue with creating separate pages for each plugin.
Make each page follow the proposed structure
Adding information and step-by-step tutorial for each plugin.
Include a CodeSandbox to try out the bot.
Adding screenshots and GIFs where necessary.

Week 8 : (20th June - 26th June)

Add proper introduction to the Using Redux with Wechaty along with a defined goal for following this tutorial.
Structure the page properly
Include code explanation and interactive CodeSandbox.
Add screenshots or GIFs (if necessary)

Week 9 : (27th June - 3rd July)

Create tutorial pages for some of the bots mentioned on the Showcases page (need feedback from the community members).
Build tutorial for OSSChat bot (if approved by community members).
Add CodeSandbox and code explanation.
Add screenshots or GIFs (if necessary)

Week 10 : (4th July - 10th July)

Work on creating tutorials for using the RuiBot & Friday BOT
Include step-by-step guide and CodeSandbox
Add screenshots or GIFs (if necessary)

Week 11 : (11th July - 17th July)

Start working on the Cheat Sheet which would consist of the following:
- Brief description of a bot
- Code snippet to use it
- Tech description (in brief)
- Example - CodeSandbox (maybe included)
- Screenshots / GIFs

Creating the cheat sheet will take time (most probably two weeks).

Week 12 : (18th July - 24th July)

Continue with the cheat sheet.
Create short video tutorials for some of the most used bots (if necessary).
Decide what are the things to be included to the Examples page.

Week 13 & 14

Add multi-language support to the tutorials lacking it.
Including content to some of the pages of How-to Guides by discussing with the community members
Add content to the Testing page
Improve the structuring of the pages (if required - by discussing with the community members).
Get final reviews from the community and finalize the work done.

This is an estimated project goal, changes might be done if suggested by mentors and community members.

Measuring the project’s success

The project would be considered successful if after publication of the new documentation:

The tutorials page views increase by 50%
The visit duration on tutorials increases by 50% (>2 minutes)
The bounce rate of tutorials decreases by 30% (<50%)

Why am I the right person for this project?

I believe I am the right person for this project because I have previous experience of contributing to documentation and how to structure the modules properly so that it is easier for beginners to follow. I have also worked on a comprehensive cheat sheet in the past, and I am comfortable with Git & GitHub to make the contributions.

I have already started contributing to the documentation of Wechaty and would love to work on it as a part of the GSoD 2021.

Stipend

Based on work division.

If one technical writer is selected - $5000

If work is divided between two technical writers - $2500. In this case, I am open to collaborating with the other technical writer and working as a team.

Personal Information

Name: Souvik Biswas
Location: Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Time Zone: UTC +05:30
Typical working hours: 7 AM - 2 PM (UTC +05:30)