Student project with the HTWK Leipzig

At a time when technology is advancing relentlessly and the boundaries of what is possible are constantly being pushed, collaboration between educational institutions and companies is crucial. An outstanding example of such a successful partnership is the cooperative project for live subtitling of video streams, on which students from HTWK Leipzig and Grundig Business Systems worked together. In an interview with the students involved, valuable insights into the project, the challenges and the successes were reviewed.

We found this project particularly appealing as it offered us a great deal of scope for creativity. The partner's clear objective was also an incentive to participate.
Our goal was to develop a real-time application that would make it possible to automatically transcribe a live stream and make the generated subtitles correctable for an editor. The aim is to provide the best possible subtitles.

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To develop the MVP, we used technologies and methods such as ASP.Net, Angular, SCRUM and agile working, GitLab, unit tests (nUnit/Jasmine), WebSockets and REST. In the first semester, we were trained in development-specific technologies and started with design thinking. We then developed and delivered the MVP. In the second semester, we focused on further developing existing features and improving code quality.

One challenge was the neglect of code quality in the middle of the project due to a lack of time. However, we were able to overcome this through refactorings, major code reviews and the experience gained by the developers. Other problems that arose were also solved together with the partner.

The collaboration was very pleasant and on an equal footing. We particularly appreciated the flexibility and fast communication. The feedback was mostly integrated into the product as a feature. We differentiated between features with priorities 1-3, with 1 being very important (core feature) and 3 being less important.

The project made it clear how difficult it is to plan the development of software, as relevant findings are usually only recognized during development. Only through a competent and motivated team with clear roles and open communication were we able to reach our goal together. Particular successes were the completion of the project, the delivery of the MVP and the learning of good communication and team cohesion.

The backend has been fundamentally implemented and can be easily expanded with new features. The front end has also been fundamentally implemented, but should be supplemented with additional convenience features.

It was a great, exciting and extremely instructive experience that not only challenged us professionally, but also helped us grow personally!

Live subtitling of video streams will continue to be of great importance in the future, for example in public debates, not least because the number of hearing-impaired people is likely to increase significantly with age due to regular listening to loud music. Software such as that used in the project can therefore provide a broad group of people with access to high-quality journalism and information. 

For us at GoSpeech, the main focus of the project was to promote the exchange of ideas and innovation through diverse perspectives. Developers who had not previously worked in the field of speech recognition brought in new perspectives, enabling recombinations and thus creating a fundamental pillar for digital innovation. In addition, as a partner, we wanted to offer students practical experience and potentially integrate their ideas into our existing software. We would like to thank the students of HTWK Leipzig for the exciting collaboration and look forward to future innovative collaborations with educational institutions!