It has now been about one month since we launched Whydeo; the outcome of my class’s Marketing and Promotion module at Hyper Island. It was a great project and I learned an insane amount of new stuff. I would especially like to thank the other people I was working with in the development team; Linnéa Becker, Linda Sandvik and Chris Raynor.
I thought it would be nice with a classic sum-up and some “do:s and don’t:s” that I have learned during the project.
- Always start with scaling down the concept execution into one feature. If you’re not happy with that single feature, start thinking about tweaking or perhaps even changing the main execution. After watching some of the documentation from the very first meetings I realize that we have made huge changes since then.
- When doing interfacing and prototyping, start with the simplest grid idea you can come up with and then tweak it.
- Spend more time on making the main ideas and features actually work before starting to think about additional features.
- If you are looking to spread your content on social platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, implement those sharing features before the launch.
- Read up on Git’s features and learn how to use them. Too much time in the development process of Whydeo was spent on solving merge conflicts and code that was lost, possibly partly because we didn’t master Git that well.
- Make a HTML mockup and user test it before starting the backend and JavaScript behavior.
- When creating something that normally isn’t a part of a “plain” website, consider using a framework. This is for various reasons:
- Greatly speed up the development process.
- Setting a standard for how the code is to be written that the other developers in the team should follow, encouraging consistency.
- Minimize security holes and leaks.
- Opening up and simplify the process of creating a future API.
- Surround yourself with inspiring people. It may be other developers that inspire you professionally, inspiring managers or simply just great people that motivate you with their personality.
- Show people your appreciation. Continuously.
Last, for you that wonders if there will be any further development on the project – Y.E.S. We are looking into taking Whydeo on other platforms, at the same time as we are trying to get an overview of the reports in the issue tracker.
Let the conversations start! I would suggest you start answering this question: http://whydeo.com/post/answer/1085?view=thumb.
P.S.
Also, check out our class gallery website, dm11sto.com! Made by same team as us behind Whydeo.
D.S.
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June 1st 2010, 14:17
