During the Christmas holiday, I had a chance to connect with a few friends experienced in software development and had a good time talking about the project. A core topic was defining the MVP properly and my initial ideal state for MVP was a tad incomplete. It would have been more of a major milestone then a minimum viable product, it was missing some core features that would separate itself and provide value to its users. So I took sometime to redefine what the MVP will look like and the features required for the MVP. I also took this time to review and update the UI and UX experience as well as spending time to redesign my database. One major change was changing from SQLite to MySQL. It was great to start it off in SQLite, but my lack of knowledge in SQLite and the actual features available prevented me from making certain changes or using certain data types. It forced me to make alternative decisions during my development and knowing that I’ll move away from it eventually. I bite the bullet and migrated over to MySQL, even if I was to migrate to a cloud service in the future, it would not be a major problem.
After redoing my database, I spend a considerable amount of time to refactor my code base for both my backend and frontend with the new database. I also developed some additional features and pages such as navigation, registration and user login. After making revision to the feature requirements, the development of these features and pages were much more on point. This resulted in more a accurate development and less revision of the feature.
After the last bit of coding and testing, I’m going to be getting ready to develop the user dashboard along with potentially revisiting the design and aesthetic of the web application. I’ve got a few rough drafts of it on Figma but still considering a few color palate and background choices. I will provide an update once the dashboard is complete or something more interesting comes up!