All Good Things Must Come To An End

Jon Ramer
Jon Ramer
Jul 25, 2017 · 9 min read

Day 100 is in the books! Wow, it feels really surreal to be writing this blog today. There is so much to recap from the last 10 days. I intended to provide one more update in between the last post and this one, but the capstone week was even crazier than anticipated.

The Grind

The last two weeks have been a serious grind. They were simultaneously the most fun and most challenging weeks of the entire program. They represent a culmination of everything that I learned in the program. I will do my best to recap them here, but I certainly won’t be able to do them justice in just one post.

The Project

The project that I took on was to build an application that allowed aspiring art collectors to get curated art recommendations that fit both their personal style and budget. I was building this application for a very important client who also happens to be my wife.

About a year ago my wife noticed that there wasn’t a great way to buy art online. There are lots of options out there, but they were missing something. For one thing just figuring out where to buy art online is a bit overwhelming. There are so many solutions and they each have their own benefits and drawbacks. One of the big problems with many of these solutions is that they are very impersonal. So that’s the first problem that we wanted to try and address. Another problem was that many of these solutions require the collector to do all of the work. That’s the second big problem that we needed to tackle. With these challenges in mind we set out to build what we’re currently calling Conservateur.

Challenge

The biggest challenge of this project was also the most fun part of it. This was my first time working with a stakeholder to build something that brings their vision to life. In all of my previous projects I had the advantage of building my own idea. The advantages to building your own idea are many. For example you get to make all of the decisions and you don’t have to wait for anyone else. This allows you to move quickly. You also have the added benefit of working on your own time. With a stakeholder you must plan ahead and work to find a time that works for everyone to nail down the necessary requirements to move the project forward. This was complicated by the fact that my stakeholder was traveling for the majority of the project. I had to lean on my project management experience to make sure that we were moving forward and were headed in the right direction.

Advantages

There are also some clear advantages to working with a stakeholder. It was great experience for me because this is much closer to a real world scenario where I will be getting requirements from stakeholders and I’ll be responsible for building and maintaining their products. It was also pretty cool to work with someone who is an expert in the space and who has a clear vision of what problem the product should solve. It was really rewarding to be able to think through the problems that we needed to solve and have a dialogue about how we could find the right solution. I really enjoyed the process of defining a need, building a solution, and then iterating and making the necessary adjustments until we had something that worked.

The Product

We tried to keep things simple and clean. The goal was to make it as simple as possible for a collector to come to the site and book a consultation with a curator. The overall design is neutral and minimalistic. There isn’t a lot of noise. Below is what the user sees when they visit the home page.

We tried to explain the process in a simple way so that the collector could easily transition to booking a consultation. Below is an example of what the user is presented with on the How it Works page. We gave the user the option of completing a simple form that will email a curator if they still have questions after reading through how the process works.

Once the user is ready to book a consultation they will navigate to the start a collection page where we will establish the requirements for the piece of art they are looking for.

Once the user submits their consultation form a curator receives an email with all of their requirements. The curator can then start researching through our network of artists to find paintings that meet the requirements of the collector.

The curator will send an email to the collector with several suggestions about paintings that fit their needs. Ultimately the collector will select a piece and make a purchase. That’s a high level explanation of the process. You can check out the live project here in more detail if you’re interested.

Takeaways

I learned so much from this project and the overall experience was invaluable. These are just a few highlights from the journey:

Working with my wife to bring this project to life was a blast. I’m realizing more and more that working with great people who are excited about the product is of great value. This project required way more hours than any of my previous projects, but it was also the most energizing. That is because I was working with a great team and we were excited about what we were building.

2. Agile is great

I tried my best to follow an agile workflow for this project. My goal after each stand-up meeting was to get a working version of those specific features up and running as soon as possible. At all times I was gathering as much feedback as possible from the stakeholder. I then iterated on those features until we were happy enough to move on to the next set of features. This really kept things moving at a good pace and ensured that I was headed in the right direction. Getting feedback from the stakeholder was crucial in preventing me from making assumptions that could potentially lead to wasted time. On past projects I have spent too much time thinking about what I was going to do and not enough time actually doing it.

3. I Really Enjoy UI/UX Design

I found myself really enjoying the process of putting myself in the shoes of the user. I knew what my stakeholder wanted the user experience to be so I found myself constantly thinking about whether or not what I was coding would meet those standards. Putting myself in the shoes of the user made my code better.

4. Code is About People Not Problems

I’ve often thought that I really loved coding because of the interesting problems that I got to solve. During this project I had somewhat of a revelation. I love coding because of the people not the problems. I love the people that I get to work with and the people whose lives can be positively impacted by the code that I’m writing. That’s where the real magic is for me. During this project I saw moments where my wife would light up when thinking about the possibilities of what this app could do. Those moments were some of the most rewarding experiences of this project.

It’s Only The Beginning

My time in this program has come to an end, but this is only the beginning. I’m more excited than ever about what the future holds for me now that I have all of these new skills. I can’t wait to put what I’ve learned to use and to continue expanding on my skillset.

New Developments

A few exciting things have happened since graduation. First, I landed a small contract working with a window outfitter in Dallas to improve some aspects of their sales process. I’m very excited to have the opportunity of working with them!

Second, I landed a short term teaching role with a company called Hello World. Hello World teaches kids in Austin how to code, and I’m extremely excited about this opportunity. I’ll be teaching some middle schoolers and I can’t wait to get started in early August.

Meanwhile I’m still looking for a full-time role and that is where I will be spending the majority of my time each day.

What’s Next?

I will continue keeping up with the blog. The pace will slow to one or two posts a week. I’ll keep you guys posted on what I’m learning and any developments on the job search. I appreciate you guys for following along this journey with me and I hope that you will continue to do so!

Gratitude

I’m feeling incredibly grateful to have had this opportunity. I realize that it’s a privilege to be able to make a career change like this and find something that I’m really passionate about. I owe a special thanks to my instructor Zubair Desai. Zubair is easily the best instructor that I’ve ever had. He is not only an incredible engineer and teacher, but he’s an even better person. He went above and beyond at every opportunity during this program. He gave us 110% of his energy every single day. He genuinely cares about each one of us and I couldn’t be more grateful to him. My life will forever be changed for the better for having studied under and known him for the last six months.

I also want to say thank you to you for reading along and supporting me on this journey. It has been a great joy to share some of my experiences with you!

Finally I would like to say thank you to my wife. I couldn’t have done any of this without her. She has been unbelievably supportive and encouraging throughout this entire process. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and I’m a better person for being married to her. She has made a tremendous sacrifice for me to be here and I’m incredibly grateful for her love and support.

That’s enough rambling for now. Stay tuned for more info soon! Until next time…happy coding.

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