Design3

Published in

groceristar

5 min readFeb 11, 2019

This text is an actual reply to our new design intern.
I start to write a quick reply, but they’re a lot of details, that it’s better to have an article.

I’ll explain my concerns.
Our coding process, not a usual way to build software.
Instead of coding something all of our work time(aka monolithic structure)
we split Big problems(that we cannot solve by default ways) into a small one, that can be solved with our limited resources.

This is actually the reason why we still developing our project -> because I decided that it is better to have a battle-tested modular project(aka microservices), that can be easily used or update in next years, and also can be shared with a community for free. It can gain our respect, attention, and promotion in the foodie’s community.

Our previous designers(plus I hope my experience) give us a good start, by creating first designs that we can use.

Designs are important for developers. Developers can code quicker because visuals help a lot and better than long specification.
But as our code didn’t release to the public, I have felt like we put everything in our pockets and hide it. I think other people can benefit from our work and it must be shared in a short amount of time.

It’s also bad for me personally, because when I’m networking, people only can see my previous work, and as it soon will be 2 years like I’m only working on this project — I think we need to release something cool.

So this is my concerns.

In order to find the best way, let’s have a list of priorities, that will be cool to meet.

I think that we should have a discussion and decide together, what we will do next.

because if you will join us I want to have some result in the end. That will follow these principles.

1) It will be interesting for you to do. I hate boring work.

2) It will a bit custom. Your work should be outstanding, due to your skill and notes from my side.

3) It should benefit to the food community somehow. Like simple things, that shared for free and boost attention to my company and your portfolio

4) It should correlate with my latest plans. I hope plans to launch a server for sharing recipe data
coding school that will increase the number of people that code with me together
It can also be correlated with something that is “trending” right now.

5) It also shouldn’t be very hard for you to do. I mean things can change and you wouldn’t be able to complete a hard and long task. So a small project will be easy to complete and it wouldn’t overwhelm you.

For example:
people don’t google recipes a lot anymore. or ingredients.
Instead of more people start to google fitness, wellness, diets, and a healthy lifestyle.

This is why I’m was interested in the new UI kit release from invisionapp.
They did good work that can save us time and they are very popular.
Actually, they are using the same principals -> helping to design community and promote their product.

or AntDesign -> it’s a UI Framework, that getting a lot of attention right now and usually used at big Chinese tech projects(Alipay, Taobao I assume?) And their code maintained for the high level of projects.

And more and more projects using it as a starting point.

Let me show you an explanation of how I’m thinking. maybe it will help.

We are coding a lot. we have a lot of things that we are created, researched and using during our development process. Like documentation, links to some other open source projects.
Our stuff maybe not popular right now, but other companies prefer to keep it shut, so I think we are going a good thing(by saving time and money) or maybe we just stupid.

So, we have a package that we are using. in order to have a different “lists”. Like select field should have options inside. List of ingredients, vitamins, calories…

And it’s part of our code. maybe our code is far behind our goals and ideal conditions, but that lists can be used at another project.

Like, remember the design of an app that I show you?[link]

And if we move away from these lists and pack them well -> it can be a separated project/product, with its own users.

I also explain how I plan to help food website owners to make their own app.

And this approach of making something looks like an interesting and inspiring challenge for you because you can help more people and they will use your work.

Additional information

In order to make this article longer and more detailed, I will put some samples of our work

Design3

Written by Arthur Tkachenko