Weekly Sprint #4: User Research
This week I reached out to several origami artists regarding the potential of FoldFeed after it is launched. Receiving feedback from my target audience was particularly informative. Several artists noted functionalities that they would like to see implemented in the system, and overall it was exciting to see that people are actually interested in using such an application.
This sprint began by adding functionalities to the user profile pages. In addition to the number of posts, followers, and following, each profile page now displays the three most recent posts from that user.
When the user clicks on the “New Post” link from the navigation bar, they are now redirected to this page which asks them to choose what type of content they will be posting. Prior to this week, I had focused on creating generic posts to test system functionalities, but now I will be breaking FoldFeed content into four separate categories: photos, videos, diagrams, and events. I am still working on implementing the necessary features for the “photo” post type, so the video, diagram, and event post types are all on my priority list.
If the user selects “Photo” from the list of post types, they will be prompted to type in specific information pertaining to that photo so that it can be stored and found in the database through a search. In order to improve searchability, users must now select what type of origami design they are posting from a dropdown list. For instance, if a user wanted to post a kusudama, they would select the “Modular > Kusudama” category from the dropdown before posting to FoldFeed. This way, users will be able to find similar works and search for other designs in each category.
Towards the end of this week’s sprint, I began looking into back-end security through Firebase. In addition to the front-end input validation that I implemented last week, I plan to learn about and write security rules for the Firebase database in case the front-end data validation is somehow surpassed. Next week, I plan to start writing security rules as well as implementing support for all four different post types (instead of limiting users to a single “photo” post type).
