Baked and Iced — A Project Breakdown
Today I want to talk about a project I took on a week after I graduated from my coding boot camp. I have a friend with a home-based business selling cookies, but I noticed that she didn’t have much of an online presence. After talking with her, I decided that I would build a website mock-up for her business and offered to manage it for her provided that she liked the mock-up. From there I started to plan, and plan, and plan some more.
I decided to make the structure of the website my starting point. I divided the layout of the mock-up into the home, flavors, about, order, and contact sections. Since I would be working on it section by section I decided to make each section a React component. I also decided to use a CSS framework called Bootstrap in combination with some custom HTML/CSS and JavaScript when it was necessary. Also, because an estimated 60% of internet traffic comes through mobile devices I knew that responsiveness would be an important aspect of this project.
Once I had a general structure in mind I moved on to the design. I went back to the client to talk about what work was done so far and to get some information about her business, her story, and herself in general. Beyond just conveying information about her cookies, I wanted her website to tell her story. Like many business owners, she had a good one. I also took some time to jot down some notes about her color preferences, styling preferences, and anything else that I thought would come in handy later on. The one phrase she mentioned a few times was that she wanted something “personal.”
…Huh
Let me come back to that one. Now I knew the design aspect would be a challenge. Truth be told I’m not really design-oriented. In my own life, I lean towards simplicity and functionality when making design decisions. Oftentimes, when I look at the fashion choices and design decisions of others I simply don’t get it. Recently, my wife was watching some highlights from the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. And…
Yeah, don’t always get it but as long as the person wearing the outfit is happy then I’m happy. And for myself, I knew I would have to do some more research in this area. So, I started looking at the websites of other dessert shops in the local area to get some ideas. I also read up on color theory and was surprised to learn how much color choice can affect the perception of a business. And with that information in mind, I started to think about how I could combine those principles to make something “personal.”
In previous jobs, my tasks were a lot more straightforward. When I washed dishes the goal was to clean and sanitize them. When I worked in a hospital and someone wasn’t breathing, the goal was to get them breathing. Not always easy, but pretty straightforward right? Making a website “personal” however, not so much. I ended up having to go back and review some notes. I had written down that my client loved photos, loved her family, and loved the city of Miami so I decided to take that and roll with it. After a few hours of pacing around the house, I was finally hit by some inspiration.
The end result came out great but more importantly, my friend loved it. She really, really loved it. And after two weeks of work, I loved that she loved it. Unfortunately, she ended up having to take a break from her business for personal reasons but the experience as a whole was still great for me. For starters, it pushed me out of my comfort zone. A lot of what I learned in my coding BootCamp transferred well into this project, but there was a lot I still had to learn on my own during the course of the project.
The other aspect I appreciated was how the project made me a lot more comfortable working with ambiguous requirements. Every challenge we take on won’t always have a straightforward solution. Arguably, most of them won’t and there’s where creativity and persistence come into play. During the course of the project, I wasn’t always confident that I would be able to figure out what I needed to figure out. However, I learned that a problem can always be solved with enough contemplation and research. That’s something that I will take with me for the rest of my career.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and to get to know me better. Feel free to leave a comment and follow me on Medium. Also, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn!
