The Weekr V2: Authentication & The Cloud
After first few months of running The Weekr, the main question for me was “what’s next?”. It appeared that authentication and cross-device data sync was the way. Why? Because of users.
Feedback Strategy
If you follow this blog, you may know that I am a big fan of the Lean Approach (the book by Eric Ries). That’s why I constantly was trying to listen to users: I added a feedback form from Hotjar and created few fake buttons (sorry, but that’s true): to check the demand on different features . And as you may understand, The Weekr 2.0 is the result of this constant feedback.
Technical Information
I hate reinventing the wheel, so whenever I do, I first look into existing solutions. And that’s how I found Firebase Database from Google and its serverless approaches which I successfully used in The Weekr for authentication and storage of all data per each user. I believe this topic worth a separate article.
During the development process I raised to myself few important questions:
“What to do with existing data of users who want to authenticate? Do I simply provide them with fresh and empty DB from the cloud? Do I transfer all the data? Do I let users continue using our service locally? What services should I use for authentication?”
For me, top priority is experience of users and since The Weekr already had some users, I couldn’t simply force them to do some new actions. That’s why I allowed them to continue using the service locally without any authentication. In case of authentication, they will be asked to transfer their data to the cloud. I also decided not to clear local data in case they pick option “Not to transfer”. Who knows, maybe it’s a friend who uses their machine.
Regarding ways of authentication — it was easy: hopefully Firebase provides solution for almost everything. For now I did not want to play with manual authentication (login + password) and play with email confirmations, password reset etc. That’s why I picked two most used social authentications: Google and Facebook.
Authentication Tutorial
Besides some details of the process which I mentioned above in technical part (such as data transfer process), I draw a simple picture to show the way of authentication for those who didn’t get that at first sight.
After that, the modal which you saw earlier will appear and when users decide whether to transfer data or simply load existing data, they will be authenticated.
Conclusion of V2
Authentication & cloud storage was the main feature of this release, however there were many more small improvements and fixes, check it out at The Weekr. Please let me know in comments whether this authentication process is straightforward for you and what do you expect next from The Weekr.
