Ruuva Development Updates 1
by Jeff Lam Tian Hung. Average Reading Time: about a minute.
In about 3-4 days, I have finished the HTML mockups for Ruuva’s main marketplace page, product page as well as shop page.
A lot of ‘design thoughts’ went into it. The biggest difficulty is the large uncertainty as to whether a design is particularly useful or like-able by the potential users at large – a lot of them are my personal intuition and experience as well as just pure aesthetics harmony.
That being said, I’m no rockstar designer (not even for user interfaces) and as such it will always have room for improvement. Besides, the user experience is still the most important thing and that comes in the form of great technology and code, in which mere HTML mockups will not display.
Things like ‘the less amount of clicks to view a certain things’ or ‘the ability to access anything from anywhere in less than 2 clicks’. The ability to maintain a certain uniform look to ensure consistency of a user’s navigation (and user friendliness in navigation) and many more. It’s time to code, and hence with my early mockups done, I’m delving into the backend code now.
I also have spoken with a potential partner and my buddy, Christopher, who knows a thing or two in the industry. Hopefully his insights will put Ruuva an edge over all the current competitors it has now.
Hi, your story sounds so interesting esp as a business person going into tech. What are your programming skills like? How good are you? I consider myself your average techie, but found your blog by way of chance. :D
Heya Stranger!
Thank you for reading my blog – I have to say I am guilty of not maintaining a healthy frequency of updates and care into it.
As mentioned, I am merely an extreme beginner. I do know HTML/CSS though (though I have to admit I am a bit not too updated with the latest HTML5′s recommended guidelines and CSS3′s new syntax and tricks) and in a way that may have helped a bit in reading and understanding some code.
I do however, have a huge problem with complicated logic at times. I’m going through the RailsTutorial by Michael Hartl so far and although I can follow it pretty decently, I completed skipped writing tests and doing TDD as I am focusing on simply getting a prototype asap (several reasons). Although I understand the tutorial and the various logic introduced, I still feel really new to it – it’s like learning how to hit swing a golf club properly only with an instructor guiding your every movement.
I do have another short post about my learning experiences though, and I’ll post it up along with updates to Ruuva’s development!
Cheers
Oh I see. No worries man. Thanks for the reply, you are such a humble chap.
With your technical skills (or lack thereof), isn’t it going to be problematic in coming up with a prototype? I am assuming it will take about 3-4 months with learning. Are you working? I have interned at tech companies and know that a lack of technical skills is going to lead to a bad product in the long run. Are you doing both at once, or?
Cheers
It’s difficult not to be humble when you are dealing with something you are far from proficient at! ;)
Anyways, indeed it may be quite problematic. That being said, the reason I chose RoR was that it felt (to me, at least) rather easy to pick up, seems very readable (since it’s convention over configuration), and the tutorial by M. Hartl is quite comprehensive. It is my 2nd time going through his tutorial since a few months back, and I can more or less catch everything (but as I said, it still isn’t driven deep into my brain yet).
Oh, and one more thing: I AM building a prototype (a “MVP” of sorts – I do try my best to follow the ‘Lean Startup’ principle that has gained so much in popularity) because I do believe in having some collaterals as I approach people – potential users, investors (we do intend to raise funds/get grants) and potentially programmers as co-founders or as ‘hires’. I just felt that to move forward I HAD to learn how to program (many reasons again) at least to get an early version done, then move on to get some traction before worrying about advancing the product.
To be honest, I think I can finish it in perhaps 2-4 weeks, as we reduced our spec for the first version a lot (no point having a complicated one without customer feedback anyways). Additionally I’m currently a student in NUS Business School (sorry, are you from Singapore?) and I have to say it is very, extremely, #!*@&#*!* tough. It is impending my progress on my current business as well as developing Ruuva a LOT. I did applied for a Leave of Absence from school (not quitting) for this semester, but for some reason they said they did not receive my application one day before school started. Oh wells.
You seem very knowledgable in tech! I would love to speak to you more perhaps through email as this commenting area seems rather…weak. Heh. Do reply me at jefflamth@gmail.com directly. I would love to hear from you any further tips/advice/pointers since you are a techie who has experience in tech companies!
Cheers