Lesson learned: it's all about balance.
A reflection on the my first Crash Challenge, what went/felt right, what went/felt wrong and what was learned.
You know those situations that you are excited to start, and feel excited when it's over? This is, certainly, one of those occasions.
As I've previously mentioned on my reflections, being in the Apple Developer Academy taught me that despite what I'd thought all my life, I like working in groups. However, I was still very excited to work on quick one-week challenges "by myself" for a change. (quote marks because in the Academy I never actually feel alone, since there are always people around)
Two challenges, two different themes. Let's go in chronological order.
#1: Interactive Story
Since we only had a week to work on something and I was looking forward to learning as much about developing as I could, I made the decision to go with the first idea that came to mind. That idea was to re-create an extremely unlucky day of my life, which took place in 2012, but in a funny way.
A few years ago I got addicted to a (kinda shameful) Visual Novel. Being quite lazy about the design, I used it as reference for my app layout, having pictures on the background to represent the locations and a small black rectangle to display interaction text. I've decided to go for custom memojis to make the story a bit more personal, especially after getting feedback that the story would probably not be as funny if the user could not picture me in those situations. The story was built using an informal tone, mixing reality and fiction making similar options for the same levels of the story.
At first, I tried using Storyboards to make it work. This was my first ever experience with UIKit, and it's not exactly a piece of cake to learn. Unfortunately, I've learned the hard way that storyboards did not personally make it easier — quite the opposite, actually.
So, I was kindly taught to manually set constraints for each element. Even though it seems less visual, it was much easier to understand how constraints worked this way. Obviously, it was easy because the screen had a very simple layout, but developing this project I learned:
- The logic behind constraints;
- A summarized version of the logic behind Navigation Controller in UIKit;
- A summarized version of how to use Model in UIKit.
I ended this week kinda happy that I'd learned a lot, but feeling kinda upset that I did such a sloppy job on the design. On the presentation day I was definitely not confident and ended up on what I believe was the worst presentation I've had in the Academy so far. I was not proud of my work, so I fast-forwarded on a lot of stuff, and ended up not even showing the story behind my app. This was certainly the low point of the challenge, but it was a lesson learned.
#2: Quiz
Let me admit. When I saw the second challenge was a quiz I was not motivated. I had just worked on a quiz on my mini challenge, which was not the most delightful experience. I was also kinda upset about the interactive story. So, I noticed I had to make a decision. I could either be bummed out, or just try to make the best of it. Gladly, I went for the second option.
The first idea that came to mind was working on the same subject I've worked on the WWDC Challenge. However, I see the Academy as a place to explore all areas, all different sorts of knowledge. I so faced my second decision: to either make something serious, or just pick some random, light theme to work on.
Since quizzes automatically get me thinking about BuzzFeed and their amazing quizzes, I thought of a silly idea: let's make a quiz that rewards someone with a BuzzFeed quiz.
First I wanted to use some sort of API for that. Then, I learned that BuzzFeed does not provide that. Perhaps at this point I should have just made something completely random, it was a buzzfeed meta-quiz anyways. But I went for the though option trying to make some logic out of it, which ended up being one of the biggest challenges of this project. To solve this, I've curated the most interesting quizzes I could find, and used a dendogram to make questions that would direct to each possible answer.
My biggest mistake on this project was not properly organizing the logic before I started coding or designing my screens. Talking about designing, I decided to work a bit harder on this part this time, using the BuzzFeed app layout and color palette as a base for the interface. Even though I ended up using FreePik images, I was quite happy about the outcome. This takes me to the biggest lesson I've learned in this challenge: it's all about balance. I did not need a design masterpiece, but I should have worked a bit harder on the design for the first challenge so I wouldn't be so disappointed at myself in the end.
This time, the constraints I've had to work on were more complex, there were more screens and elements. Even though I kinda messed up with the planning, I was finally happy with an outcome after quite a while.
