Learning Along the Way

It took me two months to identify a crucial design fail in my platform.

ClassPulse, said platform, is a website I am developing that aims to narrow the gap between students and teachers in learning environments. ClassPulse began as an experimental project, where I sought to discover just how far curiosity and personal research could take me for a rather ambitious goal––after all, I am not so well-versed in programming that I could derive a website from a blank document. However, as I progressed, I became exposed to countless remarkable tools built for this exact quest, whether they covered databases or coding––tools that could enable an ordinary student like me to make something great.

And so I continued with ClassPulse, transforming it from an idea––a "maybe"––into a working website with coherent functions and a stable database, well-built enough to implement in real classrooms. Or so I thought.

About two months into the process, I realized I had one significant issue with design: my local development platform had no distinction from my product platform. That is to say, the site that I was using for ClassPulse to update and make changes was synced up with the version that actual users have access to. Instead of making alterations separately and pushing them to the main branch, every update went immediately user-facing. This has many potential problems. For one, any updates will interrupt live sessions, which can lead to data loss and overall site frustration. It also makes reversing unwanted changes much riskier.

Though my initial reaction to this realization was discouragement, I found out that much of my work thus far could be salvaged. That being said, much had to be redone as well.

My most crucial takeaway from this unfortunate set of events is that having a solid plan and foundation is arguably the most important part of projects like these. Building a hotel on a quicksand base will sink it all.

Image Credits: Chiaramonte, Susan. “EduCred Services | Higher Education Consultants.” EduCred Services | Higher Education Consultants, 28 Aug. 2019, www.educredservices.com/blog/2019/8/28/the-crumpled-paper-theory.