“Wow that looks ugly.” That was the first thought in my head as soon as I switched to mobile view. There was so much time I had spent formatting the page and elements to look display on the screen just to see it in complete disarray when viewed from a smaller screen. The thought of the page being altered by customers using a mobile device had not even entered my mind. And thus I began researching how I could use web development technologies like Remix to maintain layouts whether on a mobile device or through a web browser.
There were really two breakthroughs for me through this mishap. The first was that design really matters. If a layout looks prettier or seems well organized, you’re just more likely to use it more. Even things that may seem trivial like if two or three objects should be on a row make a big difference towards the overall usability of the application. The second was that I needed to think like someone who was would use the application rather than just a programmer. For example, I had completely missed the (now obvious) idea of a customer using a the website through their phone and the necessity of the web format to translate properly to a smaller screen. The overarching point that I learned to take into future projects is spending the adequate time to plan and think of possible problems in the future because it’s usually easier to build things with a direction than to have to go back and make major revisions.
Overall, I think that this class is good in involving students in a team environment. You learn how to work together and split responsibilities. There are not that many courses that require extensive use of collaboration, so that is definitely something positive. Another strong point is the freedom offered in the class to on how to approach the project, along with giving students the responsibility to learn about the technologies themselves. The graded and extra credit discussions throughout the term were also interesting and I spent more time reading through classmates posts than I expected. One weakness of the course I think may be that some of the projects seem extensive to complete in the provided time if the students are starting from scratch. Actually this is a positive and a negative because it does push students to learn more and test their abilities. I think a way to make this class better would actually be to make it a two term course. In my opinion, working on a large, team project like this is one of the most valuable parts of students learning and having an additional term would be beneficial. I believe non-postbacc students spend one full year on their capstone. A threat that can lead to a bad experience for students would be if the projects offered are too hard or too easy. There should be a happy middle ground leaning towards “too hard.”
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