Join me on my journey to bring Steem/it to the masses.
It is getting very close to the end of the journey for the beta version of Let's Eat. I made no update last week due to travel (and testing) in Munich and London.
London
The app is posting on the Steem blockchain but the real eye catching part of the app is the map view. Finding places to eat is a breeze and leaving your review, photos and rating on the Steem Blockchain is even easier.
I made it to the London Cryptocurrency Show on Saturday and got to show the app to some Steemians.
Last Week of Development
The plan for development this week is to finalise the build then next week blind testing, optimisation for devices, final bugs and submission to the App Store.
Learnings
Terms and Conditions
There are a few legal requirements when you publish an app such as:
- Terms and Conditions
- Privacy Policy
The latter is even more complicated in Europe where we will shortly be coming under the GDPR directive. In developing Lets Eat I wanted to keep my risks to a minimum;
- I have implemented Steem Connect so that I do not have responsibility for passwords
- I will not be collecting any user data (besides basic bug reports and usage stats temporarily) so I will not be holding GDPR related data.
- The user data that anyone posts will be limited to that that is stored on the Public Steem Blockchain so again that will not be my responsibility but I will make it clear in the user terms and conditions that this is where the data will be stored.
- For the beta version I will be storing user submitted images on an AWS server so I will need to monitor this to make sure there is not any illegal content but over time I would like to put that back in the hands of the user possibly using IPFS.
The issue I have with images is where does my responsibility for storing them end? At some stage its not inconceivable that links may be broken to old posts but then again this is a problem with Steemit already.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this?
Bugs
This week I came across many minor UX issues with the app which have taken some time to work through.
When I started this process I expected (naively) that bugs would mean tweaks to the implementation. If I discovered that one screen should link to another screen or a button wasn't places in the right place they were bugs in my mind.
These types of bugs are not something you can necessarily plan for and through testing and iteration you would get to the finished product.
In the development world bugs have a different meaning. Bugs in this world refer to differences between specifications and the product. In effect you (as the consumer) have to check the work that you have specified for errors. This is has always been quite infuriating to me because I am very detailed in my specifications as a rule and after submitting specifications my eye is usually on the bigger picture. For this project I have spent much more time than I was expecting looking for "bugs" which have included typos in text, obvious visual issues and even payouts being displayed incorrectly and not corresponding to Steemit.com.
Standards
My expectations coming into this project with these "bugs" was I could take for granted them to be correct, the UX issues would be fully tested and the app would be clean on completion. I am paying enough money for it after all!
My energies would be better spent on tweaking the design, promoting the app and planning for future iterations of it.
Onwards & Upwards
Having shared this experience I am still confident that the app will be delivered in budget but there may be a slight delay in getting it up to the play store. It is important to get the quality of the app to the standard that the Steemit Community deserve.
I envisage this app as making the interaction more enjoyable for those who write and read restaurant reviews on Steemit and being intuitive to use for people that know nothing about blockchain and crypto.
This app will also bring new users to Steemit that want to get good honest Restaurant Reviews and find places to Eat while on holidays.
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
Thomas Edison
Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Travel.
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