OutHives 🐝
A New Way of getting things done
Story
I wanted to work on an idea from scratch, start to finish, and develop something completely to explore the challenges that come with building products. This includes the design, development, UI/UX lifecycle, decision-making, technical debt, and everything in between.
I also wanted to see what technologies I could use. I chose this idea because I felt it was worth pursuing. Marketplaces are fun and require you to take multiple perspectives, presenting unique challenges.
To tackle this, I set out with several key learning objectives and development goals:
✦ Deep User Research
✦ Iterative UI/UX Design
✦ Full-Stack Development
✦ Robust API Creation
✦ Complex Database Schema
✦ Real-time Interactivity
✦ Async Task Management
✦ Cloud Infrastructure
"It took about 4 months to actualize, from start to finish..."
"...and what an incredibly fun journey it turned out to be!"
Learnings
this project was a huge learning curve. I quickly discovered that building something from the ground up comes with its own set of unexpected lessons:
✦ Battling Distractions: It was a real battle to stay focused. New ideas and potential features kept popping up, and I often found myself tempted to chase them, even if they weren't core to the initial vision.
✦ Feature Creep: I definitely fell into the 'feature creep' trap. What started as a simple idea of connecting people in need of a service with people who can provide it, began to balloon in my mind – suddenly I was thinking about adding a marketplace, then items, then a whole social platform! It was a classic case of trying to do too much too soon.
✦ Sticking to the Core: Sticking to the main problem I wanted to solve was harder than I thought. I'd sometimes find myself deep in developing a feature that, in hindsight, was pretty far removed from what users actually needed or what I initially set out to build.
✦ Avoiding Reinvention: I also learned the hard way about 'reinventing the wheel.' There were times I spent ages building something that I later realized had a perfectly good existing solution I could have used, saving a ton of time and effort.
✦ Prioritization is Key: Perhaps the biggest takeaway was the critical importance of prioritization. Learning to constantly step back, look at the big picture, and ask 'what's *really* important right now?' became essential to making actual progress and not just spinning my wheels on exciting but non-essential tasks.
Every Detour, A Lesson Learned
These weren't always easy lessons, and there were definitely moments of frustration. But looking back, every challenge and every misstep was a valuable piece of the puzzle in understanding what it truly takes to bring an idea to life.
Launch Version
V1 Beta
Main Ads Interface