Note:
Ever since the launch of this application, some of the functionalities we initially created have been been browser deprecated and whenever we have time we will try to arrange and refactor some of those issues.
Hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me...
Like previously stated, for a normal content creator, there's simply not enough information on their audience. How old are they? Are they pretty much neutral as they're consuming the creator's hard work? A lot of the time they have to either resort to forms that almost never get filled, or by trying to get some faulty analytics dependent on the users providing real information whenever they created their accounts. The idea behind Motus was to build a project that we could build to give content creators the only tool they would need in order to get the analytics they had been dreaming of. Not provided by group tests done by consultants. Not provided by focus groups, but provided directly, literally from their audience's face.
OverReacting?
The second goal of this project (and probably more important for our case) was to get all the knowledge we had been gathering in previous 9 weeks of Ironhack Berlin's Bootcamp and apply it to a real life scenario. A real world application. All of this by using React and Node to create a Full Stack Application. The final goal was there. But for the first two days of the project, we flipped over multiple project ideas. We were desperate, we were starting to get nervous and stressed. Truth be told we were starting to overreact. But, as this project was presented, we all knew that all that "hardship" gave us one thing that we probably wouldn't be able to simulate - a sense of real urgency. We didn't have a lot of time to procrastinate. We had to be direct and provide feedback and communicate with structure.
Right Hook? Or React Hooks?
This section is a little clickbaity. The idea is not only to talk about React Hooks, but rather to discuss the impact of new technologies or new ideas. Without Marco, or Alfonso, this project would have not taken 1 week to finish. Being flexible enough to rewrite our code as we learned new techniques also gave us a great chance to grow as new developers. Not only learning React Hooks, but how to better utilize data analytics and to figure out communicate all this, between three latin people that barely had coded anything just 3 months before.
Future updates
We don't know when we will get together and work again on this project, but for sure we want to. This was not only a great experience, but we also believe this is actually an idea with potential. Ideally, this could be provided (in the future) as some kind of browser extension that is checking if a specific pixel or identifier is somewhere provided in a page and we could, then, connect it to other content platforms. The idea of the emotional recognition, we believe, has a lot more power than the content platform. Imagine, you post something on Medium - you're getting emotional analytics, but also real demographic information and pertinent data - like time on page. The moment the user changes tabs, we save the data, in order not to skew the collection. If, for some reason, we are unable to get access to the camera, we still get the numbers and time speant on that content.
Special Thanks
To all the people that helped us and calmed us down in our times of "trouble" - the amazing Ironhack teaching staff - Montasar, Svenja, Bruno, Min, and Pierre - but also to our amazing colleagues and friends that helped us not only by providing some company but also good sparring partners for us to be able to bounce some ideas and check their validity. From my side, really a big thanks to both Marco and Alfonso. It was really a great week of work and I still can't believe how great we worked together!
