[what_is_orcas]

Wow, I built a prototype of something almost exactly like at my last job. It didn't go anywhere after that for a variety of reasons, but I remember asking myself "I wonder if this sort of thing would be worth releasing/open-sourcing?" Looks like I won't have to wonder forever, I can just watch y'all and find out.

[putrikarunia]

Oh interesting, what sort of issues did you face? Perhaps we could learn from your experience!

[what_is_orcas]

The main issue we had, and a big part of why it didn't get picked up, if you ask me, really came down to defining our user. The design team who requested it originally made it sound like it would be a tool that product-owners would use to build their sites, get approval from the design team, and push to go live, but I later came to understand that it was for the design team to design the websites so that they could hand the designs off to developers, which raised the question of what the developer would actually want from a designer to make their lives easier. I (the only developer in the conversation) requested an internal component library, but when I left 6 months later they were still wrestling with the question of how to give developers designs...

I hope y'all don't have anything to learn from that experience... at least y'all have gone to production =)

[putrikarunia]

I see... Interesting problem, we had a similar issue previously where we didn't define our users well. This time we rigorously interviewed potential users before even started anything :D