Ask HN: How to plan a webapp before building it?

3 points by zubairlk 5 years ago | 5 comments

Hi everyone,

I was wondering what level of planning do people do here before diving into making a webapp?

e.g. Let's say a customer comes along and asks for a 2 sided marketplace for renting bikes.

What would be a gold standard level of spec/planning before we start building things?

Should we make low fidelity wireframes?

Plan a site map? User types and privileges? User stories?

Background: We to build webapps for customers using bubble.io (nocode platform). It's too easy to just dive in and figure things out as we go but I've found that we end up reworking quite a few things. I'd like to rework less and plan more.

I'd appreciate the wisdom of the HN crowd.

Ideal would be light overhead but accurate spec. Although not sure if that exists.

viviansolide 5 years ago |

Hard to say.

But you get the idea, wireframes and user stories are a good starting point. Sitemaps are great too.

For tiny projects, I use Sketch to get a prototype. The client may easily stumble upon something unexpected.

zubairlk 5 years ago | |

These are good for client facing work?

Any tips for the database side?

It is easy to paint something in a wireframe, but the database has to be structured in a certain way for the app to work as well.

viviansolide 5 years ago | | |

For the database side, I suggest NoSQL databases such as MongoDB. You're able to add, change properties very easily.

At the same time, however, you don't have an ORM designer, which is very handy to design databases.

For the back-end, I use Strapi. Which is great for prototyping or industry-grade server app.

Hope this helps.

zubairlk 5 years ago |

Feels like this is going to be an empty thread...