Project3

http://excuse-me.herokuapp.com/ ~ Hailey & Joe ~

#Technical Requirements

• Build a full-stack application by making your own backend and your own front-end
  • Note that if you build an app using Ionic, a backend is optional. However, look into services such as Firebase if you'd like a service for storing data.
• Have an interactive front-end, preferably using a modern front-end framework
• Be a complete product, which most likely means multiple relationships and CRUD functionality for at least a couple models. However, this is ultimately up to your discretion.
• Use a database, whether that's one we've covered in class or one you want to learn
• Implement thoughtful user stories that are significant enough to help you know which features to build and which to scrap
• Have a visually impressive design to kick your portfolio up a notch and have something to wow future clients & employers
• Be deployed online so it's publicly accessible

The Startup

• What is your application (elevator pitch, ideally in one sentence): Everyone has a story about a time they needed to come up with an excuse to get out of something or where a friend used them to get out of something. ExcuseMe generates those excuses for you and provides you with the option to have it appear like someone sent a text to you giving you the feedom to get out of anything.
• What value does your application provide to your audience?: ExcuseMe takes the pressure out of coming up with an excuse. All you have to do is flip through our extensive list of excuses and choose the one that works for you. Having the option to have it sent as a text takes the pressure off you having to lie. Simply show the person you're trying to ditch your text and say "Sorry!" and you're free.
• What steps have you taken to entice users? (user experience, a fancy frontend, trying out functionality before being forced to signup): Users are free to look though our excuses for free and get a feel for what we have to offer. If they like what they see we encourage them to sign up and that grants them the option of texting themself an excuse text, it also allows them to save their favorite excuses for fast future access.

Technologies Used:

• Angular
• Mongo
• Express
• Java Script
• Html
• CSS
• Bootstrap
• Twilio API

Installation Instructions:

• Fork and clone the reapo.
• Run npm install to install the dependencies.
• Create a .env with your Twilio auth token, Twilio account SID, Twilio number, and set SECRET = to a unique password
• In the controllers section, under the AdminCtrl and NavCtrl change the phone numbers to your number/numbers
• Add excuses to the excuses database.
• Have fun!

User Stories:

Annie is 21 and an avid user of hookup apps. As a result she has gone on some truely terrible dates. Rather than stick around through a terrible date, she needs a way to excuse herself that won't hurt her failed dates feelings.

Sawyer is a 24 year old techie and loves going to hackathons and networking events. He has a difficult time finding excuses to leave conversations that he no longer wishes to participate in and wishes there was a way to just leave without seeming rude.

Maisie is 33. She loves her family and friends but meeting their friends can be a bit of a gamble. She needs an easy way out when she knows things aren't going well that won't insult anyone and will preserve her relationships with her loved ones.

Wireframes:

Approach Taken:

Day 1:

We talked through what we wanted our app to do, went over user flow and wire frames, started planning out the neccessary routes and found an API that would allow us to send text messages. We spent a good part of the day wrestling with trying to get Twilio to work for us.

Day 2:

The struggle continues. Twilio will only send texts to Joe's phone today. We're looking into why and trying to fix that. We're also building out the routes and HTML for the rest of the app.

Day 3:

We had a pretty successful day. Added a lot of various points of functionality despite having to redistribute the tasks due to losing a team member.

Day 4:

We finished up our core functionalities. Favorites works, comments works, along with profile updating and several other things. Things are looking good for deployment tomorrow.

Day 5:

We went through and corrected any bugs we found in our code and started using more Bootstrap to style our app. We also deployed our app to Heroku.

Roadbumps:

The Twilio API took a while to figure out and required a lot of work. Figuring out how to update the comments took a lot of work as well.