Observatory

Inspiration

For this hackathon, I wanted to work on a project that I would enjoy. I thought of my interests, and decided on a website that would promote astrophotography. I took inspiration from social media apps related to sharing pictures, such as Instagram and VSCO.

What it does

Currently, the Observatory website simply greets users, introduces it's mission and future plans, and describes a little bit about me and my thought process when creating this project.

How I built it

1. I first planned out the design, formatting, colour schemes, picture placements, and flow of the project all out on Figma.

1.5. I experimented a bit with Anima, however for a smaller-scale project such as this one, I concluded it was better to start coding my prototype right away rather than continuing with a software I'm unfamiliar with. (It may prove useful in the future though!)

2. Here is when I start writing code. Since I have a rather small foundation of HTML and CSS, converting my prototype into actual code was challenging, yet a rewarding and enjoyable experience since I was having fun learning along the way.

3. This is the stage I'm sure all individuals working on a project go through, and that's debugging and fixing errors. There were many times I wondered why things were not working, however I didn't let such hardships stop me, and naturally kept going until I assembled a product I was satisfied with :)

Challenges I ran into

As I talked about a little bit above, I don't have extensive knowledge on website development, so there were many obstacles I encountered along the way where I'd have to do my own research to figure how I could disassemble the problems I ran into. Moreover, there were a lot of features that I'd like touch upon since there was a lot that I left unfinished unfortunately. For this hackathon, I was solo, so that was also a challenge on its own. However, overall and as always, working hard, persevering, and finally hitting the submit button was really gratifying.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I created this project with the intention of improving my general website development skills. That includes formatting, positioning, and the many things I did not know how to do before. I still consider myself a beginner in terms of knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JS, however, I feel that I really expanded what I knew during the process of making this project, and I feel that even my mentality has become a little bit tougher while persevering through what I didn't know and the numerous obstacles.

What I learned

I learned a bit more about the foundation of web dev. I'll definitely continue to do my own research and study up more! I also learned a bit more about types of design, certain styles, and useful features with Figma, which I didn't expect! It seems like I also have a growing interest in design as well, so I will also try and learn more about it too.

What's next for Observatory

I planned for Observatory to essentially be a social media, though it would be narrowed down to sharing photos related to astronomy, to be more of a "cult-hit", and reach a smaller, filtered, yet loyal and passionate audience. Users of Observatory would be able to post pictures, videos, their process of capturing such views, discuss, comment, and more. I was also planning to make it have a feature that would make it unique and stand out, such as perhaps gamifying it and adding a star points system. Since Observatory is still in a very early stage, there are many creative possibilities for it lying in wait!

Furthermore, since I'm expanding on what I know about web dev gradually over time, I'd love to put that knowledge to use every now and then and add new features to Observatory and tackling new challenges while doing so.