Did you know FaceySpacey is the creator of Redux-First Router and Universal?
The Startup Incubator.
Your one stop social media shop
Coding
The coding phase is the phase you, as one of our clients, can’t wait to start. It’s also potentially the most costly phase--because of the cost of multiple professional software developers we put on your project. The high cost of professional development is a fact other firms like to deny. FaceySpacey, on the other hand, brings this fact to plain view and confronts it with you in order to actually accomplish the best you can get for your money. We covered how we do this in our articles about the speccing and branding phases. The idea is that in those phases costs are cheap because you’re usually dealing with only me, James Gillmore, as your speccing guru, and Holly Welch, our Branding & Design director. So other firms deny this fact because their developers usually do not have the experience for what you want to develop, certainly have never executed something as large as your project before, and management just wants to get your contract. So management at these firms sell you as though they have the experience, which they don’t, and pay the lower costs of under-experienced coders. They then charge you the most you can afford for something they won't be able to execute because of internal resources which will be exhausted before they complete the project.
The reason is extremely simple and rational: you would like to build a money-making invention. If they could truly do it on their own, they would, rather than work for a few upfront bucks. They would find a way to do it, even if they have to pay their bills. The developers good enough would not be working for these contract companies, and would rather be doing it themselves, or be a team member of a funded startup. Point blank, period. The ones that are good enough leave, and you’re left with the crumby or inexperienced ones that are learning on your project. Another reason is because your invention is exactly that--an invention. Startups are not rinse-and-repeat company websites. There is too much they will not be able to anticipate while building an invention, which inherently is something new.
Yes, there are exceptions, and we’re one of them. Here are some of the exceptions you want to look out for while picking you the team/firm you hire:
EXCEPTIONS:
-
1an extremely expensive company with fortune 500 clients. If you can afford them, get off our website now and go hire them. Objectively speaking and in favor of your standpoint, there’s just no reason to risk going anywhere else.
-
2teams that are about go pro and do their own project, and leave contract development completely in their past. If you can be their last project before they go pro, this is who you would like to hire.
-
3teams that know their place and do a small number of things really really well, and refuse to do many things not in their core expertise.
We’re #3. So what this means is we’re only really interested in developing a few types of startups these days. We of course do easy company and content sites, since we’ve managed to truly turn the process of shipping those product into an assembly line. But that doesn’t count because they're too easy. When it comes to startups we specifically are looking to execute products that fit within the following constraints:
PROJECT CONSTRAINTS:
-
1web applications. not native mobile apps (e.g. on the Android or iOS platforms).
-
2applications focused around 1 or 2 user types, and no more.
-
3applications focused around one key content entity that your users contribute, e.g: a video, a checkin, a service offered, an apartment to stay in (i.e. as in AirBnB.com). So imagine the users creating a profile page for these entities, e.g. for your apartment, where most the interaction happens.
-
4marketplace applications where users communicate and perhaps make a transaction over the primary entity type, i.e. again as in AirBnB.com. In other words, apps we develop usually mean your users’ actions revolve around that primary entity. And the key here is we won’t take on your project if in the first phase, you imagine more than one such entity. In our opinion, that would violate the “Keep it Simple Stupid” (KISS) development axiom we adhere to. That’s what causes projects to never get completed. We require your application to do one thing and do it extremely well.
-
5applications with amazing user interfaces and user experiences in the web browser. We excel at javascript/ajax ;), and we love making tablet sites feel like native apps.
So that brings us to our coding process and what we bring to the table to make it so we can provide the stellar user experience and user interface your social networking marketplace application needs to survive in a modern web world where raw functionality simply doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. Here’s the scoop:
SCOOP:
Applications we ultimately take on to develop end up having very common database and code architectures. That means server side coding will end up following a formula very closed to something else we’ve done before. Otherwise, we won’t do it. We have tons of ready-made and practiced solutions from similar past projects. We have tons of past FaceySpacey solutions we can learn from if not completely re-use, and these solutions are built on top of the Yii PHP framework. We like to think we’ve enhanced the Yii framework, and built a sub-set of tools specifically designed for these social networking marketplace style applications.
The net result is we can focus on the Javascript UI/UE, e.g. things like animations/transitions between states in the web browser that don’t require new page loads, rather than sites with a traditional page refresh browsing style.
Now the real important thing about this fact is that it gives you a front seat to the progress being made on your project. When projects require lots of server side work, and architectural work, you as the client are often left in the dark, being told lots of things are being done for your project, but with very little proof of the results. This in part is what has led to this focus at FaceySpacey. We like to please our clients and deliver gratifying results as often as possible--at least on a daily basis, and occasionally with hourly updates. Also, it’s just fun for us to making amazing user interfaces. It’s what we enjoy. And lastly, it’s the key ingredient to compete in this competitive world of Techcrunch startups. Sure there are data-heavy startups, but that’s not what we do. We know our place, and we do what we do well. We’re a user interface and experience company for web applications that get the product right.
So if you’ve read about our speccing and branding process, you know we work in one week sprints, testing with professional testers at the end of the week, while delivering you a release at that time as well. We use project management software where you can track as features are being developed. Generally, we make it top priority to share with you whatever is going on, most importantly through quick turnarounds. We select our projects wisely, and turn down projects that don’t match up with the constraints listed above. We have long term relationships with the developers assigned to your projects, and opt for a few awesome developers to work on your project rather than lots of mediocre ones. I, James Gillmore, personally layout the solutions/tools we use by picking and choosing from past projects, which will ultimately be similar in key technical ways to your project if we choose to take it. And lastly, we limit the technologies we use to just the following:
TECHNOLOGIES WE FOCUS ON:
-
1PHP
-
2The Yii Framework
-
3Javascript
-
4jQuery
-
5Ubuntu Linux
-
6MYSQL
-
7Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, SQS, RDS, CloudFront, Elastic Load Balancer, etc)
And that’s us. If you’re somewhat technical, you can label us as a Yii/jQuery shop, with a hardcore product and user experience bent. Where we’ll exceed your expectations is in how innovative our product plan is and how easy it makes development. So what that really means is that the most important thing to note here about CODING is that our developers show up on time consistently. The reason this is so important is because great developers--more than many other professionals--require their own self-determinism and opportunity to contribute their own solutions to problems which they can be proud of. They do not want to be treated like a robot. Great developers simply won’t stand for it and will leave.
In short, our developers are our greatest asset, and we succeed because we hire people that get things done, and provide them with an atmosphere where they can show us and you how smart they are. Lastly, we pick great developers not because we know where to look. That’s easy to find out, but because they want to come work with us because they know we’re the best firm when it comes to Yii and jQuery. period.