🖥️ Night at the Museum Presentation Reflection

📢 Presentation Overview

During our Night at the Museum (N@tM) presentation, we showcased our social media page project with integrated frontend and backend functionality. Our goal was to demonstrate how user interactions on the frontend (like posting and viewing content) were captured and stored in the backend database, highlighting the full-stack development process. Key features presented included:

A stylish, visually engaging interface with a customized color scheme and layout.
Backend integration using Python, allowing us to store and retrieve user data.
Real-time user interactions, enabling the audience to see the posts displayed live on the page.

👥 Audience Feedback

We received valuable feedback from peers, teachers, and visitors, which provided both praise and suggestions for improvement:

“Love the design! Backend and frontend appear functional—great job! The page could be organized a bit more to avoid clutter by grouping items by type.”
“Visually appealing! I noticed that the image at the top sometimes loads slowly, which looks kind of cool, but could be optimized if that’s unintentional.”
“Nice connection to the Del Norte ASB Store!”
“Well done! Great job!”
“Good effort.”

Positive Feedback:

The design and color scheme were widely appreciated for their aesthetic appeal.
The functionality and backend integration impressed the audience as it demonstrated a working model of a social media page.
The connection to school-related topics (like the ASB store) was a relatable and engaging touch for our peers.

Areas for Improvement:

Organize layout by grouping content by type to reduce clutter.
Optimize loading time for images or add a loading effect, enhancing the user experience without sacrificing design.

❓ Questions and Answers

Here are some insightful questions the audience asked during our presentation, along with our responses and reflections:

Q: What language was your backend coded in? Do you think it would have been easier in a different language?
A: Our backend was coded in Python. While it worked well for this project, we recognize that learning additional languages could open up more possibilities for future projects. Python served as a manageable choice for our current understanding, but expanding our knowledge could provide new efficiencies and insights.
Q: What was the idea behind this social media page, and are you planning on implementing it for actual school use?
A: We initially developed this project as a learning experience to understand the relationship between frontend and backend development. Although we don’t plan to implement it for school use, the project provided a solid foundation in app development and working with user data, which will be valuable for future projects that might have real-world applications.

🎬 Demonstration and Interaction

To showcase our project, we walked the audience through:

Posting on the page to show how data entered on the frontend would appear on the page in real-time.
Backend functionality with a demonstration of how posts were stored and retrieved from the database.
Interactive elements where audience members could engage with the page themselves, testing the posting feature and exploring the layout.

The audience enjoyed interacting with the project directly, which helped them understand the mechanics of a dynamic social media experience.

💭 Reflections and Improvements

Reflecting on this experience, we gained a lot from both the feedback and the interaction with the audience:

Presentation Experience: Presenting the project helped us refine our technical communication skills, as we needed to explain both the frontend and backend functionality in a way that was easy for all visitors to understand.
Key Takeaways: Organizing the layout to minimize clutter and optimizing load times for large assets are immediate improvements we could make to enhance user experience.

🔄 Next Steps

Based on the feedback and our reflections, here are some specific improvements and potential next steps for our project:

Optimize Page Layout: Reorganize elements by grouping similar types to create a cleaner, more user-friendly layout.
Loading Optimization: Implement faster loading techniques or a progressive loading effect for images to maintain the aesthetic appeal without slowing down the user experience.
Expand Functionalities: Consider adding more features, such as commenting and liking posts, to increase interactivity and make the social media page more engaging.

🚀 Final Thoughts

Overall, presenting at N@tM was an incredibly rewarding experience. We gained insights not only from technical feedback but also from observing how the audience interacted with our project. This experience has motivated us to keep improving and to take this project to new levels in future sprints.