Lesson Learned: Design Approach
Explore how to design full stack applications by starting with the user interface and building the backend accordingly. Understand the workflow advantages of designing from the front and building from the back to create efficient APIs and databases. Learn why starting minimal and iteratively adding features helps manage complexity and improves user experience, enabling quicker feedback and smoother development.
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Design from the front and build from the back
If we start with an idea for a web application, we’re immediately confronted with a thousand questions about data requirements, API design, and the user experience. Knowing what to tackle first can be maddening. We make one decision and break an earlier decision, or it rules out simple solutions to another piece of the application. As described in Design a Web Application, we advocate to always design from the front and build from the back. This will not eliminate all of the challenges, but it has several benefits.
Benefits
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Designing from the front and building from the back gives us a clear path to get started. The thousand design questions will become confusing without some approach, and the project will never be completed.
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Thinking first about the user interface is a natural place to start. The ...