Just Jam

Find your musical soulmates!

Just Jam is a mobile responsive web app that connects musicians looking to start a band together.

Users can sign up, create their own profile and upload sound clips of themselves. They can then search for other users and if they like what they hear can start a chat and organise a jam session.

Use it on Heroku here.

Just Jam was built by George Eaton, Chris Cooper, Jenna Ramdenee and Rory Grieve in 8 days as our final project at Makers Academy.

Technologies

Objectives

• Build a full stack mobile responsive web app using Node.js
• Learn technologies we had not previously used in our time at Makers (Node.js, MongoDB, Web Sockets, Mocha, Zombie etc.)
• Work as part of an agile team following XP principles
• Write clean and tested code

Process

• Initial meeting to decide on MVP, user stories, and technologies
• Group diagramming session to agree on the flow around the app
• Follow tutorials on building a web app using Node and Express and testing with Mocha and Chai
• Apply what we had learnt from the tutorials to start building our app using our user stories working in pairs
• We initially wanted to use React for the front end but quickly realised this was unrealistic in the timescale and agreed to use the templating engine, Pug.
• After reaching MVP in 3 days, we decided on our next features - user authentication and adding music upload. We worked in pairs to achieve these 2 features.
• Follow tutorials on web sockets to add the chat functionality to our app
• Feature freeze on day 7
• We then worked on making our app responsive for mobile using Bootstrap

Struggles

• Deciding on frameworks and Technologies
• Learning new testing frameworks at the same time as learning new technologies
• Conflicts when merging code with conflicting dependencies

Successes

• Minimum viable product in 3 days
• Clear understanding of what our app was throughout
• Learnt new frameworks and languages and about no SQL databases
• Regular communication, daily standups and retros
• Dividing up tasks fairly and ensuring everyone had an understanding of all parts of the project
• Using web sockets to enable chat messaging in real time
• Having lots of fun

User stories

MVP

As a musician
So that I can find other musicians to jam with
I want to see a list of other musicians

As a musician
So that other musicians can find me
I want to create a profile

As a musician
So that I can find out more about a musician
I want to view their profile

Remaining

As a musician
So that I can ensure security
I want to log in and out of the app

As a musician
So that I can join
I want to sign up

As a musician
So that I can showcase my musical ability
I want to upload an audio track to my profile

As a musician
So that I can show people what I look like
I want to upload a photo to my profile

As a musician
So that I can change my profile at a later date
I want to be able to edit my profile

As a musician
So that I can get in touch with other musicians
I want to chat with them

As a musician
So that I can remember who I have chatted with
I want to see a list of all my chats

As a musician
So that I can review conversation history
I want to see previously sent messages in a chat

As a musician
So that I can find a particular type of musician
I want to search Jammers by instrument

As admin
To ensure that only official users chat
I want to prevent users that have not signed up or logged in from starting a chat

As admin
To ensure that only official users connect
I want to prevent users that have not signed up or logged in from creating a profile

As admin
To ensure an effective search of Jammers
I want to prevent users from seeing their own profile in search results

Future

As a musician
So that I can find a musician located near me
I want to filter a search by location

As a musician
So that I can showcase all the instruments I play
I want to list more than one instrument in my profile

As a musician
So that I can showcase all my music
I want to integrate videos in my profile