Wait, wait, wait… Before jumping into building an application, there’s a crucial question that hit me today:
“How can I start developing a social media application without following the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)?”
The truth is, I can’t and I shouldn’t.
Just like any structured system, every successful project begins with a process. And that process in software development is SDLC, the backbone of building scalable, maintainable, and reliable applications.
So, before diving into code and features, I took a step back and realigned myself with the Software Engineering principles. It’s important to understand the stages of planning, requirement gathering, designing, developing, testing, deployment, and maintenance. With that mindset, I began my Day 2 by focusing on the design phase, particularly the Frontend UI/UX of the application.
🎨 What Am I Building?
I’m working on the UI/UX design of a social media application, my goal is to create a platform that’s clean, intuitive, and more focused than Instagram in terms of user experience. Right now, I’ve structured two main components of the frontend:
🏠 Homepage (Public Feed)
The homepage is the heart of the platform where users can:
Scroll through public posts made by other users.
Like and comment on posts they find interesting.
Enjoy a minimal and distraction-free interface with easy navigation and clean design.
Each post card includes:
- The user’s profile image and name
- Image or content shared
- Interactive buttons for likes and comments
- A compact comment section with a reply option
The idea is to keep it clean and better structured than existing platforms, allowing users to focus more on the content and less on the clutter.
👤 User Profile Page
The profile page is where users can:
- View all their uploaded posts in a neatly organized grid.
- Edit or delete their own posts.
- See the total number of posts, likes, and interactions.
- Possibly add a bio or profile image in later versions.
This page will serve as the personal space for each user, giving them full control over their content and profile presentation.
🧱 Why UI/UX First?
Starting with UI/UX allows me to:
- Visualize the user flow
- Plan backend APIs and database structure better
- Break down features into manageable microservices or components for DevOps pipeline
- Maintain modularity and scalability, which are crucial for any cloud-native application
This approach ensures that the rest of the system , from backend to deployment, can be built in a well-organized, modular, and scalable fashion. The frontend serves as the blueprint for the business logic and infrastructure to follow.
🔜 What’s Next?
Once the UI/UX part is finalized, I’ll:
- Begin backend development using FastAPI
- Set up a CI/CD pipeline for automated deployment
- Containerize the application using Docker
- Eventually deploy it to Kubernetes on a cloud platform
This is just the beginning, but every solid system starts with the right planning.
Day 2 has been all about design thinking, aligning with SDLC, and laying the visual foundation for a meaningful application.
Stay tuned for Day 3 where I’ll dive into building the professional document for the application.
Until then, build smart, plan smarter.
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