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November 4, 2024

The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries #184

Contingency time for (self-imposed) deadlines, an upgrade nightmare, a video podcast interview, and some design sneak peeks. 👀

7 Weeks To Go

Based on what I said in the last issue, I should be declaring that there are “8 Weeks To Go” today. But I remembered that’s not how I roll. 😌

I typically make (self-imposed) deadlines earlier than they need to be. (Do you ever do this?)

So, to that end, I’m pretending that January 1st 2025 is actually on December 22nd 2024. 😆

I always like the idea of a more chill, “feature freeze”, ”maintenance mode only” last week of the year, especially during Christmas, my favourite time of the year, but since starting StoryGraph I’m yet to achieve that (though last year’s stress was more about me completing my Pages Goal in time than StoryGraph dev work).

Maybe this year will finally be the year…? 😅

A Noble Conversation [Video Podcast]

When I was in California a couple months ago, I went to a studio for a video podcast interview with Noble Conversations, and the episode came out last night!

A thumbnail for a video titled "The Road to 3 Million Registered Users: How StoryGraph Took on Goodreads". It features an image of me, Nadia Odunayo, smiling and dressed in white with the title text overlaid on a matching green background.

You can check it out on YouTube or Spotify. (Or wherever you get your podcasts!)

New Look Sneak Peeks

Yeji’s been hard at work on the new designs. 👀

Here are some teasers:

This screenshot shows the interface for a

An interface displaying participant avatars and usernames for a "2025 Cozy Mysteries" reading challenge, which shows the number of participants and books involved and the progress of each participant via a circle around their profile picture.

This image details a user's reading goals and progress on StoryGraph for 2024, including visual progress bars for books read, pages read, and reading hours. It also displays current reading challenges with their completion percentages.

A vertical layout showing a community review summary on StoryGraph for a book, including average star rating, mood distributions, pacing, plot character focus, and character development insights, all displayed with color-coded charts and percentages.
We’ve already received feedback about the green/orange/red colour scheme and are experimenting with different options.

This displays detailed reviews for

By the next issue, some of these designs should be live! ✨

Since Last Time…

I mentioned six things that I planned to spend at least a couple of hours on.

Well, I managed to do so on Native App Flows, Database Fine-Tuning, and Upgrades, and I spent an hour on the Pause Books feature.

However, I didn’t get to the Barcode Scanner or Librarian Tooling because I’m still in the middle of an upgrade nightmare. 😩

Well, the nightmare part is over, but I’m still working on upgrading bits of software that we’re a couple major versions behind on — one being our pagination software — and it got to the point where working on other things, especially new features, didn’t make sense. 😔

Hoping I can make more progress on all fronts before next time! 🤞🏾

What I'm reading

I’m not leaving it another five years and am finishing off Tomi Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orïsha trilogy with Children of Anguish and Anarchy!

The interface shows I am 49% through "Children of Anguish and Anarchy" by Tomi Adeyemi, labeled with tags like fiction, fantasy, and adventurous. The book cover is displayed alongside options to mark as finished or view buddy read.

Have a great week,

Nadia

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