When I was approached to develop this platform I was extremely excited, it seemed like such an outdated concept that really hadn't been pushed to it's full potential.
This one was simple, whilst browing Facebook I saw a post looking for an app developer to build this new platform; I got in touch and started talking.
The post creator (Ash) was interested in getting this idea he had off the ground which was inspired by the zoom quiz masters that had been popping up as a result of the first lockdown.
As soon as I heard the idea, we got to talking and started brainstorming ideas with his partner (Josh).
After a number of calls and sharing ideas and thoughts on the platform we arrived at what is now the completed quizzoo platform.
As this was one of the largest projects I'd taken on at the time, it was cruitial to ensure a full planning phase to make sure everything was covered.
During the planning phases we took the bare bones minimal project and turned it into a reasonably functional and well designed platform.
It did, however, take a while to get to that stage; as I'm not a designer there were plenty of lessons to be learned and plenty of time wasted.
Arriving at the end of the project planning phase we decided on the platform to be a Webapp to manage the content, Mobile app to be customer facing, Firebase as a backend and a standalone WordPress website to promote.
As mentioned, we decided on these 3 sub platforms that created quizzoo and allowed everything to work together:
Looking at the mobile app during the planning phases it was clear it didn't really have any deep integration with any of a phones hardware, really it didn't have much demand for speed either. Because of that, I decided to use Ionic, which was a mobile PWA framework I'd touched on previously but hadn't had the oppurtunity to use yet. Ionic suited the project pretty well and it turned out to favour the app quite nicely.
This was the platform that controlled everything, due to the nature of quizzoo and the amount of data it had to manage we needed a decent platform to keep things running smoothly. I developed the web app using Angular, a trusted framework that I'd used plenty before. Using the platform as a tool for development as well it quickly evolved into a really handy piece of kit and typically I'll develop a simple dashboard for most of the projects I work on now. Work of the most crutial and overseen advantages to one of these dashboards for most projects is providing the client with the ability to manage data in the platform; stuff which would normally be done via a database, it just provides a nice experience for the client so they feel more involved in their project.
Ontop of the cruitial components of the platform we also needed a nice simple website to promote everything, this was done using WordPress and I was really happy with the way it turned out. Hosting a simple vertical seemless scroll for the content it's a really nice user experience and showcases the app nicely.
This was an easy one, I needed a simple backend that would allow authentication and the ability for basic CRUD functionality; so I decided to go with Firebase. I'd used it previously to get projects off the ground quickly and it always peforms really well providing there's no major demand for database activity. As a frontend developer it was nice to have a decent solution like this which was easy to setup and get going.
This was one of the less enjoyable parts of the project. Design is something I'm constantly working on and trying to get better at because it makes such a massive difference. The Quizzoo design looks pretty average, it's simple and easy on the eyes with some nice colors and a clean interface. I arrived at this design simply by creating a flow diagram for the platform and how I wanted things to work together; the design was a reflection of the best structure from a logical point of view to make the functionality work. Looking back at the design now I would've loved to revise and have another go and perhaps Quizzoo might get an overhall at some point in the future; I do think it hasn't had it's true oppurtunity and being something beautiful.
One of the biggest concerns for the client was all the questions and where to get them? The cool thing about Quizzoo is the amount of questions it has that have been checked and ensured are suitable for the platform; I think it's currently around 2500? We pulled the questions from here: https://opentdb.com/ a simple trivia database which has a collection of loads of trivia questions. I wrote a nice little tool on the website to pull all of the questions from the database and convert them into the format quizzoo would use. Once we had the questions, it was time to filter everything and make sure everything on the app was of good quality. In addition to this, you could add your own questions and re-query the trivia database for new questions.
The structure of the app is pretty simple, you have the ability to build a quiz (or multiple) creating your own rounds and filling those rounds with questions pulled from the database. Questions are sorted into categories so it's easy to find the ones you're looking for, and they've also got a difficulty rating on them. The different systems work well together to provide a really simple and easy to use platform for anyone looking to create a quiz. Once you've done building your quiz, you can host it straight from your phone and manage the entire quiz directly from it, also, once done with that you can even save it for another time!
Quizzoo was one of the first large projects I'd undertaken as a single developer and alot was learned during the projects timeframe.
I'm extremely happy with how everything turned out and it is a solid platform.
As I mentioned previously, perhaps the owners of quizzoo would revisit the platform and get a phase 2 development project going; that's something I'd be really in too.
Looking back, If i was to redevelop the platform I'd build it using the MERN stack, as my primary stack now I think I'd be able to take what's already a really solid platform and turn it into something even better.
If you wanted to hear the story from the owners of quizzoo and their experience with the development process you can check that out here
Well, that's pretty much it!
You can find the website here
