Spring quarter blog post 1

These past two weeks Maria and Senem have been working on making the forms more customizable and uniform. Right now the forms that Zorzal employees have access to only have text field boxes. However, this is a problem because it allows for too much freedom, which can lead to faulty answers. For example, if we use a text field and prompt the user to enter a date, the user could write it in a number of different ways (November 23rd, 2020; Nov 23, 2020; 11/23/2020; 23/11/2020). If instead of using a text field we were to use a date component, the user would not need to worry about the correct formatting. It would also be easier for the user because they could select the date from a calendar rather than typing it out. And, more importantly, data would be collected in a more consistent manner. Because we will be recording information in a google sheet and potentially analyzing it, it’s important to keep a standard format.
As for customizability, Maria and Senem have been adding the radio, date, and slider elements into Firebase so that Zorzal employees can edit forms if they want to. For example, if they want to add a new field that prompts the user to select between three fermentation states, they could insert a radio element and choose the number of options—in this case three. This is important because we will not be working on the web app forever, so they have to have a way of editing the forms without having to know the code from React. 

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Austin and Mark have also been teaching Maria and Senem more React concepts like state. They went over the functionality and the relevance of the functions. State is used to record and store the input from the user. Without it, data would be passed in but it wouldn’t be attached to anything. There would be no way of keeping track of a shipment and its different characteristics—farm, date, forms, etc.

Meanwhile, Austin and Mark have been making some changes to the app. For example, they worked on saving the data from the web app and storing it in google sheets so that Zorzal can keep track of barcodes, dates, and other relevant information in an organized way. They also incorporated form formatting to allow users to specify categories and subcategories. At the same time they adjust the existing layout to make the web app compatible with mobile devices. 

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