#257 — 🪢 Revisiting Chord

Hey what's up everybody? This is Lola Ojabowale, founder of Lunch Pail Labs. Welcome back to Lunch Pail Daily. My personal audio diary on building and growing Lunch Pail Labs, which is a digital product studio based out of Atlanta, Georgia. 

In today's episode, we're going to jam about chord,chord oh chord. Rebuilding Chord revisiting Chord, what is Chord? Any longtime listeners will remember, I feel like it's been an ongoing I mentioned this every few months but it was a weekend project last may actually to try to make a clubhouse alternative that I did last year and like tweeted about and stuff in a moment of passion and inspiration. Kind of like a mighty networks meets drop in audio that I did mostly because I wanted the experience of integrating code with no code. And there have been some upgrades and updates that I've been meaning to incorporate. In this for a while it's been on my product ideas, quick ideas list for lunch bell labs for such a long time. 

And fast forward now a year 2022 I've got more skills, I can do even more fun things with code and no code. And I also think it's a fun opportunity to force myself to learn different things that I really been meaning to get into bubbles responsive engine, guess I've done like a part of a Flexbox course to really to get into that figma components translating figma designs into designs in in bubble and I've also want a better example of like an audio only app with like, the plugin and stuff that I worked on. So mix of I guess intrinsic benefits of working reworking on cord aside from the satisfaction of getting something off my list. Yesterday, I spent some something that I've also spent some time talking about like oh, like the lunch pail labs weightless and productizing, Lunch Pail Labs, I switched up, spent some time with copy, I switch up some of the language on the website. So I was happy to get that off the list and want to get this really old core.so off the list. So thinking that I'll be spending the next few, maybe podcast episodes talking about that process, and also making it the focus of like my builds and tweets for potentially the next few days. So for today's sort of build session, sacred session really diving deep into okay, like what exactly do I need to do for this, like rebuild, kind of broke out tasks into a few phases. So I started with, like the redesign piece, which not gonna lie as I was listing things down, I was getting quite overwhelmed, because it's a lot, bubble. For those who don't know, it's a no-code platform, they I guess it's not so recently, it was end of last year released a completely new design paradigm for Bumble, their new responsive engine. And so like any app that I've built previously on the platform, the old responsive engine is like not compatible with this new way. They're still supporting the old engine. But it is going to be retired at some point. So it's very imperative that these things kind of get kind of kind of rebuilt. 

So I think this Chord is also a good good test run on that process before all kind of projects are like, Oh my gosh, yeah, we need to rebuild this. This rebuild this app and stuff. So but really diving into those, I have some pages that would need redesign landing page, the portal, the kind of like each community on Chord can have their own sort of like welcome page. So that and like the room page is probably where the most sort of technical enhancements would be because there's audio only updates that I previously did in like a hacky way but now can do in a more sophisticated way.

And one of the biggest kind of annoyances with this rebuild, is I used a bubble framework, which I generally generally like but it's another one of those lessons of like, ah, sometimes it is nicer to do not take the shortcut. To use a bubble framework and so there's like this additional of like, okay, like, I have to understand how these assets are built, because I kind of dragged and dropped them. And then make sure that they're like, you know, compatible with the new engine, I bought them before they do have a new engine, but there's like not a clear process of translating the old engine version to the new engine version. So I am very tempted to kind of like, start from scratch. But that's where, and I probably will, at some point, I think the first level is going to be like changing the landing page language and the waitlist, I feel like the waitlist goes to like an air table form and it looks janky. Changing that, adding the spruced up with like, the audio only, and, and, you know, tying up some loose ends, so it's just like a fine, a better like v one that people can just like, check out and just be there who knows, I might even create some video assets or tutorial assets from doing all of that. And then potentially, I guess, depending on what a relaunch what interest that gets, I can then take it further and actually rebuild this onto the new engine which will require replanting assets and yeah, trying to build them from scratch on the new the new engine, which is kind of involved, but I think also a good, good process to go from that, at least from a learning side from that very, very beginning. Like, what if we just built things from total total scratch to give me more control, or at least know that like, okay, I can really, really own that process from end to end. So. But first, starting with the easiest stuff, because the easiest stuff will keep me motivated. And then I can see if I'm interested in other things later. As my like, I have, like my parents always have this saying is like the the best way to eat an elephant is to start with the years. 

So starting very small as to not overwhelm myself with such a big task. Because when it's too big, then I get like not motivated, especially when it's not like a client project or something that's immediately revenue generating because it's like, why am I spending my time doing this? So that is the jam day one of rebuilding, rebuilding core kind of laying out these tasks. So think tomorrow, we'll probably jump into that landing page redesign and the waitlist and maybe share it on Twitter. I've just like hey, guess what chords back? We want to want to check. Check it out, or yeah, do some stuff with copy AI, ship it and ship it. So that is all for me on this Tuesday. I hope you all have the most wonderful one and I will catch you all later.