Our prototyping stack

Previously, I determined that I need a platform that supports our near-term goals of rapid experimentation and learning. It should be data-rich, fast and cheap to set up, extensible, and enable rapid change. It should provide a variety of ways to gather user feedback and deliver content and functionality with low lift. We've learned that other platform features we see in enterprise-level ventures (eg. scaling, high-fidelity branding, performance, security) are not critical during this prototyping stage.

After doing some research and evaluation, I landed on a stack that will support rapid prototyping and learning with little setup:

• Github
• NextJS + ChakraUI
• Vercel
• Firebase FireStore + Authentication + Analytics
• Nolt + Google Forms
• Webflow
• Monday

The breakdown

Github is a hosted, centralized version control system, which provides collaboration features for software development teams.

NextJS is an isomorphic React framework, which means it can run in the browser and on the server. It comes with friendly presets like Typescript and structured routing. NextJS apps are simple to set up and deploy on Vercel’s hosting service using continuous integration (CI). It can also handle expanding with an API layer and Prisma database later on, if needed.

ChakraUI is a simple, modular and accessible UI component library that works on a foundation of primitive building-blocks. It doesn’t require any theming, but nearly every aspect can be overridden. Its props-based styling in React has a similar feel to the popular TailwindCSS system, but with less context-switching.

Firebase is a cloud-based app platform from Google. It's administered through a web-console and supports real-time document database interactions. It integrates with Google Authentication and Google Analytics out of the box with a few clicks. There are community-supported React hooks that further streamline the workflow.

Nolt is a user-feedback platform that offers robust features for a single flat fee per project.

Google forms is a tool to easily create user surveys and generate reports from the results.

Webflow is a web-based WYSIWYG web page builder that can be integrated with virtually any platform through its raw HTML output. Webflow offers professional templates that can be customized to any level. The page you're reading right now was created in Webflow.

Monday is a highly customisable workflow management tool for teams. It is less complex than Jira, but more feature-rich than Trello.

Next steps

I’ll roll with this stack for the time being, and periodically evaluate how well it’s addressing my needs.

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