@tag, you're it!

My app careerlobby has been out in the wild for a little over a month now. Wild!

I’ve shipped big things, small things, surprise and delight moments, easter eggs, and I’ve even de-bugged a few things here and there. Look at me being all technical and stuff. 🙃 

This week I shipped something I’ve been wanting to ship since the beginning: @usernames! How often on a social platform these days can you choose @firstname as your username? Well, if that’s what you want, of course. And, if it’s available. 😉 

I was looking to go a bit deeper into the feed experience so that there was more of a touchpoint for user-to-user interaction, and at-mentions was that. It was pretty straightforward to build (with the power and brains of my tech stack!), but I had to debug a little. It wasn’t perfect at first. Who knew something as simple as a tag could require so much back and forth?

Building this feature reminded me of all the little details of shipping something like this. It wasn’t just the ability to tag other users in the comments section. It was also about:

• What does the choosing of a username look like at onboarding?

• How does the username (and name) of the user show up in the feed? Does it?

• How does the username, if at all, show up in the profile?

• What about the dropdown menu when tagging someone? It should have logic to detect who the person is likely tagging/replying to, and show that user at the top of the list.

• What about my early users who already had an account and didn’t choose a username yet? That mattered. Needed to think that experience through too. (Result: it’s just part of the Edit Profile feature)

• Coming up with the username: the indication that a username was available or taken. Needed to build that.

• Duck/brand-themed usernames: Did I want to make these available or not? (Result: I blocked them from being used. Just to protect the names a bit, just in case I decide to use them for something down the line.)

• And then visually; are the tagged users the brand green? Same color as the plain text? Something else?

There are so so many details that go into one feature build. I’m sure I haven’t thought about additional details too. But that’s the fun part. Realizing what else is possible in the experience. It’s never quite done.

Go get your username created. Be the first with your @firstname. Or choose something random. Totally your call.

quackadoodledoo 🦆 

Thanks for reading and for being here. I don’t take for granted that you care what I have to say. Or even if you don’t care, and you’re still here; thanks for being a fan anyway. ❣️

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