Quire. Simple notes online made easy and secure. 

Closeup of an iPhone X showing the main view of Quire.

Quire was a group task during my studies at KYH autumn 19. The main goal was not app itself but rather learning how to work with agile development – this time focusing on the scrum method.

Close up of an white iPad showing the main view of the Quire App
Close up of an white iPad showing the main view of the Quire App

Introduction

Quire was a group task during my studies at KYH autumn 19. The main goal was not app itself but rather learning how to work with agile development – this time focusing on the scrum method. To do so we were asked to create a functional note taking app fully functional using local storage. Our class was divided in groups of five people. My main role was designing the UI of the app. However, we were all asked to try different roles except for product owner (that was our teacher).

Directly quoted from the task description; "Quire – notebook in the browser is a new service scheduled for launch 2020. The service will develop in several stages and your task is the develop the first beta version of the service".

Goals and constraints

Our task for the beta release was to fulfill these requirements for functionality;

  • the user shall be able to create multiple notes
  • the user shall be to write as much as they please, as well as having the option to format the text with simple options such as headings, lists and highlight (bold, italic etc)
  • the user shall be able to favorite notes to find them easier
  • you shall be able to make simple changes to the UI, such as choosing fonts and colors
  • you should be able to print notes with a pleasing result

Two iPads in silver showing the editing mode in the Quire App

Process

We began this project setting up our backlog and planning our first sprint. With this finished we started researching for a rich text editor we could use as a base. We landed in Quill.js as the most effecient editor for our needs. With its API we were able to quick and rather easy fulfill each increment in our product backlog.

The project was divided in several weekly sprints where each week we tried the role as scrum master.

Results

What I foremost learned was that by using scrum it was so much easier having control of the project. Besides getting to know the benefits of scrum I also learned more about writing clean and smart code.