Sometimes, we do face a situation where your manager/supervisor/teammate instructs you to build a feature like xxx. Saying something like:

> _Our checkout flow is not the best, lets redesign our checkout flow like Spotify_

> _Spotify's checkout flow is interesting, we should do something like this_

Taking some time to think about this as I am able to relate to this, and this happens quite often for a product team I believe. Personally, I made some wrong decision, reflected and trying out different ways handle this situation better. Writing this to share my thoughts on how we can handle this situation better.

What I did before is digging into the experience, and getting excited that this experience is good. Then, further decide on more detailed user flows, stories, and last, implement them.

Will it works? Maybe? But I do think this is a risky move by blindly getting into the work without further questioning. 

But why?
1. Same experience/flow might not applicable for different product natures, user targets, etc.
2. Doing it like xxx might not actually solve the problem (or even the problem does not exist)
3. Doing it like xxx might not actually lead to the goal we want.

Therefore, there shall a better approach to deal with it to ensure we can deal with a better approach. 

After more thoughts, I am thinking of a better way to approach this with three main steps:
1. Dig deeper to understand the "why"
2. Explore other ideas
3. Share your ideas with them (alignment)


## Dig deeper into the "why"

Usually, there is a problem, painpoint, or story behind his/her thoughts. They are expecting some outcome (eg. improved checkout flow, increase MAU, improve internal tooling process, etc) that could solve some problems, painpoints, and meet some goals they had. 

Some example scenarios:

> _"Let's redesign our checkout flow to be something like xxx"_ 

The reason behind this could be — the checkout flow completion rate is low, there are missing opportunities there.

> _"Build this feature like xxx, I think users will like it."_

The reason behind this could be — due to the recent recession, no. of active users decreased which could affect the company's revenue, therefore, they are exploring "killer" features that could help them to regain active users.

> _"Can we add this feature like xxx for our internal tooling?"_

The reason behind this could be — due to stakeholders finding the internal tool hard to use for this situation, they are inspired by the features from other tools that could potentially solve their problem. 

Here are some example questions we can ask (or frame them better based on situations):
1. What do you like about it? 
2. How is xxx doing better than us? (improvements features)
3. Why do you have this idea in your mind? (new ideas)

Overall, what we need to do is discover what outcome or goal they aim for at first.

## Explore ideas to achieve the goal

After we know what the goals they wanna achieve. We shall explore different ideas and solutions to achieve the goal.

Some questions we can ask ourselves
- Is the solutions proposed the best solution?
- Are there any ways to achieve it?
- Among the solutions I explored — which one do I have the most confidence

In this stage, we shall explore solutions through users' journey, interviews, and also dig into the data. Basically doing more meaningful research to explore different solutions available.

So after you explore your solutions, also briefly think about how we gonna implement them. Will be great if we can slightly shape the solutions — so at least we have a good idea of how this solution gonna look like and foresee any future challenges.


## Share your ideas with them!

Time to get back to them and share your research findings! It is important to check with them on whether it will solve their problem. As we are solving problems with them not only by ourselves. Therefore, aligning with them before implementation is important.


My thoughts on what you should do when people ask you to build a feature like some other products.

My take on how to deal when someone tell you "build something like xxxx"

My take on how to deal when someone tell you "build this like xxxx"

About a month ago, I revamp my personal website using NextJS (I wrote a blog post about it [here](https://www.sykim.me/blog/revamp-my-personal-website)). It was an interesting experience and I am pretty happy with the results and performance.

However, [Remix](https://remix.run) is released as stated in my previous post and I am keen to try it on building some project. Therefore, I decide to move my personal site to Remix from NextJS. It is not that NextJS is bad or anything, just that I wish to try out Remix DX and also I am interested to learn more about Remix as well. 

Therefore, I spent about 2 days with few hours day to migrate my personal site from NextJS to Remix. Overall, it is a pretty good experience!! As transition pretty smooth.

## Overall Thoughts on Remix
### The nested routing is good!!
I really enjoy the nested routing in Remix, it is kinda like the nested routing in NextJS but with more features, such as Index Route.

```
├── invoices
│   └── index.js
└── invoices.js
```

In this case `invoices/index.js` will be apply into the invoices.js as `<Outlet/>` component. With something like below.

```jsx
// invoices.js file
<Invoices>
  <Outlet/> // <-- invoices/index.js will be insert here
</Invoices>
```

Therefore, when we have nested files, it will result in nested urls + nested layout as above.

Nested files = nested urls + nested layouts.

### mdx support on the go
MDX is directly supported in Remix without any further configuration!!

### Server side rendering
Remix is a framework that provides only server side rendering, while do not have any other features from NextJS such as ISR or static site generation. 

### Support PostCSS, CSS in JS libraries.
Config and transition is pretty easy for using any CSS libraries such as tailwind, styled components and more.

### Form submit like HTML
I like this quite a lot, it make form submit pretty simple as in HTML when I started learning web dev. However, we might need to see how it gonna handle complex form as in other JS frameworks using state management or anything else (as personally one of the pain-point with HTML form submit is it is quite rigid to some point).


## Conclusion
Overall, I felt Remix is pretty well architectured (quite different from current available JS Frameworks) and have its own benefits that could be used in by developers to built web applications that are scalable and performant.

Lastly, you can view my personal website which are migrated to Remix [here](www.sykim.me).

My journey of migrating my personal website from NextJS to Remix.run

Moving to Remix (from Next.js)

It had been a year since I started working & studying from home as a student and developer since the Covid-19 outbreak in Malaysia. Like others, we always face issues in focusing on work/studies as there are distractions. Also, there is no peer pressure from peers such as you work with others in the office and studying in the library (you will have more motivation to focus/work as others are looking at you). 

Therefore, we start seeing many people actually have their private study groups in discord to study together using Pomodoro timer, and some of them live-stream themselves studying on platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, and more.

One of the benefits of studying in groups or publicity can help you boost your motivation and focus. You could feel that you are working with others together to the same goal and giving yourself to a situation that others are monitoring you studying.

I think that this is a pretty good idea, and it kind of works, but I personally did not practice it as most of the study group platforms or livestreams are dependent on a common public schedule or streamer schedule but not personalized (although you can reply it, but it feels different). 

Until one day, I discovered [Centered](https://www.centered.app) from Twitter. It basically solves the pain point that I stated above by helping me to get into deep work by working with others with my own schedule. 

Once you enter the app, you can list down all your todos for the day and the estimated time for each of them. Then, you can get into your "Flow State" by starting your task, and the Pomodoro timer will start. Once the timer starts, music will be played, and you will join a virtual co-working session with people who are working now (you can see others working together, as shown in the screenshot below).

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1637587380273/aU4-S-R0H.png)

I personally enjoy the application a lot, and it boosts my productivity as it forces me to stay focused and work on real works while not procrastinating.

My thoughts about Centered, and why I enjoy it.

Writings