Overview
A two sided platform connecting pet owners with local pet minders. Minders set up a profile and list the services they offer. Owners add their pets, browse minders by location, price and rating, then book and pay for a service.
Each side gets its own dashboard covering bookings, services, pets and reviews, with real time messaging between owners and minders and an admin area for handling reports and suspending accounts. Built as a prototype, so payments are simulated and data sits in local JSON files rather than a real database.
Led a team of seven from research and system design through to build. I designed the interface and built most of the front end, including the booking workflow, filtered browsing and both dashboards. My first product build.
Stack
- React
- Vite
- CSS
- Node.js
- Express
- TypeScript
- Multer
- Socket.IO
- JSON store
- Google Maps
Decisions
One account, two roles
Owners and minders could have been separate account types, but plenty of people are both, and that would have meant two logins and two profiles for the same person. A user holds either role or both and switches between them, with the dashboard changing to match.
No database
Data sits in JSON files that the server reads and writes directly. It made the project runnable by anyone on the team with nothing to install or configure, which mattered more than durability for a prototype with a fixed deadline. It would not survive real use, and that was the accepted trade.