I've been keeping track of "learned" nuggets of information - wise words if you will - that I've learned working for a variety of clients on a couple of projects.
- The best way to understand the scope of a client project is to have your client use the final product. Everything you do beforehand is an attempt to figure this out before the deadline.
- Even if you have a testing environment set up for your client to play around with, they will do their testing on the live site.
- Your client won't test the project until it becomes relevant to them. See 2.
- You need a team.
- It's really hard to do full stack design and development on your own. See 1 - you need 4.
- Work on projects in your timezone.
- Get a work e-mail address. See 6.
- You won't hear from the people who didn't have a problem using your system.
- If you want to hear from those people, add a comment box to the end of whatever it is they want to do. Don't expect them to fill it out though.
- You will hear from everyone who's office or work environment uses a firewall or filters e-mails so that they don't receive sign up e-mails.
- People aren't expecting automatic uploads or saving. Even if the uploaded document appears in the browser, they'll assume it hasn't worked. Provide them with the button and the "Done!" that they want. Same with saving any input.
- People are surprisingly okay with automatic importing of their user accounts based on past signups.
- People will fail at copying-and-pasting their auto-generated passwords into their password box.
- People will copy-paste any information they already have, even if it's wrong.
- Make sure your server provider doesn't have a daily limit on how many e-mails you can send out.
- People will forget what e-mail they signed up with. They will create multiple accounts and then wonder why their accounts are not up to date.