Building Stardew Hotel App: Sora’s Capstone Project for a Seamless Booking Experience
Sigma School
16th February 2025
As part of Sigma School’s coding bootcamp, students undertake a capstone project to demonstrate technical skills and problem-solving abilities. One standout project is the Stardew Hotel App, developed by Sora. With a background as a student before joining the bootcamp, Sora set out to challenge himself by building an intuitive and efficient hotel booking system that simplifies the reservation process.
Many hotel booking platforms suffer from cluttered interfaces and complex navigation, making the process frustrating for users. Sora wanted to create a streamlined, user-friendly booking system that removes unnecessary complications and provides a seamless experience. The goal was to enhance accessibility while ensuring a hassle-free way to book hotel rooms.
Sora built the Stardew Hotel App using React, Firebase, APIs, and Bootstrap, focusing on a clean and intuitive design. The app allows users to create an account with email authentication, book hotel rooms with ease, and receive automated email notifications upon successful reservations.
A dedicated booking management dashboard gives users control over their reservations, enabling modifications if needed. The profile section includes customization options, allowing users to upload a profile picture for a more personalized experience. To enhance security, the app also features a password reset function, ensuring users can manage their accounts with ease. By prioritizing usability and efficiency, the app delivers a modern and simplified hotel booking experience compared to existing platforms.
Building the Stardew Hotel App wasn’t without its obstacles. API integration issues proved to be a major hurdle, taking two to three days to troubleshoot. Display problems with the profile picture feature caused inconsistencies across different pages, requiring additional debugging. Time constraints also became a challenge, as the initial project scope was too broad. Procrastination in the early stages led to a rushed final development phase, forcing Sora to make tough decisions on what features to keep and what to cut.
To tackle these challenges, Sora dedicated extra time to debugging API connectivity, ensuring smooth functionality. The profile picture issue was resolved by refining image handling across different parts of the app. Realizing the initial scope was too ambitious, he narrowed it down to essential features, ensuring a polished and functional final product. Seeking feedback from an experienced developer provided valuable insights on improving functionality and user experience. The process also highlighted the importance of time management, reinforcing the need for better planning in future projects.
Despite the challenges, Sora successfully developed a fully functional, user-friendly hotel booking system. This capstone project not only showcased his technical abilities but also reinforced crucial lessons in project scoping, problem-solving, and time management.
Reflecting on the journey, Sora acknowledges the support from peers, mentors, and AI tools like ChatGPT. The Stardew Hotel App stands as a testament to his growth and determination, proving that with perseverance and continuous learning, anyone can build something impactful in the world of software development.