W.O.T.D: A Proof of Concept

This is a simple proof of concept, for generating word of the day generator.

Introduction

It is a very straightforward implementation, in a react app that on pageLoad a call is made to the https://random-word-api.herokuapp.com/word.

My initial thoughts were to test out a word generator, the design is plain and simple as there is minimal user interaction. It was inspired by a screensaver I saw which showed the word of the day generator.

I developed this with a simple ReactJS, with some simple UI components for displaying the page title and for the text, A simple fetch call to the third party dictionary API, which returns a single word which we render as the response within the text.

I did also add a nice feature I would likely link out to a dictionary.com definition. And I imagine the URL would be constructed to pass the parameter of the value returned in the API and appended to a Merriam Webster Dictionary URL which takes the user to the dictionary definition of the word.

Future Developments

An idea would be to use a Yes/No button and add a Poll to see how many people used that specific word. This could prove challenging as it would require tracking each word returned and tying it to a Poll - which feels cumbersome, for minimal customer impact.

Another idea for future development would also be to use a speech-to-text API so that a user is able to hear how the word sounds, which could be a useful feature for users learning to use new words to feel comfortable using the new word once they hear how it sounds.

Lighthouse Scores

Lighthouse scores are used to measure the performance of a given website, it uses a set of measurements known as Core Web Vitals. The Core Web Vitals measures things like the First Contentful Paint, First Input Delay and Largest Contentful Paint. It can be useful to establish a baseline and is something I will continue to use in my personal projects/proof of concepts to identify themes that hugely affect these scores.

These are the lighthouse scores from this POC.

Link to the personal project - Link here