Why Build a Fun Fact Generator?

“Let’s do a quick ice breaker to kick this off… What’s everyones fun fact?”

*Me sinking into my chair in the utmost panic*

“Uhm… uhh… I like to hike.”

That’s a direct quote from yours truly and I could not be any more embarrassed by how lame that sounds. Fun facts should be energizing, conversation starters, actually interesting. Not some boring information that no one will remember about you. 

This is when I decided to work on a small project that would eliminate this problem I was having.

Typically, when thinking about what to build, your product should have three components: Strategic Fit, User Value & Business Value. When creating a product for yourself, you may become the user and the business so this framework changes slightly. When I was thinking about what to build I kept three things in mind:

1. 1. Strategic Fit (Does this help me break into Product Management)
   2. User Value (Is this something that I find helpful)
   3. Can I build this (Low technical complexity)
      
      

I wanted to build something from the ground up that provided value for myself, but I had to be realistic with my level of technical ability. Around this time the “What’s your fun fact" question popped up and I thought this would be an appropriate small problem I could solve for myself and learn a thing or two along the way.

Goal Setting

I started by developing SMART goals:

• Specific: I will use this project to display Product Management skillsets
• Measurable: I will spend at least one hour a day learning basic code
• Attainable: I have baseline knowledge in HTML and JavaScript
• Relevant: This is solving a problem that I experience and can be used for practice
• Time-bound: 1 week. 

Once I set these goals, I was ready to dive in and work towards my objectives.

Building...

I started with a basic HTML website that contained two things. A header (Random Fact Generator) and a button (New Fact). That’s it. From here I knew I needed to use JavaScript to return some information.

This was the challenging part. Not the coding, but the act of generating tons of fun facts about myself. ChatGPT was all the rave at the time I was building this so I decided to try it out. For those that aren’t aware, ChatGPT is basically a super human chatbot that uses Machine Learning to generate accurate answers. Learn more about it here. I told ChatGPT about myself and asked to generate fun facts. I took the answers from ChatGPT and plugged it into my JavaScript file and randomized the facts to generate upon clicking the button. 

Boom. I had my fun fact generator. Cool on its own but not practical. To create more value, I converted the “website” to a google chrome extension to make it more accessible for myself.

This mini project inspired me to create my website and highlight other small projects that I have worked on.

Message me below for a copy of the code I built!