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We learned that UI design can be a long and iterative process. We were constantly challenged to change our assumptions, and learned that often, the smallest of details matter. Most importantly, we learned that we needed to be flexible with our designs and be prepared to change them even if they passed user testing if it would be impossible to implement.
If we were to do this again, we would probably start earlier, and find outside help for parts that were a little more difficult, such as connecting the database. A lot of the trickier parts of our implementation was bottlenecked by the database, so we would try to work around that. We ended up implementing most of the features we prototyped, with the one change in the status that was different from what we prototyped. As far as which prototype techniques to use, I think that both the paper prototype and the heuristic evaluation was valuable, although I believe the paper prototype was a little more useful to see what people actually wanted. The heuristic evaluation mainly told us small things that we needed to fix, rather than what is wanted by the users.