Building Apps on the Edge: Ideation

If I am going to build some apps, going to need to have some ideas first.

Drafting table with work in progress
Lets scratch off the old drafting table and get to work.

This is probably more of a living document, but I am going to start it as blog post so that it is started.

What follows is a series of ideas captured from a series of thinking sessions and discussions with my wife, who lets be honest, has way better ideas than me!


This blog

I've never really had a good blog before. I have had a website, but never a solid place of my home. I want to make it feel personal and quirky, but still be a great place to learn new things or follow along with my progress.

I would really like to build a easter egg filled website game, where you can track your progress and discover hidden extra's in the site.


A instant messenger app, similar to MSN

Over the christmas period, my wife mentioned that she would love to be able to have a modern MSN experience, where you have to be signed in in order to chat, and that discussion was ephemeral. The name we came up with was Realchatty.


A polling app

Just a really simple app where you can ask a question and get an answer from a large group of people. But I want to make it so that you can add a lot of personality with it by creating custom themes.


A real time quiz app

My boss put together a little quiz for our end of year party. We are all remote, so it was done online. It was good fun, so I thought maybe I could replicate that experience so that you can in real time answer quiz questions and the laugh at the unexpected responses. It might be multiple choice, free text or any other possible response.

I think it could be fun to build but of a personal touch to it, like picking a color, an avatar and maybe a bunch of personality traits and it would change styles of your and your friends screens.


A a personal short link service

This one is a must have weekend project right? I thought I would use it as bit of a self test for learning Remix. When i'm a few months in, i'll try going from design to website in a single weekend. What could go wrong.


Learning Apps

As more of a category than specific app, I want to help my wife make some real time tools for collaboratively learning by engaging with material that is randomly generated when people enter a room and then they can communicate over video chat to play.


Flash cards

I have tried to do this before, but became stuck trying to get API's and UI's to mesh well for more complicate examples. I think I ready to dig a little deeper on this though now.


Life recorder, Gratitude and general notes

I have started recording my life to better observe how I am living. I have recently been diagnosed with high blood pressure that is genetic and so changing my diet and doing more exercise is important. I wand to build a simple app to put this in an easier to use place (and I hate writing things neatly with a pen.)

The Core of the app is a calendar view with day, week and month views. You put data and notes in daily and the can role up and see how things are going.


App Idea App

Create an app that is a little bit social, built around the concept of app Ideas. You have an idea, upload it and then people can interact (like, up vote, etc). There could be private lists for individuals or groups. And you can connect with others to implement.


I am sure I will think of more as I go, but as I said, should probably more of a living document so yeah, that.