Indie App Developer’s Blog #1 : Getting Started (Or How To Find Your Idea?)
Let’s start from the beginning…
Joy Of Creation
It was early 2016, I was still in college. I had learned the basics (really basic) of Android app development.
Created a some small apps which had singular functionality or some with multiple functions. And yeah, they were all poorly coded and looked really crappy.
Still I love them!
That’s what the creation bug does to you. Once you make something of your own, you will always chase that feeling.
Nothing is more satisfying.
I was hooked.
A series of first apps…
Once I had completed(not really) learning the basics.
I started created random, somewhat useful apps for my own use.
First app was a simple news app, which pulled top 10 news articles of various fields from Google’s news rss feed and showed in the app. Second was to put my phone on silent if I was in class, using Google Maps API. It checked location regularly which made it accurate but it drained battery.
Created two games too. Using Corona Labs’ engine, which is based on Lua language. It was really basic and the language although different from Java, was easy to pick up. Had to unpublish them because of some security issue -as told by the Google Play Console.
Created a video compressor after that, it uses ffmpeg. It doesn’t work well and is buggy!
One pattern you can see in all of these apps, that they are basic, buggy and poorly coded and designed. But they were initial apps, that I created just for learning and experimenting. That’s what every beginner must do. Create stuff!
So, how do you think of ideas for your app?
Start with yourself.
What app do you want? Make that.
Is it already available on the PlayStore? Doesn’t matter, create your own simpler version first. Add features as you go on.
What apps your family or friends want? If they want something complex, then break it down to a single feature first. And make that.
In all the apps, I mentioned above there were two things common between them :
- I (or my brother) wanted that app.
2. They all have single function.
And that’s how you come up with an idea for your first app.
A single feature, basic app which you or someone you know, might find useful.
Take a small step first.
It doesn’t matter if the code is a mess, or the UI is not like Instagram.
It doesn’t matter. Just start.
Makes something, make anything!

