I Have An Idea
Like you, I regularly have ideas for products, services or inventions that should exist, but for some incomprehensible reason, don’t yet. When these ideas occur to me, they are so obvious — painfully so — that it baffles me how it can be true that my dumb idea isn’t yet a thing. Once again, I have an idea.
The truth is, it’s one thing to have a good idea and a wholly separate other thing to actually bring a good idea into reality. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to create something; it takes skill and dedication. I, for one, have a surplus of the latter but a large deficit of the former, particularly when it comes to the skills needed to accomplish my idea.
My idea? I want to build an app. A novel concept in today’s world, I know, but one that requires a particular skill-set to pull off. To make an app the inexperienced must learn a new language (or three), one must simultaneously think like a designer, developer and a user in order to be able to see the project from all angles. It’s no small task — a task not unlike learning to play guitar, bass and drums just to write your first album.
I’m comfortable in the design realm. I’ve been designing for print and the web for years with decent success. It’s the programming side of things that I struggle with. My HTML and CSS are ok but you start to loose me at Javascript – and these are just the basic web-based languages. When it comes to learning the native tongue of apps, it might as well be Chamicuro.
In addition to learning to speak app there are additional hurdles to hop. I’ll need to find a free, easy to navigate messaging system to integrate into the app. I’ll need to choose a suitable name, come up with some makeshift branding, build a homepage and eventually navigate the app submission process. I’m sure there are dozens of other hurdles to jump over once I arrive at them but I’ll wont know until I get there.
For the next however-long I’m going to be documenting my experience. I’d like this process to be transparent so those of you out there that are also code-curious, or even code-savvy can see what it looks like for a lay person to wade through the code-y mire and (hopefully) come out the other side. My goal is to be finished by the end of the year, but dang, April is already half over. Follow along to watch me struggle and if all goes well there’ll be one less dumb idea cowardly hiding in the depths of self doubt.
Next time, I’ll tell you what the idea is. Hint: it involves meeting someone special 35,000 feet in the air.
