Welcome to Thunkable, Where We Believe Anyone (Including You!) Can Invent Their Own Beautiful App
Hi there. My name is Albert and I want to tell you about one of the most important moments of my life. It was the fall of 2012 and I was a thirty-something grad student in urban planning who was desperate to learn how to code. Thanks to an amazingly generous professor, I spent the previous summer researching the disastrous impacts that another technology (the car) was causing in cities across developing Asia. The problem was that cars were spreading rapidly to every major and minor city in the region and carried with them everything from greenhouse gases to traffic and the inequity that was often associated with it. The only hope was to counter the ascent of cars with the only technology that was beating it in adoption — the smartphone.
Smartphones at the time were starting to become popular even in Dhaka, the bustling mega-city of Bangladesh and the forecast was that these devices — which were already more powerful than mainframe computers from a few years before — were going to be ubiquitous because they were not just phones — they promised to become the remote control to one’s daily life.
Apps aren’t a panacea to thorny human problems — but they can help
The problem for me was that after visiting 13 cities and meeting dozens of entrepreneurs mashing up mobiles with mobility — including the inspiring founders of Fazilka Eco-Cabs, Grab, and Go-Jek — I could imagine a hundred ways in which this soon-to-be ubiquitous smartphone could help alleviate the transportation challenge facing so many. My problem? I had no idea how to program one.
Anyone can build a mobile app — and likely in 10 minutes
Fortunately for me, a visionary MIT professor named Hal Abelson had been working on EdTech for over four decades and had been working with Google on a Lego-inspired platform called App Inventor. App Inventor sought to greatly simplify the process for building an app — something that at the time was and is still a complex program to build even for an experienced programmer. On App Inventor, building an app was as easy as dragging and dropping different elements (called components) from things native to phones like location sensors to your favorite services like Google Maps — and then connecting blocks together like legos. For a novice like me, this reduced the time it took to program a native app from two years to a quiet afternoon.
Making your first app doesn’t just give you joy; it also gives you more ideas
After a few quiet afternoons and the help of a TA named Arun, I was able to build my first app after a decade of wanting to learn. I can’t describe the joy I felt when I got my first app to work on my phone. Until that moment, I just assumed that anything I could do on my phone would be invented by someone else. I presumed that because app development was so complicated, only apps that served commercial interests (like those from the automobile industry, which led the way with navigation apps) would ever be made.
To say that the first app moment is addictive was a bit of an understatement. I spent the next weeks of my life building — then imagining — then building seven apps that I thought might help address that thorny problem of urban transportation in developing Asia. And thanks to a partnership with a local adventure organization called Kewkradong, took those apps to the wild streets of Dhaka. (You can learn more about that great adventure in the First Bus Map of Dhaka.)
Introducing Thunkable, where we believe anyone can invent their own beautiful app
Earlier this year, a couple of the early engineers from App Inventor founded a new company called Thunkable (www.thunkable.com) to make inventing beautiful and powerful apps accessible to anyone everywhere. Despite what it feels like sometimes, we are still in the early days of smartphones — and the best apps have yet to be invented. Smartphones are becoming more powerful with every release cycle and they can tap into the latest advances in modern computing like artificial intelligence and augmented reality.
What I’m most excited about is the moment when everyone believes that they can develop an app for the devices that they carry with them each day. What will they invent? What will you invent?
An app to help your community by increasing voter participation in the upcoming election cycle? Or an app to help you business or blog reach their increasingly mobile-only users? Or perhaps an app designed just for you because your homescreen is as personal to you as your bedroom?
I joined Thunkable two months ago because I’m excited about what you’ll be able to invent. And since building your first app or your fiftieth is still a scary proposition, our team in San Francisco is here to help (just click on the chat icon on the bottom right once you start building your app). We try to answer every question we come — though we are sometimes sleeping so that we can be our best selves the next day.
Help us to name our mascot! Email us at hello@thunkable.com or connect with us on Insta, Twitter or Facebook
Today we are launching a new website and with it a new mascot that we need your help naming. She or he is smart, helpful and has some great dance moves. We look forward to seeing your suggestions and even more, seeing what you invent!
