How did we get here?

Some call it coincidence, I call it fate. The same day I got news of my biggest client having to cut back on my services in part due to the economic crunch, I stumbled upon a Twitter post by the FlutterFlow team.

The post simply called for any app ideas/concepts that was built using FlutterFlow. Just to make it beginner-friendly, they decided to only require 1 screen or just the UI portion of it built up. Sweet. Right up my alley. One problem though, it was due in 4 days.

Working on a crunch for your side-projects does wonders.

With a very real deadline ahead of me, I had to make every small window of time that opened up for me, count. According to my calculations, I should be able to pull it off if I average 16hrs/day.

The prize was a pair of AirPods Pro, which I thought was a decent token.  With my eye on the prize, keeping the theme on my mind, and trying to figure out what would attract people’s, let alone the FlutterFlow team’s, attention, I set out to pick out of my hat full of ideas.

With all the hype around AI, doing a concept that harnesses it could prove worthy.  Also, I took a glance at some of the incoming entries. Most of them submitted individual screens, but one even went the extra mile of launching it as an actual app. I could not possibly compete with these guys. Or so I thought.

Just as a testament to myself, I decided to embark on this journey, with not one, but two app concepts. I aimed for a minimum of 4 screens per concept for the submission.

Why now?

As a first-time business owner, I was way too comfortable with serving that one client, really well. They reciprocated with matching my charges with no complaints. It did not interest me to take on more clients. It also never seemed like this client was headed towards tougher waters.

Being slightly caught off-guard, I was wondering what I was going to do to get more clients? To make sure history never repeats itself. I do have a family I provide for, and bills to pay. I also had a knack and a love for building products in general.

To sell my services, i had to showcase how my work process is and what kind of outputs I produce. I never had a portfolio site, but I figured its about time my little tech consultancy gets some wings and start working with more clients.

The Aha! moment.

I love moments when I step into an app contest/competition. For some reason, I feel that the constraints somehow result in promising outcomes. The best way I look for ideas, just look within. Problems that we encounter on a daily basis.

While skimming through my iPhone, the Photo widget pulled up a throwback image of a house party we held at my parent’s place. We were about 30 pax strong in that one picture. But, I was not able to share it in group chats, nor in social media (although I am only on Twitter), just because….. There were a bunch of ex couples in that picture, which could stoke the wrong emotions in them.

Breakups are hard. But why do we have to delete them, especially when you look great in them!

Photos are precious. They are a way of capturing a specific moment in time. Why do we have to let anybody ruin it?

Holiday photos, family reunions, school gatherings, almost all of which could easily be made non-sharable the moment somebody goes through a breakup. The parties might have moved on and remain friends. But it will still be awkward if either posts a picture of themselves overlooking a scenic backdrop, many years later.

The #buildinpublic movement on Twitter has shown a sneak peek into  what is possible with AI.

With technologies such as StableDiffusion, ControlNet, etc. it is unbelievable the number of potential use cases that suddenly opens up.  Watching guys like @levelsio and @dannypostmaa churn out projects is just mindblowing.

Having toyed around with image generative AI and being hands on with it, I knew how I could apply it to my problem. Simply replace the ex’s face with a totally realistic A.I generated avatar that looks nothing like the ex in question.

Now, if only I could come up with a catchy enough name for it, that was not only funny, but at the same time, said what it does. And that’s when a word play came to mind. This app helped you forget ex’s right? But that is not provocative enough. But, what if I called it F-MY-X (i.e. pronounced ‘eff-my-ex’), where the F stood for ‘forget’ 😛 .

How I started work on it.

Pencil to paper. Wireframes came out the instant I knew how I would like the app to behave. I knew that trying to build it on the fly would definitely result in a cheaper looking final product. I stuck to my design process, but stepped on the gas.

The right screens, are ones that should be able to tell what exactly your app does.

Pictures say a thousand words. But in the app world, every and any screen could be left open for interpretation. Video or GIF formats are best, but sometimes pictures are all we can work with.

I knew at this point that I had to finish the paper mockups for all 8 screens by that very night. After multiple sketches, and a couple of iterations, I arrived on the first set of 4 screens that I thought would best depict what the app does.

That day, I hit the 16hr mark and it just dawned on me, on what I had signed myself up for.

How I built it.

With the sketches out, the next morning (a couple of hours later), was just a list of to-dos I had come up with the previous night as I was wrapping up. My work process has always been pretty straight forward, and even though I have tried switching it up a couple of times, I seem to be defaulting back to this. Paper → Sketch → {insert languageName}.

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Since I was using FlutterFlow, which is a no-code platform, I did not have to worry about crunching out code for hours at a stretch while just trying to build the UI for one screen. Instead, I knew that if I nailed one screen to the exact specs of my Sketch designs, I can average it out and get an idea of how long it would take to complete all 4 screens for each app.

No-code is about to change the world for PMs as we know it.

I have said this before, but I think its worth mentioning again, if you are a PM and always loved making ideas come to life, no-code is for you. Devs do not have to worry that PMs are about to launch their own apps, but it allows them to ideate at a much faster pace.

Building my mockups on Sketch was almost second-nature to me. I knew exactly how long I was going to take to design and beautify each one. Again, I gave this task for all 8 screens a full day’s worth of attention and nailed it.

At this point, everything that I did prior, was things that are well within my comfort zone. Tools that I am familiar with. When it came time to start working on FlutterFlow, I caught myself hesitating a few times over.

The only difference this time, was that the deadline was very real. I had one shot. Every hesitation, was tackled head on by just putting one step in front the other. I wasted no time on the what-ifs and found creative ways to cross every hurdle that showed up while I was building it on FlutterFlow.

On Day 3, I was done with FMYX’s UI on FlutterFlow. 4 screens. ~12hrs. Breaks factored in.

Where I am with this project now?

As much as the problem I was trying to solve with FMYX is very real, I told myself not to fall too deeply in love with the idea, like I do with most, knowing this is as far as I can bring it.

This was an idea that I wanted to work on, to kinda document my entire work process, to whom it might interest. As much as I see crazy indie-devs making equally crazy money from the A.I front, I am doubtful of my abilities to carry this one alone.

Not every idea deserves the time and effort to see if it has legs.

Coding is hard. Wasting time on building something in code jsut to see fi people will use it, can be quite futile. It can also get really demoralising and the sense of ‘wasted effort’ looming even before you launch. No-code actually cuts that coding time, to a fraction.

As much as I would love to sit in my office and build out every idea I have on no-code, I also have bills to pay. The consulting gig was not one that I planned for. But realistically speaking, I needed some form of revenue that was paying the bills.

Building products and ideas, quick enough to test them was always my forte. In the time since  I started consulting, it solved an itch for me to never settle on one idea for too long. I have built a number of apps for different organisations just by collaborating with their devs.

FMYX is another such idea that I might revisit down the road some day. Or hopefully, maybe one day, one of your big boy photo editor apps incorporates it as a feature.