Have you ever thought of building your own flutter app? I’m going to share with you, my ideas for choosing a Flutter project. As an extra I’m going to share the Flutter project idea I have chosen to work on. This is part 2 in the series on building a new Flutter app from scratch.
What should you build? I know that it’s not all of you who have an app idea. But, I really recommend that you find a project you are really motivated to solve. I’m going to take you with me on my journey to finding a starter app project. I already have experience in Flutter as I’m in charge of our Flutter app development in my company DecorRaid. But I didn’t build the app myself and therefor I want to learn how to code a Flutter app from the beginning, I don’t find it motivating to build the same app from scratch, as I already know the code base. So, instead I have found a project that motivates me to learn Flutter.
Examples of Fun Flutter Projects
For finding a project that motivates you, try looking at your life and think of which features could make your life easier. Maybe, your hobby is cooking, then wouldn’t it be cool with your own recipe app? Think creative, to get your ideas rolling, I have collected a few examples of fun Flutter proejcts you can build.
- Portfolio website
- Book database of you favorite books
- Notes app
- Recipe app
- Gardering notes with notifications
- Remake your favorite app etc.
I’m going to build a Flutter app that can monitor my companies KPI’s with different stats. You can follow along in my example or find your own project. If you have your own website you can connect Flutter with Google Analytics and get data for your own Flutter Stats app. How to get data for your stats app we are going to figure out in a later post. Don’t think so much about what is possible at the moment, it’s about taking it one widget at a time.
Make a Simple Mockup of your New Flutter Project
Before you start coding, you need to make a simple mockup of the Flutter project you have decided to code. With the mockup it will be much easier for you to figure out which widget you need. Start with one simple page of the app. I like to use Instagram to get inspiration for beautiful UI Design, by searching on hashtags like #appdesign #uidesign #uitrends.
It’s always good to get inspiration from others, especially if, there is not the big UI designer hidden in you. When you have gathered some inspiration for the UI, choose some colors that you like for your app. You can go to my post on How to Choose & Install a WordPress, where I go through what you should think about when choosing the color pallet for you website or app. The most important part it to choose three colors. But, I will really recommend you to read the post, as your app is going to look so much better if you are consistent with the use of colors.
How to draw a mockup of your Flutter project
For drawing a simple mockup of your app, you can use pen and paper or find an online drawing tool. I came across Adobe XD, where you easily can setup a new prototype for a mobile or web application. The really cool thing about it, is that they are working on making it possible to generate Dart code automatically from the design you have created. So far, it has been free for me to use. I started with this simple mockup, you can see below. I added some text to help me figure out which widgets that can build my UI. To learn more about widgets go to Flutterbyexample.com they are really great at explaining the basics.
Now that you have a mockup of your app you can start coding. If you haven’t already created a Flutter project for your new idea go to my post on Creating a New Flutter Project.
