About 3 months ago I played with Flutterflow for the first time and quickly felt like a UX Designer that's been unlocked. I have this vision for the past year of building out a National Parks, app and have been playing with the idea for a while, but thought it would take several people and a bunch of funding.
I managed to all of this on my own. I'm a UX designer at a big tech company and know a little code here and there, and have led a few side projects over my career with the help of developers. I'll openly and honestly say I had help with ChatGPT at times when I needed a little know-how or debugging a few custom functions - but managed to get there so far.
The screenshots below are all from live app screenshots.
Some of the details behind the scenes:
- I'm hitting the nps.gov API for a bunch of data
- I used several other public databases for various pieces of data, and also created several data sources via the help of ChatGPT)
- Backend is Firestore
- I'm using a few back-end features with AirTable (because I wanted a friendly front-end to manage some of the content and use Airtable automations)
Here's some of what the app solves for National Park fans
Research parks
Look up all US parks, view live weather (the imagery below changes based on weather). You can research trails, points of interest, and get live park alerts from nps.gov
Plan Trips
Record past trips and create your park travel timeline or manage your wishlist of parks and places in parks you want to visit.
Fill in your Parks Passport
Collect achievements for all the parks and places you visit, for doing lots of hikes, etc. A fun way to encourage and reward everyone's park bucketlist
A community of park fans
Share your Park photos and meet fellow park friends, hikers, etc.
Get help planning your trips with AI
Throughout the app are touch-points to start asking questions to Ranger Parks - an AI chat that surprisingly does an amazing job with itineraries and information about parks, travel, etc.
Is this more than a VIP? Yes, it's a lot. However it's a complete narrative that aims to be one place that National Park fans can record their park memories, plan new trips, and maybe find some new hiking buddies for their next trip.
If anyone wants to get early access, I have a form here for my Flutterflow family. Thank you to everyone helping answer my questions in this community - and for the Flutterflow support team for helping me get through some obstacles.