When I was doing the software engineering bootcamp at Flatiron, the biggest struggle outside of the technical challenges was coming up with ideas for the many milestone projects. For some of them, I was able to come up with ideas fairly easily and jump right into coding. Others took me longer to piece together, and I ended up writing out different ways and places to find inspiration. For anybody else struggling with project ideas, whether for a bootcamp or just a personal project to level up your skills, here is what I came up with:
Create a digital version of something to use/do often
This is a popular one for early projects; I know many people who created basic digital board games like tic tac toe, checkers, or backgammon. It’s a great way to work on your UI and have fun with some design if you build out a frontend with JavaScript, or you can do a CLI version (I did a CLI two-player tic-tac-toe!).
You can also create digital planners or diaries, recipe books, even a family photo album. Just pick anything physical you interact with during the day, and think about a version of it that could exist digitally. There are a million different calendar apps in the world, but not yet one created by you!
I got the inspiration for my Tarot Dictionary when watching a friend flip through the guide that came with her deck. The goal to make it as easy as a few clicks to get to a specific card is what guided my build of the application. Others in my cohort make language dictionaries or basic translation apps for travel.
Recreate your favorite app
Speaking of apps that already exist, another often seen project is simply recreating popular apps! Twitter, Instagram, or just a simple blog are all great ways to get a deeper understanding of how these apps work from the inside. It doesn’t have to be an exact match, and odds are it’s not going to be anything that improved upon the original (though kudos if it is!), it’s all just about the practice.
If your favorite app is Co-Star, make your own version of an astrology program. If the most used app on your phone is Seamless, find an API that provides restaurants based on zip code and make your own Yelp! Even better if you can think of something to add that the others don’t, even if it’s not a feature that the majority would be interested in. “I always wished that this app included this feature, so I build my own” is a fantastic thing to tell somebody you’re explaining your work to, like an interviewer or recruiter.
Ask your family or friends
Many of my project ideas came from trying to solve real-world problems. I made a narrative organizer for a writer friend who wanted to be able to access notes when she didn’t have a notebook handy. I made a gardening application for my mom so she could organize her plants and easily look up all the planting information she needed.
I also started including crowd-sourcing into all my projects, when coming up with possible features. I posted the basic idea for the app and asked people to say what they would like to see included, what types of things would make them more likely to use or download that type of application. This is another great thing to include when explaining your app!
An application should have a narrative built into it, the way the user interacts with it being a seamless story from start to finish. But the way you built it is also a narrative, and recruiters love to hear it. Wherever the idea came from, expound on it when you explain your projects. And if you don’t have a good reason for why you picked a project idea, and especially if you’re not feeling particularly inspired by what you are building, that might not be the project you should work on. I built an application completely based on the Witcher game series simply because it was interesting to me, but the way I can talk about the application makes people want to hear about it, even if they aren’t familiar with the inspiration.
There is a lot of inspiration to be found for coding projects, and hopefully, if you are in the midst of a block these ideas have helped you!
Top comments (1)
My mom gives me suggestions. They're...adorable.