65 | Validating an Application: How do I know I’m building the right thing? Where do I start?

In this episode, Amy and James talk about the process of validating an application idea, planning it out, and determining which features get built first.

Sponsors

Vercel

Vercel combines the best developer experience with an obsessive focus on end-user performance. Their platform enables frontend teams to do their best work. It is the best place to deploy any frontend app. Start by deploying with zero configuration to their global edge network. Scale dynamically to millions of pages without breaking a sweat.

For more information, visit Vercel.com

ZEAL is hiring!

ZEAL is a computer software agency that delivers “the world’s most zealous” and custom solutions. The company plans and develops web and mobile applications that consistently help clients draw in customers, foster engagement, scale technologies, and ensure delivery.

ZEAL believes that a business is “only as strong as” its team and cares about culture, values, a transparent process, leveling up, giving back, and providing excellent equipment. The company has staffers distributed throughout the United States, and as it continues to grow, ZEAL looks for collaborative, object-oriented, and organized individuals to apply for open roles.

For more information visit softwareresidency.com/careers

DatoCMS

DatoCMS is a complete and performant headless CMS built to offer the best developer experience and user-friendliness in the market. It features a rich, CDN-powered GraphQL API (with realtime updates!), a super-flexible way to handle dynamic layouts and structured content, and best-in-class image/video support, with progressive/LQIP image loading out-of-the-box."

For more information, visit datocms.com

Show Notes

• 0:00 Introduction
• 4:01 Tips and Mini Rants
  • Making TypeScript Look More Like JS Docs
• 9:54 Coming up with a New Idea
• 15:11 Sponsor: ZEAL
• 16:04 Design Sprint
  • Deploy Empathy
  • Software Social Podcast
• 19:42 UI Flow Diagrams
• 20:41 Data Modeling
• 23:07 Sponsor Spot: Vercel
• 24:15 App Map
• 24:56 User Stories
  • Episode 44: What Does it Look like to work on an actual dev team?
• 26:47 Pointing Stories
• 29:22 Prototyping, Wireframing, and User Research
• 34:24 Sponsor: DatoCMS
• 35:17 Which features?
  • Simon Høiberg on Twitter
  • Feed Hive
• 41:29 Grab Bag Questions
• 42:02 Question #1: What is a good way to find a need that you can fill and structure it to build for profit?
• 49:13 Question #2: How do you come up with the perfect name for your app?
• 50:53 Picks and Plugs
• 51:06 Amy's Pick: Cho Pat Bands
• 51:58 Amy's Plug: Learn Build Teach Discord Server
• 52:30 James's Pick: The Traitor’s Son Book Series
• 53:50 James's Plug: Discord Bot with TypeScript, Node.js, PlanetScale, Prisma, and Heroku