Creating user interfaces in order to solve real problems

I believe that the way we interact with technology is crucial for us to do more and to know more. And that's why I really value user interfaces.

They allow us to access information, interact with it and perform actions with technology that we wouldn't otherwise.

As a creator, my main drive is to develop solutions that can help solve real problems for myself and other people, and my weapon of choice is precisely creating web user interfaces.

So, today I'd like to share with you my most recent experience solving a problem by creating a web user interface.

The problem

As mentioned in the case study on my previous post, I launched an online concept store with my brother called Quest It Up. And as you know, nowadays it's really hard to grab people's attention towards your creations.

So, leveraging social media is still one of the best strategy any business can adopt since that's where most of the attention is allocated.

Both me and my brother want to be involved on content creation for social media, but one problem occurred: my brother didn't have the means to create personalized content the way we envisioned, since he has a Chromebook.

For those who don't know, a Chromebook generally comes with Chrome OS, a Linux-based Operating System that supports mainly Google Play apps and some other few features. They are great for mobility and light processing work, but they are not good for content creation and editing.

The solution

And so I thought: why not creating a web user interface that allows him to create content and then convert that generated HTML into an image?

And so that's what I did.

The idea here was to make something really simple yet efficient that took as little time as possible to build. After all, anything was fine as long as he could create quality content on his Chromebook.

Roughly 8 hours passed by, and... this tool was born!

And the following image is one example of what he can achieve now.

Cool, right?

At the end of the day, these 8 hours ended up saving him money since he wanted to buy a new computer for this purpose. And hey! I also ended up using this interface as well for being a quick solution to create images.

Awesome!

So, why am I sharing with you this story?

This project was a reminder for me that you don't need to build perfect solutions in order to achieve a valuable product.

Sometimes doing the minimum is ok!

This goes hand in hand with pareto's principle, aka the 80 20 rule, which suggests that 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results.

If you think about it, you can really apply this concept to a lot of things in your life, which is quite interesting to think about.

Another thing that I want to point out is the importance of user interfaces. In this day and age, where we are all connected through the internet, user interfaces can bring true value for people. Even change!

A cool project that I'm following is electroneum, which is a cryptocurrency that is empowering people, specially in underdeveloped countries to get access to crypto through their mobile app. People can even top-up their phones with crypto in some countries. And all this is possible with their mobile app.

So I can't stress enough how important it is to building meaningful interfaces in this era.

I hope you enjoyed this post! If you are a web developer, share your thoughts! If not, are you interested in start creating user interfaces?

I would love to hear from you!

Until next time.

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