Hello everyone! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sam and I’m a Bubble Developer at Bubble and passionate fan of our product.
I’m really excited to announce our first community build contest! This is something that I’ve been wanting to do since the day that I started working at Bubble - if things go well and we get enough engagement, I’m looking to do these every month across a variety of different categories.
Here are the general details:
Each contest will last one month. This specific one will run from March 1st - March 31st.
There will be a specific set of guidelines each month that define the parameters for the build. Some builds will be small bits of functionality or specific UI components, others will be larger builds more akin to a full app. We’ll try to change it up so that these contests can appeal to a variety of different experience levels and availability constraints.
To enter the contest, you can submit a public link to your build anytime during the month by commenting on the forum post.
The app for your build must be a new app, created on or after the start date for that months contest (we will check this to keep things fair!)
At the end of the month, we’ll pick our favorite app and send the builder some Bubble swag!
Other than that - be creative, and have fun. This is meant to be a really loosely defined structure that allows our community to showcase what they can build.
Here are the details for this month’s contest:
We’re starting simple: our interactive lessons at bubble.io/lessons end with a to-do app. For our first contest, we want to take this to the next level, and see what the community can come up with for project management functionality.
Here are the requirements:
Ability to create “projects” (you can call them whatever you want)
Ability to create to-dos within a project
Ability to create “general” to-dos not assigned to a project
UI that clearly designates the difference
User authentication so that projects and to-dos are only visible by their creators.
Due date functionality for both projects and to-dos
Bonus points for a calendar display of to-dos and projects by their due dates!
I recognize that “we’ll pick our favorite app” is a bit general, so here are some guidelines for what we’re looking for:
Clear UX - it isn’t difficult to determine how the app works and how to interact with it
Clean UI and beautiful aesthetics
Working functionality - data is created, edited, and deleted properly.
Extra bells and whistles - we love to be surprised!
I hope everyone has fun with this! Let me know if you have any questions!
@sam.morgan very cool! I am with @mikeloc the UI/UX kind of puts us developer first types (i.e. not designers) at a disadvantage. Maybe future projects/contests could consider the design as of slightly lesser importance or could provide some sort of base level design components that could be used so that the focus can be on features/functionality over pixel perfect design.
For sure! This is really great feedback. My thought in coming up with these was this:
Bubble as a tool empowers a bubble developer to be the designer too, at least more so than traditional software developers. Frankly, that’s one of my favorite things about it! It takes a process that was once the job of 3 people (PM, designer, dev) and makes it possible for one person to fill all three roles. That isn’t to say there isn’t a reason for Bubble apps at scale to have PMs and designers in addition to devs, but I do think its one of the coolest parts of being a Bubble developer - we CAN fill all three roles.
All that said, I certainly don’t want this to be limiting, or discourage anyone from participating. I would suggest that if someone really is a design-first dev, they wouldn’t have the same functional skills you might have, and both are counted equally here. So definitely participate regardless!
For future contests, I think that this will naturally be accounted for in the category: For example, this build, as a project management app, is naturally going to require more design skills. But a future contest might ask you to build an iterative loop that processes data in a certain way to achieve a certain functionality. In that case, design would not matter nearly as much as workflows and functionality.
Great questions! We’re still experimenting, and trying to keep this contest as casual as possible for right now, so at this time there will only be one winner who will receive some Bubble swag.
I’m not opposed to creating a forum badge for participants! That’s a really cool idea - let me talk to the team about it and see what we can come up with.
@sam.morgan It would be fun to put some limitations on these in the future. Like “no plugins or javascript allowed challenge” – I’m thinking something like the native bubble flappy bird game. Would be fun to see how far we can push native bubble.
I think what would also be nice is a contest where people can make some components (reusables etc.) using native bubble features. There are quite a few things which lesser mortals like us will benefit from if some good components are there as otherwise they are really tricky to make. For examples a good dropdown like Selectize plugin or a table component or a calendar view for booking resources etc.
