Can you create all of the front-end design first then go back and complete the back-end (workflow and data) last? I would like to know if this proved to be an effective/easier method.
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Yes, you could. You could “prototype” before fully building the application. Whether it’s more effective or easier probably depends on what your goals are. Is it better to show what the overall design is going to look like, or fully build out one feature, release, and then build another?
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My recommendation is to start out small get basic features working on all pages and revise from there.
Here’s my experience…
I’m more comfortable with a graphics program and paper so initially used those to draft the vision of the site layout.
Then I used those as guidelines to build a page of bubble at a time. Now I didn’t just go make all the pages but started getting the functionality to work because how it actually worked made me change my mind about some designs and that impacted other pages. So if you did everything you’d have this kind of cascading effect rippling through the design.
Since I’m more comfortable with bubble now I just design the page straight in bubble but I get it working and see how it flows before moving onto another page. I also don’t add all the functionality initially but leave spaces for other ideas or leave things non working like users until I’m happy with what they are doing.
This way you don’t “overbuild” but go incrementally and have the flexibility to quickly change your mind as you see how things work.
What kind of app are you building? That might provide the basis for more insight.
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Like @Kfawcett said, it’s possible of course, and again it might be more effective.
That said, from what I can gather, most bubblers typically do both more or less at the same time.
Bubble development, in my opinion, blurs the line between traditional “front-end/back-end” development in the sense that so much time is saved on both ends that breaking it up and focusing on one or the other as separate projects isn’t necessarily time efficient by any means.
Also, by “designing” the app visually, you are essentially building many of the workflows you’ll need already. It’s just a simple matter of clicking the start workflow button.
If you’ve got a form with a submit button, just create new things for the data and boom you’re done.
What I like to do myself though is spend time defining all my breakpoints and styles first, that way I don’t get caught up when I’m “painting” my app on things like trying to figure out page widths, typography, colors, button corner roundness etc.
And as @john3 says, there is this cascading rippling effect that we run into - as you build the function of the app, other things are going to pop up that could very likely break your design
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Thanks for your response. I think I’d rather showcase what the overall design is going to look like fist since that’s the easier of the two for me.
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Ah, nice touch. Thanks for your response. Its more of a general question rather than a specific build. Pre-gaming for my first non-tutorial based build.
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Thanks for your response. I like the way you put it because you are definitely correct in that if you’ve already dragged an Input box and created a submit button the workflows are already there for your to “create a new thing” and add elements to make the darn thing work.
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Cool - be sure to share when you get it up and running 
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You bet!
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