Pareto of Learning No-Code & New Case Study ✨

How to actually learn a No-Code Platform in 20% of the time.

Sep 2, 2020

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What is Pareto Principle?

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is a theory maintaining that 80 percent of the output from a given situation or system is determined by 20 percent of the input. The principle doesn't stipulate that all situations will demonstrate that precise ratio – it refers to a typical distribution.

Basically, you spend 20% of the time as input and get 80% of output. When you begin to approach No-Code, it takes a lot of time to learn. It's harder because, you are figuring out your idea, design, workflows & eventually you also have to learn about No-Code platforms to implement your idea. This is an inefficient and Ineffective way of learning & executing your ideas.

I came up with these learnings and systems after building with No-Code products for 15+ months. Here’s a quick tweet thread:

Madhuri 🔮 @Iruhdam24

1/ I built a number of projects over a year without writing a single piece of code and very less investment of less than $100 (< ₹7000). Some of them are publicly built projects and some of them are internal systems that worked as products.

Clarity on No-Code Platforms

A fundamental clarity every maker needs to have is:

👉 No-Code platforms are not made for design, they are only made for execution. You need to be ready with design, workflow and product strategy before you even jump into No-Code.

👉 No-Code Platforms are designed for work with how technology actually works like, you need to be aware of basics of Interfaces before you jump in.

Constraints for Learning

When I started with #noco30d for nocolo.co I wanted to learn about Adalo or Bubble in the following constraints:

Explorations are to be done in less than 3 days.
Explore all options and constraints of the No-Code Platform.
Get an overall understanding of how workflows & data works in that platform.

Based on these points I started to develop a simple system for the same; Here let's look at it with example of Music App.

Step 1: Start with Simple App Idea

Start with a basic Music app, something familiar. Make a music app which has the following aspects:

Artist Page with basic details
Album Page with 2-3 Songs from each album.
Playing the Song
Relations showing the artist has albums & the albums has related artists.

Step 2: Work with Data

When you work with data you actually understand, how any platform handles the data and wether it can actually fit your context.

For example: I learned that Adalo does not give me an option to show my data as Time, only currency was available.

Setup your data in a spreadsheet. Setting up a spreadsheets allows you to see the details and the connections in your information (View how a spreadsheet can be setup).

Here is the data for you to practice:
Get on Google sheets

Step 3: Imitate existing Design

I was able to build out Music app quickly using a familiar layout like Spotify and make workflows using the above Data. It really helped in understanding the constraints of the No-Code platforms.

For example: I realised that Adalo did not really handle responsiveness well & had issues with alignment once published (See the final result).

Step 4: Final Decision Time

Once you conducted this simple experiment:

If you see that the platform has more potential, you should invest more time in learning the nuances and making more workflows.

If not, choose a different No-Code Platform and see if it fits your needs by repeating the same experiment.

Your Context

Learning is highly dependent on context and motivation. There is a difference between being a No-Coder and shipping a project using No-Code.

The above method works for Learning more about a platform & also to ship your project. If you are looking for learning no-code to become a No-Coder, you need to shift your strategies.

How to maximise your No-Code shipping and learning?

Define a project.
Gather the data that your product needs.
Design the workflows of your product.
Working with timelines and ship consistently.

Being a No-Coder means a lot more and deserves more detailed posts of its own.

New Case Study: Little Black Book

I have been a long ardent user of Little Black Book which practically allowed us to find cool cafes and brands that I never knew in and around India.

We had a great time chatting with Dhruv, Co-Founder of LBB on how they use Retool, Webflow and Airtable internally and also to ship to customer quickly.

This a particularly important case study if you are a startup or an organisation and looking for effective and efficient ways to improve collaboration and effective working among teams.