I was recently told that every time we make a to-do list app or a weather app, a koala dies somewhere. Let's stop this together!
Below are some app ideas that loosely came to my mind. I added emojis to make it easier for you to identify the apps that could become your next passion projects:
💕 helping others / more friends
🌍 sustainable world
👩⚖️ social justice
🧞♂️ everyday practical
🎁 misc
1. Metro locator 👩⚖️ 🧞♂️ 💕
- an app locating the closest subway stop that has an elevator
2.Food-sharing app 🌍 💕
- share food you won’t eat
- bonus: maybe an option for restaurants to join and a separate UI?
3. Social gatherings 💕
- an app that helps you engage strangers in random impromptu games/challenges/conversations -- it could use geolocation to see whether another app user is in proximity
4. Brain teasers 🧞♂️
- an app for bored people that sends fun activities, brain teasers or goofy challenges
5. Teamwork is Dreamwork 🧞♂️ 💕
- pair-programming app that helps you set up fruitful collaboration
- bonus: accountability check
6. Hands-free game 🎁
- a hands-free game like this one: https://duckhunt-handsfree.glitch.me
7. Text generator 🎁
- a lorem ipsum generator like https://www.affirmations.madewithtech.com/
8. Coding quiz 🧞♂️ 💕
- a quiz-based site that challenges you to transform functions to arrow functions, to use destructuring or translate methods between js and ruby
9. Sentiment-based news site 🧞♂️
- a news site that uses IBM Watson to determine if a given news piece feels angry, etc.
10. Money counting app 🧞♂️ 👩⚖️ 💕
- an app that helps people with dyscalculia to determine how much money they have in the wallet
11. Art generator 🎁
- a page that generates a Yayoi Kusama random painting. Or Alma Thomas. Or Piet Mondrian.
12. Bookmark extension 🧞♂️
- an app/extension that helps you save a link to your bookmarks
- bonus: it could also work on slack
13. Fluffy Alexa skill 🧞♂️ 💕
- an Alexa Skill that tells you nice things every day
- bonus: maybe they are in some way personalized?
14. Online treasure hunt 🎁
- bonus: 💕 with an option to communicate with others? Or, a leaderboard?
15. Carbon footprint calculator 🌍
- an app that calculates how much carbon footprint your grocery shopping/general habits contribute to and educates you on eco-lifestyle
16. Water waste calculator 🌍
- an app that calculates how much water your clothes used to be created (and maybe invites others to do the same?)
17. Timeline! 🎁
- an interactive timeline of some music history / game history / social justice stuff
18. Front page generator 🎁
- a website that creates a newspaper front page with news of your choosing or with media uploaded by you
19. City trivia 🎁
- an app for people who just moved to the city that responds to geolocation and sends out facts about the area
20. Browser history detective 🎁
- OMG imagine a game in which you are given someone’s browser search history and on that basis invites you to make some guesses about the person
21. Gamer's bingo board 👩⚖️
- A gaming reddit scanning app that looks for most common sexist comments, then checks a bingo board and sends automatic comment if more than 30% of the board is checked, like this: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/195625177536611475/
22. Making sidewalks even 👩⚖️ 💕
- an app that helps you report uneven sidewalks instantly, with a click
23. Trading app 🎁
- a sneakers/Magic the Gathering card trading app
24. Film production call sheets 🎁
- an app that helps you builds a call sheet for film production
25. End subscription? 🧞♂️
- an app that helps you keep track of your online subscriptions
- bonus: it sends notifications when the free trial is done or sets a reminder on your phone (in your calendar app?)
26. Bug tracker 💕
- a cute app that helps you and your team log the errors/bugs you got this week and invites you to celebrate as a team every 100th bug
27. Trivia 🎁
- an app that sends you push notifications/emails every day with some very specific trivia
28. More app ideas 🎁 🧞♂️ 💕
- an app that generates app ideas
29. Plant parenthood 🧞♂️
- an app that reminds you to water/move your plants.
30. Horoscopes 🎁
- mad-libs horoscope app
31. To the loo 👩⚖️ 🧞♂️ 💕
- An app that helps you locate the nearest available bathroom, allows you to rate its cleanliness/accessibility, leave comments + has a filter for gender-neutral bathrooms
32. Data Viz 🎁 👩⚖️
- Data visualization of any of the OpenDataNYC
33. Dating app for social justice warriors 👩⚖️ 🧞♂️ 💕
34. Humane meetings 🧞♂️ 💕
- a meeting scheduling app that forces you to include in the agenda 15-minute breaks every 3 hours and an hour-long lunch break
35. Better carpooling 👩⚖️ 🧞♂️ 💕
- a carpooling app that prevents drivers from canceling on people with disabilities or PoC
36. Loving chatbot 👩⚖️ 💕
- a Slack chatbot that corrects your messages with regards to inclusive language
37. Weather app?? 🧞♂️
- a weather app (hold off your judgment) that actually tells you how to dress -- New York's 50F is very different from Berlin's 50F due to humidity
Oldest comments (44)
Great post. I also went to a bootcamp and tried to come up with different ideas for project with friends. Great 👍 list!
Thank you! How kind. Now that I work at a bootcamp, I decided to create resources that help students and code newbies not worry about fluff stuff like this :)
I mean it. #28 is great 😉. Great resource. I wish i knew about this website when I want at the Bootcamp.
Awesome ideas!
This would surely inspire the developers, especially the newbies to innovate and create stuffs!
Great work👍
Thank you! That's so kind of you! ✨
I am actually working on #28 as my final year project🙄
Oh, that's amazing! If you remember to share it once you're done, I'd love to encourage my students to use it! ❤️
Heyy, How was it? I wanted to do a similar project, did u publish any paper??
Great post :)
Thank you! ❤️
They are good ideas. Love to try to to create while learning. Thanks
That's awesome! If you create any, share them! I'd love to include examples in this post!
excellent list!
Thank you, Tamara! So kind of you.
This is by far the coolest list of app ideas I think I have ever seen.
Wow! Thank you! Your comment motivates me to:
a) write more!
b) MAKE these apps :D
Thanks!
It's ambitious but I think I may do something modeled after #22 with traffic infrastructure in general...I used to work for traffic engineering firms and if enough people were willing to share data of how long they are stuck at lights it could produce enough data to create an empirical basis for forcing the Dept of Transportation or city Civil Works to do a traffic study at an intersection to recalculate timings. The super ambitious route would be throwing it into a ML model and finding the most optimal traffic signal timings!
I love it!! That’s a very important issue considering how much time is spent in cars. Awesome! If you do it, share it! I’ll be super curious to see it.
An app that sorts the restaurant's menu by least calories and shows those first ;-)
Yes! Or by the amount and quality of oil / salt / sugar used :)
Very col and original suggestions.
Thank you!
Thank you for your kindness! Have a wonderful day!
37: I made an Android app that did that many years ago (but it's not on Google Play anymore). I named it "RainMama" 😄
Oh, that’s really great! Do you have any screen recordings or readme? I’d love to give it as an example in the post ad/or to my students!
I found some screenshots - bear in mind this is from 2012 :)
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It was a simple Android app that accessed the user's approximate location (no need for fine GPS location) and got weather data from some weather API (can't remember which one, maybe OpenWeatherMap?).
You could open the app and it would suggest what to wear based on the current weather. Or you could receive a notification when the weather would change, saying smth like "Don't forget to take your umbrella with you" :)
Hope this helps :)
That's awesome (and also very early 2010s :D )! I'll add a shoutout to you in the next edit!
wow this is amazing!
your kindness is amazing! ❤️
Wow!
I wanted to do something to learn some front-end and back-end dev (I'm mainly an embedded developer) and this is the best idea list I've ever seen.
Thank you!
How wonderful! I’m so curious what you’ll create. If you end up making something, please share — I’d love to add links and examples to the blogpost to help people get connected and inspired!
There is also a well-organized list here: github.com/florinpop17/app-ideas
Oh, thank you! I will contribute my ideas there as well!
I love how many of these are targeted at helping marginalized groups and communities. There are a few bathroom finder apps but I've been thinking about putting my own spin on it because I know finding gender neutral bathrooms is always a challenge for me.
Exactly! I am always trying to integrate as much information about socially-conscious tech as possible. If you end up creating such an app, I'd be really happy to see it!
Just mind-blowing!😍 This article is timeless. More and more people need this to save koalas😉
I will definitely dive into some of those. Thanks for sharing.😊