Learn to structure a database with Glide

What is it:

I was looking for a better and beautiful way to bring my travel research with me and share with others with me or looking for recommendations. I also enjoy photography so I went back through and updated 90% of the app with my own photos.

Maker Insight:

I learned a lot about organizing data and how to think about databases when starting a project.

What did I learn:

1. Not all apps need to be created to start a business. Creating an app for your passion project is sometimes the perfect way to get started with no-code or like Amie, document an amazing travel trip.
Features Amie covered:
-list of cities
-map of cities
-documented notes of what it is like to travel within ea city
-list of favorites
-an about page explanation

Amie said that she learned about structuring databases when creating this project. What I think Amie does so well is naturally move the UX from high to finer grain of detail to drill down into the experience. Her hierarchy of content flows like Itay (the app) cities>Food and Drink locations>her personal experience and notes, hours, link to restaurant website, address.

I've used Glide several times and I think it is not super obvious how you might structure the database/google sheet correctly. But what Glide does a great job of, especially if you are just starting out is provide rapid feedback through trial and error. Because the preview view is live based on what data you have in the connected sheet and what actions you change in the UI.

The one caveat is this works nicely before your app is live. If you app is already published you do not have a test environment to change things without affecting the published version. This is one negative to the Glide platform.

2. Product ideas and how Glide Apps can be used to create businesses....I couldn't keep myself from thinking how I would entertain turning this into a business opportunity. A great way to look for creating a product and service that charges money is by looking for creators who are charging for their services. Use Case:
Airbnb's value prop is providing an experience like you are local. And allowing you to connect to local guides.
Problem:As a guide it's hard to scale your time or maybe you'd like to give you customers more value by providing a custom made app to help them enjoy their journey even more.

User and customer: Could you add value to what a guide does by providing them a bespoke Glide app or sell them a template they can use.

Problem it would solve is: The guide could use to sell to customers that they cannot physically provide a TOUR or provide it as a tool to help their customers have an even better trip by giving each customer their own local travel app pre-stocked with local places to try and allow the customers to document it for them within an app.

Essentially productizing the services of a guide for local tourism.

Second product idea:
Productize a scrapbook
What if Amie used this as a format and a POC to turn into a service? I thought this was a really engaging and different way to be used to better document a trip?

Today what is hard is when you take a picture, you have no easy way to add meta data to it nor is it easy to understand the journey because most scrapbooks don't have maps.

This app made by Amie does exactly that. What if you used this as your own personal scrapbook in real time. Maybe this is exactly what Amie did and in that case, I love this use case. Because this is a behavior that everyone is doing when they go on trips. And because you know it is a behavior that already exists, you could use technology to enhance that experience with just using your phone in real time. I'm not sure there is any type of productized mobile first, digital scrapbook app available today.

3. Glide Apps feature - comments section - In Glide apps you can trigger a user to sign into the app when a user favorites content. Another opportunity to trigger this is with comments. At the bottom of each location that Amie visited, is a section to leave a comment. When clicking this feature a sign in flow initiates. For a business this is a great way to trigger sign up. For a personal app like Amie it is a great way to engage with her family or friends who might be following along her journey in real time. Not everything needs to be placed on social media. Why not create your own personal digital scrapbook and allow your loved ones to comment and provide feedback.

Whatever use case you decide to use it for, Glide Apps provide a lot of functionality and ways to grow engagement or grow a business.