2020 was a tough year and I needed a project to survive the endless lockdown and remote working. Outside the day job I have always been playing with technologies. Learning, playing, building and producing proof of concepts. With my interest in containers and microservices I have been building up an inventory of reusable services and libraries. I built a reusable login service when I wanted to learn about Oauth; a data store library when I wanted to learn about new kinds of databases, the list goes on.
Separately I have been building a list of side project ideas I have been continuously adding to. Lots of them are crazy but when the bad ones are culled out there is a lot of potential in the list. In 2019 I was working on an ambitious enterprise service diagramming tool which was starting to prove itself valuable as a design tool, but 2020 felt like it needed something different. I wanted something simpler and more easily accessible as a public example of what I could build.
Mainly 2020 had to be different because continuous working from home and with my passion being coding I wasn't getting out much, so I looked down my list of projects and found the perfect candidate that would get me out into the world! Challengeswipe was perfect for me, because the testing and process forced me to go out!
The elevator pitch
Is planning your city visit stressful? How many guides have you googled? How much time does it take to find the spots you really like? Do you feel like you are walking past the best spots?
What if you could make a list of the places you want to see just by swiping? What if you could get assistance planning your route? What if you could build a profile and share where you have been?
If that sounds good, challengeswipe is something for you goto challengeswip.com on your phone and follow the three steps:
- Swipe for Challenges - and pick the spots you need to visit
- Complete challenges and earn points! - getting directions to each one in the process
- Share with friends - and inspire them to follow your footsteps.
It's the perfect solution. It meant I had to get out, take photos and record locations in order to set up the location database. I got to learn a lot about GPS, integrating with google maps and more. I am now at the friends and family launch stage so I invite everyone reading to visit the site on your phone and check it out! Maybe select some challenges and put them on your post lockdown todo list!