Ian Blue lived in Chicago for just two months last winter, before returning to his hometown of Sioux Falls. Don’t ask him about his sightseeing experiences, though -- most of that time he spent inside Mobile Makers Academy in River North, learning to build iOS apps.
Turns out he was in the right place: He took what he learned and built an app that was featured on iTunes just a few months later.
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After completing the program, Ian returned to a job he had lined up at Lemon.ly, an infographics company in South Dakota. He went to work building a productivity app for them, “Full,” which helps you keep track of your progress on goals, such as going running 15 times in a month.
Since he was just getting going as a developer, he was as surprised as anybody when Full made iTunes’ New & Noteworthy list. “That was kind of crazy,” he acknowledged.
So why did they select his app? “I don’t know for sure. I think the name is awfully simple, the artwork looks good but is also simple. And it features swipe gestures, which Apple’s going to use in iOS 7.
“I submitted Full… and before I knew it, it was approved and they were asking for promotional artwork.”
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Although the app looks simple, Ian built out a relational database so that each swipe is tracked with its own timestamp, giving him the ability to add more robust filtering and data displays in the future. He didn’t know how to do that going in, but he said Mobile Makers taught him to use Stack Overflow as a fantastic tool, but to not just copy and paste large chunks of code. “That gave me the eyes to see code and question it, and to do something different. I ran into issues when I was building Full, but I had learned to problem-solve and make it work.”
Now Ian’s staying on for another four months while they look at additional ideas, including designing apps for Lemon.ly’s clients. You can be sure we’ll be keeping track of his progress.
