Our No-Code Fundamentals course has been an opportunity to empower makers with a solid foundation in building and automating using no-code tools. We’ve been fortunate to have some excellent students join our cohorts, and for the showcase, we’re often wow-ed by what they put together in under five weeks.

Here’s how one of our students used Adalo to build something really cool!

Hello! My name is Michal Sikorski, but you can call me Mike. I’m from Poland. I work as the operations excellence manager in a shared services center in the automotive industry. Together with my team, we improve the work of accountants, making it simpler, error-free, and less time-consuming.

As a side-project, I teach others how to use Excel spreadsheets for their office work and business. I am a husband and a dad of a ten-year-old son. I like to travel, read books, and discover new things.

The project name's Slam Dunk.

Joining the Makerpad No-Code Fundamentals course

As mentioned above, I like to discover new things and the best way to do it is by learning them. I had already heard many good things about no-code tools, but never really got to the subject.

The question was where to start?

Well, my approach is: if you want to learn something new, then learn from the best. I read about Makerpad in the ‘Inside No-code’ newsletter, then discovered the website. Seeing how much helpful information could be found there, I decided to get involved! I signed up for the No-Code Fundamentals course, and kept an open mind.

Turning my childhood goal into a no-code project

During the course, I did several projects, but for the final showcase, I decided to create something special. I had always dreamed of building a mobile app, particularly one that can teach you something, or even just have fun. So I thought, why not merge both in one?

The question was what this application should be about?

I remember when I was a teenager, my friends and I watched NBA basketball games. We admired watching players like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Dominique Wilkins, and Kobe Bryant. Each of us wanted to fly over the basket and slam dunk.

I decided to master it myself. I got some training materials and began exercises. With tons of practice after 12 weeks, I made my first slam dunk. I perfectly remember how I felt then. So I decided to create an app that allows you to "become the best dunker of your team".

The Slam Dunk application was built in Adalo because, as a tool, I find it very user-friendly. I built the whole application in Adalo, and stored all databases there. I started from scratch, with only signup, sign in and home screens. Then I imagined how I, as a user, would like to play with this app.

If you have a clear vision, it’s easier to then recreate it on Adalo. It has to be simple to use, nice looking, and minimalistic. After signing up, the user can start their 12-week training program.

Users have to sign up to access the content of the application. There's no fee. Each week is composed of 5 sessions, and each session is a set of 5 different exercises. I’ve incorporated simple gamification elements into it.

When the user trains regularly, they gain recognition and earn badges in the app. At any time, they can see the progress, the results, and how many badges they’ve earned. For all images or graphics like badges, I used Canva. It's a simple but powerful tool.

My experience building Slam Dunk on Adalo

To me, the most important thing was to build logic for the whole app, as well as to create the right set of database collections. Of course, I had some challenges (for example with creating custom formulas) but this is when you appreciate the value of the Makerpad community. If you ask, you will always get the answer.

The most challenging thing was to create relationships between different tables. The main goal was to follow the user's progress and show what was already done and what wasn't. Based on this information, different actions are triggered.

For example, to visualize how many sessions for each week are completed, I used a rating component. After customizing icons, I created a custom formula to compute an integer from the sum of points assigned to the current session and logged in user divided by the number of sessions in a week. It can sound complicated but it isn't.

This is an MVP (minimum viable product) version of the application. It isn't perfect but it works. I have a list of features I want to add to make it more complex. But it needs time, and I’m still learning how to build with no-code tools.

Learning with the No-Code Fundamentals cohort

The No-Code Fundamentals course was an eye-opening experience for me. Not only did I discover the no-code world, but most of all I met a wonderful and inspiring community. In those five busy weeks, other participants and I created many interesting projects using different tools such as Carrd, Softr, Webflow, Glide, Adalo, Airtable, Zapier, etc. For sure I wouldn’t have made such progress alone.

For me, the most important message from the course is to be problem-focused, not tool-focused. That's why I don't stop here. I am now working on other projects, like an online directory for electromobility in Poland.

I hope this story will inspire others to bring their ideas to life using no-code tools. It can be overwhelming at the beginning, but if you know and understand the basics, you can keep at it. And then, the sky's the limit!

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Thanks for sharing your story with us, Michal! You can follow his journey here.