Custom Application Development
Turning workflow thinking into functional custom applications — expense tracking, project management, and personal finance tools.
Situation
Chris began using AI-assisted development tools (particularly Base44) to turn workflows and ideas into functional applications very quickly.
Problem
Many businesses have processes running through spreadsheets and email that could be better served by a real application — but traditional software development is slow and expensive, and the people who understand the workflow aren't usually the ones who can build the software.
Chris's role
Chris designs and builds the applications — his strength is the business and workflow thinking, not traditional software engineering.
How Chris approached it
Chris thinks through the entire scenario the application needs to support — not just individual screens or features. Who will use it? What does each user role need to do? What information needs to be entered, and where does it come from? What needs to happen automatically, and what needs a person to decide? Where do handoffs occur? What exceptions and unusual situations come up in the real world? What do managers and administrators need to see? What needs to be measured and reported? How should permissions work? How does information move through the application, and how does the software fit into the real-world process it's meant to support? Chris works through all of that before and during the build, then uses AI-assisted development to turn that thinking into a working application.
What Chris built
Functional applications including expense tracking software, project management software, and personal finance software — built quickly using Base44, and shaped by thinking through the full scenario each app needs to support.
Result
Working applications that fit real workflows, built in a fraction of the time traditional development would require.
Skills involved
Related types of problems
- • We think this spreadsheet or process could become an app
- • We have a process that really should work better than this
- • We're running an important process through spreadsheets and email and think there has to be better way
Does this sound like something you're dealing with?
Tell Chris about your situation