Skill Progression App for Rollerskaters
Background
As a roller skater myself I often found it frustrating that the apps we currently use, like Strava or Let’s Roll, only track distance and duration. That makes sense for cyclists or runners, but not for roller skaters.
We don’t skate to count kilometers, we skate to dance, to groove, and to express ourselves. It’s not a workout, it’s a flow. So none of these apps really captured what skating feels like or helped me track what actually matters, the skills and drills I was learning.
Highlight
Since it was a personal project to experiment and I wanted to move fast I thought “what if I just ask AI to prototype an MVP for me?” So I opened Blink.new, described what I wanted, and within a few hours, less than a day actually, I had a functioning prototype. I also tested Lovable and Replit to compare, and funny enough, all of them made similar design mistakes. That was kind of reassuring, it reminded me that AI still has a long way to go in design thinking :P
But the cool part is that I sent this AI prototype to a few skaters I know from two of the biggest roller skating communities in Greece, Patinia and Zoe Patini. They tested it and loved it! Their response was basically, “We totally need this. Please go build it.” So, I had a functioning prototype alongside a validated idea in less than 24 hours.
Discovery
After I had the initial idea, I wanted to see if other skaters were struggling with the same thing or if it was just me being extra about progress tracking.
So I went on Reddit and asked a few simple questions in rollerskating communities like:
“How do you keep track of what you learn?”
“Do you usually go out with a plan, like ‘I’ll work on transitions today,’ or do you just start rolling and see what happens?”
The answers were super consistent. Most people said they used Excel, Notes apps, or nothing at all, just their memory.
"I use a Google Sheets spreadsheet on my phone to track tricks that I want to learn, and when I end up getting them. For other sports I use a more detailed spreadsheet where I track more info about attempts, practice, etc."
-One of many Redditors
I realized people were already trying to track their drills, they just didn’t have the right tool. Also, their spreadsheets were basically databases waiting for an interface!
So I took inspiration from those sheets to design the app’s structure.
Ideation
I picked FlutterFlow because it’s visual, it builds for both iOS and Android, and it connects easily to Firebase. I used ChatGPT as my tutor. I’d upload screenshots from FlutterFlow and ask things like “what am I looking at?” or “how do I connect this to a database?” Step by step, I learned how backend and frontend work together.
At some point, I realized I had not only built my own app but also learned a new skill set, databases, state logic, UI/UX in FlutterFlow, all while solving a real community problem which was awesome.
Next Steps
The app is still in progress (since I’m juggling other projects), but I already see how it could evolve into a real platform for skill progression, not just logging.
