What is Pareto Principle?

The Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is a theory maintaining that 80 percent of the output from a given situation or system is determined by 20 percent of the input. The principle doesn’t stipulate that all situations will demonstrate that precise ratio — it refers to a typical distribution.

Basically, you spend 20% of the time as input and get 80% of output. When you begin to approach No-Code, it takes a lot of time to learn. It’s harder because, you are figuring out your idea, design, workflows & eventually you also have to learn about No-Code platforms to implement your idea. This is an inefficient and Ineffective way of learning & executing your ideas.

How did we come up with this learning style?

We have built over 30+ Projects just in No-Code. Here’s a tweet thread of Madhuri's openly built projects and systems built for various contexts:

Clarity on No-Code Platforms

A fundamental clarity every maker needs to have is:

👉 No-Code platforms are not made for design, they are only made for execution. You need to be ready with design, workflow and product strategy before you even jump into No-Code.

👉 No-Code Platforms are designed for work with how technology actually works like, you need to be aware of basics of Interfaces before you jump in.

3 Constraints for Learning

When I started with #noco30d for nocolo.co I wanted to learn about Adalo or Bubble in the following constraints:

1. Explorations are to be done in less than 3 days.
2. Explore all options and constraints of the No-Code Platform.
3. Get an overall understanding of how workflows & data works in that platform.

Based on these constraints I started to develop a simple system for the same; Here let’s look at it with example of Music App.

Who should use this approach?

1. This method works best for a usecase way of approach to launching you products.
2. If you want to be a No-Coder, this approach will help you evaluate if the problem statement & the no-code toolset you are pairing it works or not.

Step 1: Start with Simple App Idea

Start with a something familiar. For the purpose of quick learning, I chose to make a music app which has the following aspects:

1. Artist Page with basic details
2. Album Page with 2–3 Songs from each album.
3. Playing the Song
4. Make the relationship of showing the artist with albums & the albums having related artists.

Step 2: Work with Data

When you work with data you actually understand, how any platform handles the data and wether it can actually fit your context.

For example: I learned that Adalo does not give me an option to show my data as Time, only currency was available.

Setup your data in a spreadsheet.
Setting up a spreadsheets allows you to see the details and the connections in your information. Make a copy of the sheet for your Practice .

See a quick walkthrough here:

Step 3: Imitate existing Design

I was able to build out Music app quickly using a familiar layout like Spotify and make workflows using the above Data. It really helped in understanding the constraints of the No-Code platforms.

For example: I realised that Adalo did not really handle responsiveness well & had issues with alignment once published.

See final result here:

Step 4: Final Decision Time

Once you conducted this simple experiment:

If you see that the platform has more potential, you should invest more time in learning the nuances and making more workflows.

If not, choose a different No-Code Platform and see if it fits your needs by repeating the same experiment.

Finally, Your Context

Learning is highly dependent on context and motivation. There is a difference between being a No-Coder and shipping a project using No-Code.

The above method works for Learning more about a platform & also to ship your project. If you are looking for learning no-code to become a No-Coder, you need to shift your strategies.

TLDR;

1. Define a project.
2. Gather the data that your product needs.
3. Design the workflows of your product.
4. Work with timelines and ship consistently.

Did you try out this method?

Thank you so much for reading this Article and I hope you found this useful.

If you have tried this method of learning, I would love to hear from you and tag your explorations with @teamnocoloco or #nocopareto on twitter and i can get to them right away.