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Writer's pictureJess Andrews

Feeling my way through app design - 7 - Pop ups & Pixel Art






This morning I have prepared myself a huge cup of squash as I am poorly and I have popped on some Lo-fi café radio music from YouTube. I am gunna take things a little easy but at the same time I want to get this done so let’s look at creating some more pixel art and incorporating it into some encouraging pop ups.


These pop ups will show when the child begins, has finished a chore and then once they have finished all their chores. This is to encourage them to keep going and to serve a reminder that there is GOLD to be had!


I begin by looking at some reference pictures of retro gaming bits and pieces on google images and then I head over to Figma to create some treasure chests!

To do this I simply use the pen tool to create these jagged, pixelated images and fill the areas with different blocks of colour making sure to send them backwards so the colour appears behind the lines. I could use Adobe illustrator or a ProCreate type app but these are super simple, rough images so it seems easier for me right now to keep everything contained in fewer places, this way I can move things over to the Figma planning page too to keep track of thought process, I like this, its like getting everything out of my head and onto a scrap piece of paper…apart from it looks a whole lot nicer!



There will be a closed chest to start, open once a chore is complete and then full once they have finished all chores, this will then direct them back to the home page where they can see what they have earned from their chores! – this is gunna take some serious brain power to do though!




Then I can go through the whole canvas app and link everything up, this means going through each button and check box and making sure they navigate to the right place etc.


So far, my experience of building my first app has been a good one, SO FAR… I haven’t hit any major hurdles and remain fairly optimistic but we shall see how I get on. I think the point of this blog was to show others who haven’t got the most experience that you CAN tackle it, as long as you do it in small, manageable chunks. When reading other blogs and articles I was kind of overwhelmed by all the jargon and technical talk but once you get past that and just concentrate on what you can do, its quite freeing!

You can do it if you want to, there’s nothing stopping you from opening up a notebook, planning a simple something, starting up a canvas app and having a play!

I wanted to create a blog for beginners, by a beginner…were in the same boat, there’s no judgement, no rush, no worries 😊

I'm enjoying taking lessons from my experiences, My awareness is growing and building and reflecting on any small issues I may have had has meant I can really sharpen my sword in terms of my skills, with Dataverse, canvas apps and now even through the blog and Linkdin. This PowerApps community is huge and I'm doing my best to take full advantage of all the help that is offered to beginners by the community!

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