Peak | Memorize like a champion (Part 1 - Ideation & Design)
Tags: beginners, programming, opensource, productivity
Published: 2021-11-12 06:24:04

This article is for you to read if you like to create dummy apps for fun or if you are curious about this kind of exercise!

## The Memory Champion

Few days ago, I finished reading [Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise](https://www.amazon.com/Peak-Secrets-New-Science-Expertise-ebook/dp/B011H56MKS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) written by [Anders Ericsson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K._Anders_Ericsson) a psychologist and professor who studied how expert performers acquired their superior performance.

The book starts with the story of [Steve Faloon]() who was able to drastically increase his memory span from 7 to 79 digits establishing a new world record at that time.

The technique used by Ericsson to train Faloon's memory is quite simple. Ericsson was reading a string of digits and Faloon had to memorize them on the fly and repeat them. Each time Faloon made a mistake, Ericsson would go 2 step backwards to put him back into his confort zone. For example if he was not able to repeat a string of 14 digits, Ericsson would go back to 12 digits strings, which was easier for Faloon to memorize.

## Will that work for me?

That story inspired me and I wanted to try this technique on my own. So I took 10 random React interview questions found on the Internet and I tried to memorize them the same way Faloon and Ericsson have trained, by going 2 questions backwards each time I made a mistake.

After only a few minutes, I knew all 10 questions by heart.

I thought it was amazing, effective and fun, so I decided to create a tool to also help others memorize like champs!

## Development process

When I want to create a new project, I divide my development process into 5 stages:

### 1. Ideation & Design
- What is the problem I want to solve
- Do I experience the problem (if no, then stop here)
- Who could be experiencing the problem (target audience)
- What solutions already exist?
- How can I produce a better solution?
- Write down user journey
    
### 2. Design
- Choose stack, list all required components (login system, alerts, tooltips, ...)
- Createa a Figma design of all views for mobile and desktop
    
### 3. Assessment
- Is the solution solving the problem I have in the correct way? If not, go back to 1.
- Publish the Ideation & Design article on Dev.to
    
### 4. Development & deployment
- Coding and deploy (use only free tiers)
- Publish the Coding & Challenges article on Dev.to

### 5. Launch
- Polish landing page
- Publish the Conclusion article on Dev.to
- Publish pitch on ProductHunt

## Open Source Project

This is an open source project. The code will be publicly accessible and the tool will be free to use.
You can check out the app design in Figma [here](https://www.figma.com/file/2AKZHygfvR5JY84e9tk4J2/Peak?node-id=43%3A31) and let me know what you think!

You can also participate if you want! If you are a junior developer or a student, this can be a nice learning opportunity! 

Feel free to send me a message or to comment below if you have any question, remarks or advice! :)

Cheers! 👋