Experienced Designer, Manager,
and Successfully Exited Founder
© 2024 David Adkin. All rights reserved
At Adalo, I led the creation of a no-code app-building platform that empowers individuals and businesses to bring their digital ideas to life without the need for complex coding. As founder, CEO, and designer, I was deeply involved in every aspect of the platform's design, from the user interface to the user experience, ensuring an intuitive and accessible journey for creators of all skill levels.
My work focused on crafting a seamless and visually engaging environment, allowing users to transform ideas into fully functional applications. The platform's design reflects a commitment to simplicity and adaptability, making sophisticated app development approachable for all. This project showcases my dedication to blending form and function, providing creators with tools that inspire innovation.
From 2018 until 2020, I served as the sole designer for Adalo, building the platform's foundational user experience and visual design from the ground up.
As the design team grew to four designers from 2020 to 2023, I led the team while taking on complex design challenges, focusing more on conceptual sketches and providing final feedback to ensure alignment with Adalo's vision.
In 2023, I returned to being the sole designer, guiding the rollout of Adalo 2.0 with a renewed focus on enhancing and expanding the platform's capabilities.
Important Note: While I played a key role in designing these projects, none of this would have been possible without the incredible team we built. From developers and product managers to fellow designers and everyone who contributed feedback, each person played a vital role in bringing these ideas to life. Collaboration was the cornerstone of our success, and I’m grateful for the collective effort that made these projects truly impactful.
This was, without a doubt, one of the most complex design challenges I've faced — designing an app that empowers users to design their own apps. The meta nature of the task required a careful balance of simplicity and depth, creating tools that feel intuitive for non-developers while offering the power needed to bring diverse app ideas to life.
One of the foundational design choices I made early on was to create a streamlined drag-and-drop canvas with all components accessible from a single left flyout menu. This setup keeps the experience intuitive and visually focused; users can easily drag elements onto the canvas, then edit data and styles directly within that same menu. By avoiding the complexity of multiple panels on both sides (like Photoshop), we minimized visual strain and provided a simple, uncluttered workflow that makes app-building accessible without feeling overwhelming.
The true "magic" for makers comes when they connect their database to list components and text, transforming a static mockup into a dynamic, live app. We focused on making this process effortless—allowing users to quickly set up a database and seamlessly link it to their components. This smooth integration brings their creations to life in real time, enhancing the satisfaction and immediacy of the design experience.
We pioneered the first component-first design system in the no-code space, which drastically accelerated the build process for makers. (#1) With a variety of components to choose from, (#2) makers can simply drag and drop them onto their screens, then (#3) edit details using a consistent accordion menu. This approach not only keeps the experience cohesive but also opens the door for customization, with a component marketplace (#4) that allows third-party developers to create and sell custom components tailored to unique app needs.
We prioritized simplicity in database creation (#1), ensuring even non-technical makers could set up complex features like relationships without hassle. Makers can easily connect their database to list components (#2), bringing data to life within their apps, and manage the database itself through a familiar, spreadsheet-like interface (#3). Later, we introduced an AI-powered feature (#4) that lets makers modify their database by simply describing the feature they want, making setup even more intuitive and accessible.
Every component makers add to the screen comes with (#1) easy-to-apply actions, from link actions to CRUD operations, keeping functionality at their fingertips. (#2) Forms simplify the process further by enabling makers to allow their end users to create new items effortlessly. For advanced needs, we introduced (#3) Custom Actions, a powerful feature that lets makers send API calls to connect with other apps; we intentionally designed it to appear later in the user journey, ensuring it’s accessible only when makers are ready for more complexity, avoiding any initial overwhelm in their building process.
We designed the canvas to feel like an open playground, giving makers the creative freedom to explore and visualize their app as it comes together. With the ability to organize multiple screens, zoom in for pixel-perfect adjustments, and easily copy and paste elements between screens, makers can see the whole picture while focusing on each part individually. The canvas is built to handle a wide range of screens, accommodating even the largest apps with ease, so makers can fully develop their ideas without limitations.
We built Adalo with designers in mind, giving makers complete control over styling to make each app uniquely theirs. From rounding, borders, and shadows to a range of other customization options, makers can fine-tune every detail to achieve their vision. The flexibility extends to custom lists, where makers can transform the same list into completely different styles, adding depth and individuality to their apps.
Adalo originally launched as a mobile-only app builder, so designing Adalo 2.0 to support fully responsive apps was a challenging leap. We aimed to keep the simplicity of the original Adalo experience while enabling makers to build apps that could seamlessly publish to Apple, Google, and the web — all from one platform. This involved rethinking every interaction to ensure that creating cross-platform, responsive designs would be just as intuitive as building for mobile alone.
We designed Adalo’s canvas to let makers drag and drop components while instantly previewing how screens would look across different sizes. A key innovation was making responsiveness work seamlessly out of the box —makers simply place a component, and our system "automagically" adjusts it for all screen sizes. This breakthrough in responsive design, which launched before even other design tools like Figma tackled breakpoints for mobile, tablet, and desktop, empowered makers to create cross-platform layouts effortlessly.
To make responsive design even easier, our layout panel includes intuitive controls for setting constraints on elements, allowing users to decide what scales and what stays fixed. This setup simplifies the process by enabling makers to quickly adjust how elements respond on different screen sizes, all without the hassle of nesting divs inside divs. With straightforward constraint settings, Adalo combines flexibility with simplicity, ensuring that app layouts look polished across devices and empowering creators to focus on bringing their ideas to life rather than wrestling with complex code structures.
All of these features empower makers to design truly unique, functional, and visually stunning apps with ease. From custom styling options to seamless responsiveness, Adalo provides the tools for makers to create a wide variety of apps—each one distinct in appearance and rich in functionality.
This video is one of my favorites because it showcases the true power of Adalo — not only in helping businesses and startups bring their app ideas to life but also in enabling freelancers and agencies to build entire businesses on the platform. It’s a testament to how versatile and impactful Adalo has become for a wide range of creators. If you have a couple of minutes, it's worth the watch.