How to Unlock Inspiration for New Mobile Apps

New ideas for mobile apps are everywhere. You can literally go to the app store and see thousands of apps that have hundreds and thousands of installs. There are app users around the world which possess a two-fold challenge. Do we create an app that’s used by a few people? Or do we create an app that’s used by many people? Through this decision-making process, we can come to a better conclusion than making a new social media network or a new car racing game.

Mobile apps work the same way that any new business would, as it’s a product that’s being offered (albeit for free most of the time). While customers have become increasingly discerning of new offerings, they are increasingly made aware of the challenges they have when it comes to finding quality apps.

There are apps for literally everything on the app store, and you can solve hundreds of simple challenges like transportation, delivery and dating, using these apps. But have there really been any revolutionary app in the last few years? It seems like apps are becoming increasingly saturated, and the market is dominated by clones and imitators.

There are close to 2 billion smartphone users today, and that number is rising daily. People love using smartphones because of all the features available and the functionalities available to users every day. It makes our lives better and we can have more productivity, fitness and business success with the help of these apps.

Apps are making entrepreneurs rich as well. There is a large number of app owners that have become multi-millionaires by making apps and games that have done well on the store.

#1 Focus on the idea

When you think about what kind of app you want to make, you must think about the grand problem that it solves. Uber makes it cheaper and better for anyone to book a cab. Evernote makes it easier for someone to take and share notes. Your app must also solve a grand challenge that a significant number of people have, so that you can make a profitable product.

When you’re thinking about what kind of challenge you want to take over first, you must understand the downsides to it. You have to commit yourself to research, talking, and working out the issues that users face in current solutions. E.g. when calculating your taxes using smartphone apps, it doesn’t provide consultation. This could be a huge market for small scale entrepreneurs who can’t afford accountants from the get go.

#2 Research

You can start by researching all the trending apps on the app store and understand what works and what doesn’t. You can also start reviewing what the basic requirements are for a successful app and try to emulate them in the beginning. E.g. if you’re making an app that makes it simpler for someone to check if a product is organic or not, then you can download existing apps to see what works about them and what doesn’t.

Then you can build an app or develop your idea further by looking at what your app can offer that’s unique in the marketplace. You can even develop new UI or UX features that make your app more user-friendly and web 3.0 ready. Using AI and natural language, you can develop quality apps really quickly to see what works in the market.

#3 Designing an MVP

You don’t want to focus on building a finished product, unless you’re working on ground-breaking technology. You want to make something called a Minimum Viable Product, that’s used by just enough people to get insights and analysis from.

You can create a basic app that performs all the functionality needed and see if works out. This way, you can develop multiple apps across different domains and see what idea sticks and what doesn’t.

You don’t end up investing a lot of money and you can keep server costs low as you have only designed for ten thousand people to use it. An MVP is a great way to think about your app as well. E.g. if you’re designing an app that helps you find local restaurants that allow dogs, you can start off with making a simpler version using Google Maps.

When your MVP starts picking up steam, you can enhance the way that your app looks by introducing new features and add-ons. When Amazon launched the Kindle store, it did so with a minimalistic approach. This helped them get traction and then Amazon iterated on more features based on community feedback.

#4 Key idea Mapping –

You want to pick out the best ideas that you have thought about and list them out to find similarities within them. Is there a singular customer base? Or are the ideas tied to a singular industry? When you figure out the commonality, you can estimate the consumer demographic so that you can build a concrete solution instead of thinking about ideas.

This is the one step that every developer/entrepreneur ignores as it focuses on developing a new app and testing it quickly. When we have so many ideas in our head to develop a new app or solution, we need to find the common theme that’s connecting these disjointed ideas. When we get that ‘aha moment’, we gain more clarity in action.

We can make decisions faster and create the app in no-time, as opposed to pondering over an idea for months and years before making a decision on only one of those key ideas. Maybe the app could be a melange of these different ideas – who knows?

Conclusion

When thinking about app ideation and brainstorming, you should start with the core research and talk to the potential customers that you will be developing the app for. Getting feedback early is important so that you can create better apps in shorter time spans. So what are you waiting for? Start ideating and make your application come to reality through research, analysis and ideation.