One of the most interesting phases of the mobile app development process is the ideation phase. You can explore endless possibilities and let your imagination run wild to come up with new and innovative ideas.
Ideas can come from just about anywhere in a hoard of different ways. There isn’t a one size fits all scenario here. One can adopt a number of different methodologies for testing ideas and brainstorming which would help them in creating apps that stand out from the rest.
Here are a few activities you could include in your ideation framework for getting creative app development ideas:
Running Workshops for Ideation
A good way of allowing the whole team to give ideas for the app development process is by running an ideation workshop. The workshop should be driven by the app designers since they understand app development like none of their colleagues do. This, however, shouldn’t stop others from getting their creative juices flowing into the workshop.
Ideation workshops are incredibly creative and are enjoyed by the whole team. You would rarely see anyone who would be looking forward to the end of the workshop. Everyone is involved in the workshop, and hence the ideas resulting from the workshop are much more creative than the ideas that are normally used by the companies.
Before running the workshop, it is advisable for you to spare some time for preparing the workshop. To start with, you must provide the team with researched data and make sure that they understand the problem at hand. Once done, inform them about some user personas and ask them for suggestions regarding the problem at hand. Make sure that the team sticks to the task at hand since the discussions tend to go off in different directions.
To make things more interesting, set up a time challenge wherein your team would have to come up with ideas.
Go For a NUF Test
NUF stands for New, Useful and Feasible. This test is done to test whether the good ideas are actually good or not. The test identifies weak points in the ideas so that the ideas can be improved before being implemented.
You could start with collecting all ideas at a place and asking everyone in the organization—instead of just the development team—to cast a vote. Getting the whole organization involved would help in implementing a positive atmosphere in the office which would promote teamwork in the office.
The main objective of your workshop should be to solve the problem. Use the NUF test to rate the ideas on a scale of 1 to 10. Having a popular vote acts as a measure of how effective the idea is.
Go Wireframing
Once you are done with ideation, get a sketch developed. After getting the sketch developed, you can now go for developing wireframes.
A thing to remember here is that a wireframe has more to do with the functioning of the app and not the looks of the app. You can spend hours recreating the content and structure of the app later, but when you start, it is necessary for you to focus on creating a solid layout of the crucial elements.
That’s how we work out here at BrainMobi, one of the top mobile app development companies around the globe. Our team has some of the most creative minds who are not only good at ideation but development as well. We have a proven track record of delivering sans pareil quality mobile apps which are bound to be successful in the various app marketplaces they are released on. Send us an email mentioning your requirements at sales@brainmobi.com to get a free quote on your awesome app idea!
