For this project our brief was to design a smartphone app. To start off the project we had a launch with Theo and David which they explained different types of apps that exist and things to consider when creating an app. There are several elements that needs to be considered such as who’s the target audience, what are the implications etc. Designing an app which is not already in the world is very challenging as the era we live in everything is now an app. Momchill Filev and Denis Grosz of the Harvard Innovation Lab illustrated the radical dematerialisation of the office desk between 1980 to 2014. This is clear example as everything on the desk, the printed calendar, the radio, newspaper these all became an app. The cables disappeared all we have on our desk top is just the laptops everything else has become part of the laptop. This is a huge shift from materials to apps. In this sense, designing an app is challenging however to start off the project I’ve started to do a mind map which focused on what would I want to download and use, what makes an app stand out.
I started off with doing a mind map which focuses on my personal interests. One of my first ideas was to focus on cultural elements such as tourists. My idea is a Tourist friendship app only focuses on tourists, they will be able to make friends with other tourists around the location they are in. As some people travel the world alone or with a partner, using an app to have a chat with other people can be very useful and I think it could work really good as an app. Thinking about the details, I think every one would have a profile where they write their interests, countries they visited and facts about themselves. The profiles will need to be verified to avoid any safety problems. By tourists I want to focus on just people who travel the world.
These are the apps I found which was mainly about tourist guides on App Store. I did some research whether my idea was already existing and I couldn’t find something similar. Most apps for tourists consist of travel guides focused on day trips, sightseeing or buying tickets for events in your location. I think the idea of tourists friendship could work if I add few more elements into it such as finding cheap bars and food restaurants.
Another app idea I had was focusing on make up and beauty. I thought about different make up apps that already exists. Mainly they are shopping apps or focused on photograph which are full of filters for instagram. For my design, I want to focus on different make up looks and beauty tips.More like Pinterest where the person gets to choose the category of the make up look or beauty hacks they want to see and the feed will be all focused on that. In a way it’s like social media for make up/beauty. I also thought about men as well where there are many men who enjoy doing make up and also beauty hacks such as skin routines, how to look after their beard etc.
I also wanted to see if the idea of make up social media already exists so I did some research. The ones I could find where mainly focused on shopping and apps for filters or photo editing apps to enhance your make up. I think this shows that there isn’t an app focused on the make up and beauty looks which has more of social media feel to it. However, this idea is very complex as I would have to involve men and women as target audience.
Also, I thought about focusing on food. There are many apps focused on ordering such as Just eat. I wanted to focus on something niche such as just halal foods in your location or just vegetarian food in your area. By this way, if your a vegetarian you don’t have to go through Just eat or other big apps which is waste of time. With this app, it will be easy to find high end or takeaways which do vegetarian or halal foods. Also, it will have features such as rating, reviews.
I found an app Halal Local which tells you all the halal food places in the area and also travel guide. Halal Gem is what my idea was which locates all the halal restaurants in the area so I will not be doing that.
Busra Yildiz 