I’ve got a lot of apps. Some I use a lot and some I hardly touch. But if I were to design a perfect app, I know exactly what I would love to have right at my fingertips. See, I love to shop. I probably (definitely) have too many clothes and my closet is very cramped. If I could create any app it would be to help me keep track of all my clothes, shoes and accessories and maybe I would be able to put outfits together on a model that looked like me. This way I could stop forgetting about old clothes in my closet, stop myself from buying new clothes that I don’t need and help to get dressed every day without pulling everything out of my closet and making a mess.

Sounds like a great idea, right? Well all great ideas have to start somewhere so I want to take a moment to discuss the ideation techniques I used to reach that idea. To start I like to use the Braindump method, it feels a little bit like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing if anything sticks, but that’s why I love it. So I gave myself 60 seconds (excuse any messiness or bad handwriting, I only had 60 seconds) and gave myself a guiding question, “What do I need improved in my life?”

So here was braindumping in action. Right now is a strange time with the coronavirus going on so a lot of the problems that I might have had with friends, work, or in other situations aren’t able to be fixed right now, so I found myself struggling with something real. But then I remembered that with all this quarantining and working from home I had a huge problem right on my bedroom floor, an incredibly messy room. So after focusing slightly on the messy room I decided to do a “worst idea possible” for an app that could help me keep my room clean. 60 more seconds on the clock and….

Surprisingly a lot of my worst ideas had to deal with home invasions. Through this ideation technique I realized that the real reason why my room gets messy so quickly is that I actually have a bad habit of dumping my closet out onto my floor when I’m looking for something to wear and leaving it there for days. I can tell my mom will love this assignment when I tell her about it. So I know I need something to keep my closet organized, let’s do one more ideation technique challenging assumptions,

It was through this ideation technique that I realized my actual problem. Because my closet is so cramped and filled with things I hardly wear, I have a hard time being able to visualize the pieces that I currently own and that’s why they don’t make it back into my daily wardrobe and eventually end up forgotten. The app I mentioned above might not work in the end, but through my ideation methods that’s the first thing that came into my mind to stop forgetting about old clothes in my closet, stop myself from buying new clothes that I don’t need and help myself to get dressed every day without pulling everything out of my closet and making a mess.

PDF VERSION: Ideation Methods