Brainstorming all ideas

Now comes the fun part. Take a piece of paper and a pencil, look at your mission statement, and write down ideas. Describe anything that your app might do. However, and this is vital, do not hold back. Write down anything that comes to your mind, no matter how crazy it might seem. We will clean this list later on, but for now, let your mind go wild. The reason to do it this way is that, by not limiting yourself, that one bad idea might lead to another bad idea, which might lead to a great idea. If you limit yourself beforehand to only writing down great ideas, you will miss out on a lot of things that might turn into great ideas. That list can quickly contain over 50 items. Do this over the course of a couple of hours. It is no use trying to do it in one go, the creative brain does not work that way; take your time.

If you look at the mission statement for the PlaneSpotter app, what do you think can be part of that list? To clarify, a plane spotter is someone who enjoys going to airfields and noting all the airplanes going and coming.

My list looks a bit like this. I have shortened it a little, but these are some typical items that could be on it:

• Note incoming plane type
• Note incoming airline
• Note outgoing plane type
• Note outgoing airline
• Note weather conditions
• Take pictures of the planes
• Warn friends about exciting plane arriving or going
• Check weather before spotting
• Order pizza when spotting planes
• Looking up date of first appearance of a plane type
• Note the runway planes use
• Share pictures with friends

The list can and should be much longer, of course, but you get the idea.

You should repeat this process a couple of times to ensure that all your ideas are on it, no matter how silly they may seem at first.