After we had been given the project brief, as a class we were split into groups and set tasks to help with generating ideas.
Firstly we were given a selection of possible areas that our Smartwatch App could solve a problem within. Categories like Money, Education, Travel, Entertainment, Safety and Fitness. From here we were asked to mind map anything we could think of linked to the central theme, we were told to keep this open and not to restrict ourselves.
In the group I was placed within we chose Travel and Entertainment, and below you can see the mind maps we produced:
Mind Mapping is a great tool for generating loads of ideas quickly, especially when you keep your mind open and place no restrictions on yourself. As you can see above we came up with a lot of different ideas linked to both travel and entertainment.
We followed the mind mapping exercise by searching for connections in one topic from either group. What made this interesting was that we were not looking for the obvious connections, or the ones that made sense. We were looking for connections that could inspire new ideas and potential products that no one had thought of or created before. We came up with some wild ideas but a couple could have spawned a product, Live Streaming Luggage was the most likely. A way of seeing where you’re luggage was and how it was being treated while travelling, could be useful for people who are concerned about losing their luggage, or it being damaged in transit.
Mind mapping as a technique was championed by Tony Buznan, who saw its potential and studied how it could be used in a range of settings. He also looked at how the technique could be improved to produce better results.
I found this mind map that shows the uses and benefits of mind maps:
Source: https://www.edrawmind.com/images/article/tony-buzan/mind-mapping.jpg (Last Accessed 03/10/23)
It’s clear mind mapping is a powerful tool in generating ideas, so I decided to take some time and place some potential areas in which I could design a smartwatch app and see where the process took me. As you can see below it offered a large of potential ideas which I could follow up and see which ones I wanted to keep and which ones smartwatches either already offered, similar apps already exist or did not have any development potential, which I could discard.
