During our week 1 lecture, we did an activity to help us begin this stage of the process called ‘alogical connections’. This involved choosing two very different words and writing any other world relation other than them that come to mind in a spider diagram like structure. Once we had done this for both. of our chosen starting words, we chose one world from each and came up with an app design even if they didn’t seem to pair together on surface level. This was interesting to take part in, as coming up with ideas that I wouldn’t have chosen myself pushed me out of my comfort zone and illustrated how you can really get experimental with ideation.
Upon presenting my ideas, I wasn’t quite happy with any of them to be honest. However, two of the words I paired were water and safety, and it was pointed out that I could focus on coming up with some more ideas as this combination did make sense.
I settled with the idea of an app to track water intake. To be honest, I was a little reluctant of this idea at the start because loads of these already exist and is didn't feel mind blowing. However, as someone who has tried to use this existing apps, this may actually work in my favour as it will make competitor analysis and discovery much easier as there is already a pretty strong market for these. Furthermore, as I mentioned, I have used some of these apps in the past on Apple Watch and ended up deleting them as they just felt overcomplicated, and the built-in feature is simply quite dull and boring. I think this idea is pretty strong as it's something the majority of people, including myself, struggle with. Personally, I’ve had many discussions with doctors about hydration and how easy it is to literally forget to drink.
It’s important to ensure that mt app would have a strong audience at this time. A good way of getting an idea of this is looking at related terms on Google Trends. Google Trends shows how much terms have been searched over a period of time, showing when audience ineterets in things have peaked and decreased.
From this, I can easily identify that people are very interested in hydration and tracking their liquid intake at this time. This indicates that there would be a strong market for an app of this nature currently.
“Hydration”
“Water Tracker”
I am aware that there is already a pretty established market for hydration managing apps. However, this gives me a good point of competitor analysis as I can evaluate existing apps strengths and weaknesses and how they meet user wants/needs.
WaterMinder seems to be one of the most popular hydration tracking apps for smartwatches. Looking at the interface, I can see that it includes 3 screens. One screen allows for inputting drinks, one of which shows current progress and one shows a combination of both. I think that this is pretty good for its core features, but for a current interface it does look a little dated, with inconsistent font sizes and spacings.
I love the interface of Waterllama, a more modernly designed hydration tracker with more features. It includes screens like managing the type of drink you’ve drank, which I really like as most hydration apps focus only on water so you aren’t getting an accurate understanding of how much you’ve actually drank. However, I personally think that in some screens out looks a bit overwhelming with colours and features: This may work for users who have time time, however, I want to create something that users can operate and understand quickly to minimise the effort needed to manage their hydration.