App Jam – The beginning

The brief:

An App Jam is designed to stimulate a developer in the rapid development or creation of an app. Through short and condensed development loops you quickly explore and improve concepts and prototypes. App jams usually take place over 48 hours. This time restraint makes sure there is no wasted time as the developer needs to quickly explore paths and turn them into prototypes to test and improve, before the final production standard app. 

My plan:

For this app jam I do not have this amount of time to dedicate and the last few weeks have been hectic and have unexpectedly pushed me off schedule. I am a few days behind on creating content which is pushing week 3 work into week 4. My plan to get on top of this is to focus on completing week 3’s work during the week and then doing week 4’s work over the weekend. This will be achievable due to a more normal schedule but I will also have to keep an eye on myself and not to burn out early on. I am looking to spend 2-3 hours a night from Tuesday to Thursday on this app jam. I will finish off any work needed on Saturday morning unless I have completed it, but that is my final deadline. 

Regarding methods of rapid ideation and development I am going to use a condensed double diamond method (as seen below). This design process follows two different stages that work well within a longer time frame and this rapid process.

Discover – This section pushed designers to look at the brief from a multitude of angles, thinking of fresh and innovative ideas. Spreading your thinking further afield than your first ideas as well as researching around the brief.

Define – Here designers and developers will makes sense of all the research and what the problem means. What matters most? What could be possible to achieve? Here you should develop a clear vision and plan to move forward in the process. This should frame the design challenge.

Develop – This stage is where you should start to form concepts, where they are prototyped, tested and iterated. This trial and error style helps designers to constantly improve and progress the ideas through short feedback loops. 

Delivery – During the delivery phase the final product is finalised and created from all the previous sections. 

Deliverables:

These 4 sections frame the process very nicely for this app jam as there is a nice balance to the project as a whole. In the past I have dedicated too much time to coming up with ideas and concepts without spending the time to reflect and evaluate them. The define section give me opportunity to do this without limiting the other areas.

I will start by exploring the theme and will initially research around this area. Once I have understood the brief I will begin exploring through the creation of mind-maps to push my thoughts and ideas further. The main deliverables in this project however are the prototypes and the final product. Paper prototypes will allow me to rapidly create and visualise different concepts and ideas. This is a method I really enjoy as I get a lot out of putting my thoughts onto paper. This will be a large part of my output along with more developed wireframes. Digital wireframes are also a great way to quickly create prototypes to test. I have used Adobe Xd and Sketch in the past and I will use one of these tools to create basic wireframes and more developed prototypes to test. For the final production I will create either a vertical or horizontal slice of the app (depending on what the app does). This will most likely be on Adobe Xd or Sketch as I have not been able to learn Swift to a standard where I feel confident to code an app and would be a waste of my time in this app jam.