Should we build an app?

Today, I’ve been at ‘Ignites’, NPC’s annual conference. Our Digital Lead, Alex Green ran a session called ‘Should you build an app?’. He said that there are over four million apps out there – which sounds like a lot to me! He also made the point that apps don’t just cost money to develop, but they cost a lot of money to run, promote, and upgrade.

So building an app isn’t always the answer! And there might be another digital solution to a problem.

Alex took us through several tools used in the UX world to think about tackling user problems. We used the SCAMPER framework, used for generating creative ideas, and an empathy map to think about what a user might say, think, do and feel about a particular problem.

Both tools would be great to use with young people and youth practitioners to think through some of the problems we want to tackle through My Best Life. We’ll be commenting here on how this goes!

Below are images of the empathy map (explore what users say, think, do and feel) and the scamper method (substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, and reverse.)

An empathy map of what users says, thinks, does and feels
The scamper framework

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