Is this a dumb idea?
I want to create a free app that helps people determine what they should eat based on different criteria they choose. I've already started the planing and design, however I don't know if I should continue
would anyone use this app?
Put yourself in the shoes of someone looking at the above description on the app store. Would you download the app if that's all you knew about it? I wouldn't.
Your app idea may very well be okay but to properly validate it you're going to have to flesh it out a lot more than that. In fact, at this stage the way you describe the app is far more important than the app itself.
Rather than asking "would anyone use this app?" try asking "who would use this app?".
It's a subtle difference, but let me demonstrate why it's important.
A couple of years ago I read a book called the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. In the book he describes a diet called the "slow carb diet" which is basically a high protein, no sugar and no carb diet. It worked very well, I lost 7 kg in 7 weeks and I'm not very fat to start with.
Now, imagine I went to the app store and found two apps called:
Which of those do you think I would want to download?
The point is, when I was doing that diet I was definitely the among a large group of people "who" read the book and wanted to follow the diet. I would have happily downloaded an app that helped me follow the diet better. I would have downloaded the app because I had a goal to eat a certain way. Anyone else that didn't share my goal wouldn't have any reason to download it.
So what your saying is I should start working on the actual idea and explanation that would draw in a certain audience?
To put it simply, you need to define who your audience is.
Most good ideas and products come from knowing who they are designed for. Think about something you bought recently. This can be literally anything.
For example, today I spent some money on a set of headphones. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of headphones to choose from. However, the headphones I wanted where:
You can do this kind of breakdown with any idea or product. Try it.
To refine your idea, you need to put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for your product. People looking for your product will have a set of constraints like the ones I defined above. If your product fits their constraints they might want it.
Believe it or not, it's impossible to design a product that "fits everyone". Even if you try to do this, you'll end up building something fits into some set of constraints. You might as well be in control of those constraints from the start.
You came here to validate an idea. The problem is, you can't really get validation on an idea until you know who the audience is. Once you have an audience in mind (even if they are imaginary) you'll have an easier time describing the idea and who it's for. Only then will you get good feedback and have some validation.
Thank you for your response. I'll dwell on this a bit more
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
The choices I have for then to choose from are currently "sweet, savoury, bitter, salty, "
"Drink, meal, snack" and " thirst ,hungry, or both"