Fritz Desir, a consultant with Mckinsey and company, conducted a two session workshop on App Development at the Mott Hall School. Students learned about the process of developing apps from idea generation to consumer research to designing wireframes to sample screens. .

In the first session, students worked in group to generate ideas and each group then decided on one that appealed to most. They created an interview guide for conducting research amongst potential customers of their future app. During the week between the two sessions, each student interviewed 2-3 people and captured the data in google sheets.

Students then put together all their data in the second session, and used this to find areas where customers have a need. Having shortlisted a few areas of customer needs, they brainstormed on how they could satisfy this need, and created a list of features their app would offer. They put all this together by creating a first level flowchart of screens, and pushed that thinking by developing sample screens.

While it is tempting to jump into features, gimmicks, and coding, students who attended this session learned that it is critical to understand customer needs first. There were definitely 3-4 app ideas generated and given shape in this workshop that have the potential to become meaningful apps.