Finding ideas is hard

Week of 28th October

Nina Reunes
Nov 6 · 4 min read

A great project often starts with great research. Especially when you don’t really have a clue what you want to do. So I encouraged myself to scoop around in all kinds of new technologies and development possibilities.

One of my favorite places to browse and learn more about new upcoming trends and technologies is Medium. So I started to read some articles about the trends of 2020 and new developments must do’s. I especially learned more about the possibilities of React, React Native and the differences between native- and web-apps. We had a short introduction of React last year in the course ‘Web App Development’ but I wanted to know more about the possibilities and features of these frameworks.

After doing thorough research, there comes the point to make decisions. I gave myself a week to come up with different ideas. These two were the ones I believed most in:

  1. A Stock Inventory WebApp

While working at my student job this idea came to me. Since 2013 I work at the largest Lingerieoutlet in Europe, based in Belgium. They are known for their gigantic selection of sizes and models, their professional guidance and the fact that they are not pinned onto one location. There’s almost every weekend a sale but it’s always in a different place. For example, one weekend there’s a sale in Genk and the other weekend there’s one in Begijnendijk. They do own 12 permanent stores but they’re never open at the same time. It’s more of a “pop-up” event.

This business model has a lot of advantages such as increasing your target audience, resolving the demand in certain locations and making it more effortless for future clients. But… it also has a lot of disadvantages and one of the biggest ones is handling the stock inventory.

I came up with this idea while walking around in the store and seeing one of my colleagues phoning through all of the deficits, surpluses, and remnants to the stock in Brugge. This way of inventory is executed for all the different sizes of lingerie as well as panties and swimwear.

It’s incredibly inefficient and time-consuming. So I conceived the idea of making an app to facilitate stock managing. This app would be 2-sided: one for managing everything in the store i.e. scanning or indicating a product that should be complemented and another for managing the demands and showing which products are still in stock.

This app would be built in React and React Native. The back-end would be made out of node.js.

2. An App That Easily Helps You Find Local Hotspots In New Cities.

My second idea is one that I carried around for quite a while now. This summer I got the idea to start up a website where you could find must-go places such as restaurants, bars, clubs or even photo-worthy spots. The whole idea of it would be to make it easy for any user to navigate through all kinds of different places and find just that special one that completely matches their expectations. After making some rough sketches, I never really got to it anymore.

So I decided to revive the idea and adjust it after doing some research. The project will no longer be a website but a WebApp. This because it makes more sense since people will be using more in situations where they have their smartphone on hand. The app will be named Local. Local’s mission will be to help discover new cities, regions or countries more easily and personally.

There’s nothing more annoying than looking forward to or being on a nice holiday and realizing that you don’t really know where to go-to for the best pizza margarita, mojito-cocktail or idyllic photo-spot. While browsing on sites like TripAdvisor or Google Maps is super time-consuming and often makes you just more desperate after reading 13 contradictory reviews. It just takes the fun out of traveling and makes you feel missing out.

Local would assist you with that. Local will be your personal assistant that will help you find the best spots in town thanks to the local community, your friends and you. Local will give them the chance to easily add, save, filter, discover and even review a new spot. It will be different from other traveling apps since it will be made for and by real people and not businesses that try to undermine each other. Easy in use and personalization will be the main objectives.

The app will also be built by React and React Native and will be available for Android as well as iOS.

More soon!

Personal Project

For the next few weeks, you can read, follow along and support me in my work process to finish my Personal Project for the module “Expert Development”. This assignment will be decisive to graduate my study Devine, Digital Design and Development.

Nina Reunes

Written by

Digital design & development student @devine_howest

Personal Project

For the next few weeks, you can read, follow along and support me in my work process to finish my Personal Project for the module “Expert Development”. This assignment will be decisive to graduate my study Devine, Digital Design and Development.

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