From Idea to reality - The progress of an Idea

 I have been thinking of writing a simple app for locating trash cans at Chennai.

The first thing anyone would do was to see if the idea has been already implemented. Sure enough, it has been. This is the app - Check it out. http://trashithere.herokuapp.com/

When I tried using the app, I found out that there were only few trash cans. This was a crowd sourced application. I guess this app was not used much.

The Spark

This led me to questioning myself - What problem led me to this application. I yearned to live in a place that was clean. My assumption was that if people found places to throw thrash, they would not litter.

Going ahead with your idea

The path forward 

I started questioning these assumptions:

• Would people stop littering if they can find trash cans?
• What if the trash cans were full? Would people walk to the next trash can? What if that trash can was full too?
• Would it be helpful if there was an indicator on which trash cans are full?
• Would it also be helpful to show what time the trash cans get cleared?

Extending this exercise, who are going to be the users of the application for me to be able to solve the problem.

• The obvious answer is the regular city citizens
• The not-so-obvious corporation workers that clear the cans
• The corporation planning team that dispatches the clearing crews

It is now time to question the problem statement.

• Do we just want people to see where the trash cans are?
• Do we want people to stop littering?
• Do we want the corporation to clear the trash cans on time?
• Do we want to just track the amount of trash and create awareness?

Next we can map the problem statement with our users to come up with a feature map.
We need the application to do the following:

• Show location and status of trash cans to the citizens
• Allow users to mark locations and update status of trash cans
• Alert corporation workers on filling trash cans with location
• Provide reports on trash collection & clearing patterns for corporation to plan its operations.

We can build various features around the high level feature map and then try it out.
The key to the success of the application and hence the original goal is not functional. We need some support.

• Make sure that users can submit data without friction
• Get buy-in from corporation for them to use data
• Get some support to spread the application and get more crowd-sourced data
• Have a way of getting automated data inputs and confirm with user's inputs.

Summary

While the idea taken is pretty simple, let us generalise the path:

• Question the assumptions
• List of all users
• Question the problem statement
• Come up with the feature map and functionalities
• List any hep needed to succeed in the effort

There are a few things that we have ignored in the attempt:

• Try the most common functionality first
• If a functionality fails, try another functionality for the same purpose.
• Aim for traction
• We did not discuss how this transforms into a business model.