There are dozens of app ideas floating around this industry (I wrote a few of mine here). Some of them terrible; others amazing.

As you likely know, building apps is not cheap.

Which begs the question, how do you know if an idea is worth investing the money and development resources needed to turn it into reality?

Simple. Validate, and prove, the concept with customers.

How do you do that? Put a concept wireframe in front of them, make them click through, and figure out where the confusion points are. Drill them on what sort of value they would place on an app such as the one you are working on. Note: an example concept wireframe can be seen here, from the relocation pivot we considered last year.

If a concept wireframe passes the sniff test, then the next step is to produce design mockups for the core screens — and make sure they pass the “I get this” sniff test with potential customers.

I think it goes without saying — before you decide to go all in and spend the money to build an app, you would be smart to do product validation and design…or risk wasting a lot of money on something no one will use.

Will Moyer, the designer for Oh Hey World, and I have been working together for over a year. Over the past few months, we’ve been doing concept validation with an entirely new iteration of Oh Hey World. We can guide you through the process of validating your idea, and turn it into the design assets and specifications a development shop (such as Cloudspace) would need to bid & build the product.

Do you have the next amazing real estate app idea?

PS: We are working with one entrepreneur already, and can accommodate 2 more. I hope it goes without saying we are only going to work on projects that have a reasonable chance of success, not add to the pool of shitty apps that no one uses. If your idea isn’t a viable product and/or business (in my opinion of course), I’ll tell you.