Research - Generating Ideas and Building Reliable References

The research phase includes finding a good idea, and researching on what features to build. Generating an idea can sometimes be frustrating.  The concept is simple.  Rather than sitting on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, and trying to innovate ideas, you can find a few reliable sources, keep track of them regularly, and see what is going on in your industry.

Nowadays, with the advent of smart phones, keeping up-to-date with latest information is easy.  If you own an Android phone or an iPhone, I recommend installing the Pulse reader (any other RSS feed readers are fine; ex. Google Reader).

These days, building an online website often includes building on the major mobile platforms as well. For example, Foursquare has a website, iphone app, android app, blackberry app, etc.

For building an online web application,  I recommend adding the following sources to your Pulse reader:

• lifehacker
• mashable
• influx
• psfk
• venturebeat
• gizmodo
• smashing magazine
• macworld
• gigacom
• pulsememe 
• springwise
• engadget
• techncrunch
• trendwatching

Trendwatching and Springwise are highly recommended for idea generation.

The mobile phones' push notification will keep you up-to-date instantly with the industry. The Pulse Reader allows you to easily share articles.

It is important to have a few websites that are similar to what your project is about as your reference. If you are building a location based social network. You will want to follow, for example,

• Foursquare
• Gowalla
• Loopt

You will want to sign up for your reference sites and start using these sites as a regular member. Take note of what the community is doing, what kind of features these sites have in common, and why they can co-exist with each other.  Organizing your notes into a spreadsheet (ex. Google Docs) will be helpful.