All smartphone app ideas start somewhere—an entrepreneur starts scribbling on some napkins at the local coffee shop, a visionary sketches on a whiteboard, a team has a brainstorm. Regardless of how your app begins, most app ideas are relatively vague at first, perhaps a basic drawing or a few bullet points of things you want the app to do.
With all the design templates available for Photoshop, Illustrator, and OmniGraffle, many designers may be quick to translate their app ideas into wireframes. While diving right into wireframing may work in some cases, most apps can benefit from some level of upfront user research. User research helps define the high-level product vision, and enables your team to make informed decisions throughout the product life cycle.
