NodlumeApp idea research tool
The system design work that comes before any screen. Describe the idea, and look up the products already solving it on the live web — pricing, company details, strengths, weaknesses, features, each with its sources. Their features union into a baseline that shows table stakes and gaps; a compliance screen shows the regulations the idea walks into. The brief on the right rebuilds as you type. Included with the Plus plan; your research stays in your browser.
One list, not six tabs
Add features to each competitor as chips and the baseline merges them — “Shopping list” and “shopping list” are one feature — with a coverage count beside each.
Blanks stay blank
An unrated feature gets no place in the build order, an unnamed competitor stays out of the brief, and a bad URL is reported beside its row. Nothing is guessed or repaired.
Compliance, early
Finding out about PCI DSS or COPPA after the data model is drawn is the expensive order. Fourteen yes-or-no facts screen for eighteen regimes, each with its reason and its primary source.
How to research an app idea
Five tabs, in the order the questions should be asked. Skip any of them — the brief leaves out what is empty.
State the problem, not the product
A working name, one sentence, the problem as a real person meets it, and who has it badly enough to switch — then one or two representative users, each a believable person with a goal and the thing in their way. Log stray thoughts one per line; promote the good ones to planned features later.
Find competitors and research them
Find competitors searches the live web for products people already use for your problem; Track the ones that matter. Research this product then fills in pricing, company details, strengths, weaknesses and features, and saves its sources. Or type what you already know — a lookup only fills what you left blank.
Rate the baseline
The Features tab unions every chip with your own plans. Mark each must-have, recommended or optional, and easy, moderate or hard. Table stakes and your unmatched features are flagged for you, and the coverage matrix shows the same list as competitors across, features down.
Screen for compliance, save your sources
Tick what is true of the app and read why each regime applies. Save the threads, papers and docs behind your claims, and define the domain's terms while they are still new to you.
What you take away
- <name>-research-brief.md
- Problem, audience, each competitor, the baseline table with coverage and ratings, table stakes, unmatched features, the build order, the compliance list with reasons and sources, your sources, glossary and open thoughts.
- <name>-research.json
- The whole document, for Restore — on this device later, or another one.
App idea research, answered
Where the brief goes next
A brief is the input to a design. Draw the entities it implies in the ER diagram designer and the screens in the structure painter. In a Nodlume project the Domain tab holds this same research — with an agent that searches the live web and proposes findings you accept or reject — and feeds it to the route tree, data model and generated code downstream.