I Need an App for That
Have you ever wished for an easier way to make decisions? What do you do when it comes to making large life choices? Do you spin a wheel, throw darts, pick a possible option from a jar filled with possibilites, pray, ask for advise from families and friends, or what?
I was utilizing Google maps on an exploratory road trip seeking the perfect spot for our next home, when it suddenly hit me…I need a new app.
I need a user-friendly app for making those big life decisions like:
Should I take the new job offer?
Should we sell our house?
Should we move to a different house, a different town, different state or different country?
Should I switch careers?
Should I (Your Large Life Decision here)
So I searched for one. It turns out that there are about a gazillion decision-making apps out there. However, none of the ones I skimmed had all the features my app needs.
At the risk of someone other than me making a gazillion bucks off the ideas in this blog, I’d like to share the specialized features I have in mind, and leave the algorithms to someone who speaks in code.
First, what do you think about calling it something like “Crossroads?” While fairly cliché, it also implies that this app is designed for Large Life Decisions, and doesn’t sound as much like a psychology textbook chapter as “Large Life Decisions” does. Perhaps LLD would work.
It needs to limit the number of options, because if there are too many, users become overwhelmed. How about choosing from three top contenders?
It should have pros and cons tabs for both Logic and Heart, so it can balance what a person’s head is telling them with what their intuition is telling them.
The Logic tab needs to have a place to enter different criteria and assign importance levels to each. The Heart side needs to offer places to enter hopes, dreams, and fears, which are also weighted appropriately.
(While some people may disregard the heart components such as fears unworthy of inclusion as criteria, let me remind everyone of one designer who forgot the intense motivational factor of human emotions: Dr. Frankenstein. Need I say more? We all know how that little experiment turned out…)
Once the options are entered, pros and cons calculated, and both logical and heart factors given appropriate magnitude in the equation, the courses of the three options should be laid out like three different routes on Google Maps.
This is the part none of the apps I perused seemed to offer.
The user’s location should be marked by a dot just like normal, because it’s helpful to know where one is starting from.
Color-coded markers could show potential slow-downs, pitfalls, construction areas and speed traps that arise on each particular route, and rate them according to risk.
They could also highlight special areas of interest, fortuitous opportunities we can’t foresee from our vantage point, and classify the quickest as well as the most scenic option.
When the user clicks on one of the routes, a list should appear, outlining the appropriate steps needed to implement the chosen course.
Don’t you love it? Can anyone see a flaw in this design? I’m sure you could add more details to fit the question you might be facing, so perhaps there should be optional criteria, like monetary cost or gain, which was never the weightiest criteria for me, but is still a factor in most decisions.
You might say a person could figure all this themselves, but why should we? Apps are created to streamline laborious processes, aren’t they? What could be more laborious than analyzing large life decisions with all the inherent risks, balancing pros and cons, opportunities and issues, and lining out a course of action? Talk about stress. This app has to be a major stress reducer. And it would minimize the time involved in making those Large Life Decisions.
Has anyone seen an app like this?
I guess there is that one called faith. The one that doesn’t require an electronic device, where I seek wisdom and guidance from the Power that I call God, and trust that whichever course we take, He will be there with us, regardless of obstacles and construction zones.
Since I already have the app, maybe I just need to remember app stands for Application.
Perhaps that is my first step, and the way will become clear once I start. Someone once said they’d have had a lot more faith they could get out of a ditch if they’d have been holding a shovel. I need to gather some tools and start the Application.
