Our app idea already exists, but we’re going to do it anyway
There are over 2 million apps in the Apple App Store and more than 3 million in the Google Play Store — so why on earth do we want to make one when similar apps already exist?
Today I stumbled across Sean DeRosa’s post called iForaging. This post talks about using various apps and technology to forage — the post is brilliant and I recommend reading it.
Though the app used, Pin Drop, isn’t solely for the purpose of foraging a lot of the features and functions remain the same as our idea. When coming across another app that already seems to do everything we require in our app it can be a bit of a kick. If the market is already saturated with similar apps, will anyone want ours?
This isn’t the first time that I’ve come across similar apps. Below is a selection of what I have found while doing research.
Existing Apps I’ve found while doing research
Wild Edibles
Wild Edibles is an app that primarily focuses on identifying plants using photos, in-depth descriptions of each plant and details of where it can be found. This app has recently announced that it will allow you to add your own notes against each plant as well as geolocate the spots, which is key for remembering where you saw something.
VILD MAD
VILD MAD (”Wild Food” in Danish) is a tool that helps you explore the wild, edible, Danish nature and forage edibles. There are in-app recipes and the ability for you to save personal foraging spots with your own photos and notes.
As you can see these apps both contain key features that we had in mind for our own app and therefore it would be easy to throw in the towel now as these apps have already been done… However, we’re not going to stop our idea and vision, why? Just because something has been done before doesn’t mean it can’t be done better.
Our main focus for this app is to concentrate on a few core features — geo-mapping, adding photos and notes. Many of the existing apps out there are focused around providing information to help identify a particular plant or berry. Our product comes from the perspective of functionally, we want to make a useful tool that enables a user to document their finds.
Above all, the main reason we plan to continue our project is that it’s ours. This isn’t a project that we began to make money from or to become our new career direction. We want to make an app and a brand that we can be proud of and hopefully, other people will enjoy too.
If anything, as there are similar apps out there in the world that are being used and are popular that means there is a demand — Think Uber and Lyft, thought product seems almost interchangeable the companies have considerable differences in their service areas, offerings and culture. This is why we are still moving forward with the idea, nothing is ever truly the same.
