Once everyone shares the same grand vision, it's time for your designers to get to work. They can create a deeper understanding of the application flow.

Here are some common questions a deliverable from your design team should answer:

• How will the user login? (Phone number? E-mail/Password? Social Auth?)
• What is the first thing the user will see on the FIRST login?
• What is the first thing the user will see on the NEXT login?
• Where will each customer problem be addressed in the experience?
• Where will each screen allow the user to go to next?

We use a technique calledMind Mappingand a tool calledMind Nodethat helps us quickly answer these (and many other) questions while in design. Even with complex app ideas and problems, this technique will help you quickly discover how complex your solutions might be.

There are a few simple rules to follow to quickly create a visualization of the effort:

1. Each "bubble" should be named and should represent a screen
2. Each "line" or "leg" that is not connected to anything should represent a feature
3. Each "line" or "connection" that touch two screens represents a way to move to that screen

We always start with the Splash/Loading screen, and then the app flow should begin to take shape as you answer the above questions.

This sort of effort usually takes us a few hours to half a day to complete, and so is a relatively low cost to getting a high level understanding of the number of screens (and thus potential hours/weeks) required to achieve a complete design of your product.

Action

Spend 30 minutes creating a mind map

Take just half an hour to walk through the functionality and screens of your app. Chances are you will end up finding small portions of the app that could be trimmed, or two features that could be merged, or discover a new feature that you hadn't thought of before.

Share this with your team to give them the full picture quickly!