Within our class today we took part in some idea generation in order to create a solid idea and to present the idea to a panel of our peers, the presentation had to be 10 minutes long 5 minutes to present, and 5 minutes Q&A.
To begin the idea generation process I began by writing down some ideas simply to get them out of my head before this class began I had an idea I was going to work on as a side project but this class would allow me to work out the kinks and decide if it was a good idea or not.
after generating ideas I picked out 2. These were an AI fact-checker plugin for a web browser to help people navigate the world of fake and bias news sources and a train tracking app to help people get the correct trains at the correct time in the correct place.
In order to validate my ideas, I had to do some research. In terms of my travel app I first wanted to see if it was feasible, I discovered that many such apps already exist within the USA 
So the idea is in use in the wild so it certainly seemed feasible. I got in contact with Translink and used the freedom of information act to get information from them about customer complaints to do with getting on the wrong train or arriving at the wrong station. After a few months of waiting I found out that there were no complaints about this particular issue rendering the idea null, I also realized that Translink has the monopoly within Northern Ireland so the drive to fix such problems is not there as passengers have no real choice as to who they travel with.
I began looking into my other idea about, The fake news browser plugin-in. The purpose of the plug-in would be to help people engage in a better way with higher quality content. Higher quality would be defined as content that is not misleading and not full of bias. I have to determine competitors within the industry, their success rate, and what features do they include as well as how do they work, are they human-operated or AI-based.
I found an article written online giving a breakdown of 12 competitors this was very useful as it gave me the data I required. From this article, I was able to determine that there are browser plug-ins that have varying features some were human-driven and some were AI-driven. I decided that I would take the best features of each of these and create an all-encompassing plug-in. I would perform a small swot test to help layout the idea and determine strengths weaknesses etc.
As the ai can get things wrong I decided on a more human-driven approach but a human can be biased, so it would be better to have a marriage between both human-driven and AI-driven in order to increase the plug-ins performance.
A free plug-in is not very good for paying staff required but I was already aware of a business model of accepting donations and also a minor cost of £1 per year. I found out that whatsapp began with a very small group of people and were able to cover business costs through donations and a small subscription, the team did not enforce this cost on customers and were still able to cover costs of staffing and keeping the company running telling me it is possible to maintain high performance and also by being generous to customers. This would only be implemented in my plug-in after we had reached 1 million users.