MIXING AND MATCHING

You've now done a bit of competitive research, have a good idea of what the others are doing in your niche, and, if you followed the prior advice, likely built up a feature set for your app comprised of various missing features from other apps, as well as your planned innovations.

The next goal is to redefine your feature set to make your app appear truly unique.

Borrowing Style and Functionality from Mainstream Applications/Games (the Picasso Way)

There is nothing wrong with borrowing new features in successful apps. Picasso in fact, is well known to have borrowed styles from classical and contemporary artists, distilled down into his own geometrical style, and created a new work of art.

In this exact way, in fact, you should take highly lauded new features or styles from successful apps, and then apply your own sort of transformation on them to make them unique.

Let's consider “Doodle Jump,” an example examined previously. Though it wasn't the first app to make use of that hand-drawn Napoleon Dynamite-esque “sketch” style of art, it certainly was the most successful to do so to that point. So, let's say you wanted to do a casual game and were inspired by the “Doodle Jump” art, not only because it more easily captures your imagination in the same way a book does more so than a movie, but also because it's simply easier to create. Fair enough, let's go with that style.

But let's also say you are intent on creating a productivity app and are wondering how in the world you can use the style from that game for a serious business app. Well, maybe that's exactly the thing that will make your app unique:

• A stock market ticker that's done in a cartoony way, making money more fun
• A chat client that doesn't look so “business-y” or “web 2.0-ish”
• A secure password safe-holder that's done in a cartoony way that makes it ironic that it can absolutely keep your data safe, but also perhaps emits the vibe of “hackers” who actually know how to keep data safe

Imagine the possibilities of this new art style applied to places that haven't yet adapted it.

In the same way, let's say you're creating a physics-based puzzle game and the obvious successful app to borrow something from is the Number 1-selling “Angry Birds,” with its physics-based casual gameplay and cute creatures. Another good possibility is the indie runaway success “World of Goo.” You don't want to appear too similar, so what do you do?

You distill what made “Angry Birds” successful with that approach — which is, in fact, how it applied the physics engine to an elegantly simple slingshot — and then mold it to fit your game. Perhaps you change from a side view to a top-down approach, and use a similar slingshot action that starts catapulting an object (or creature) forward in slow motion at a certain angle. And then, on the other side, you slingshot another object (maybe in real time). Your goal is to collide them and utilize the pinball mechanic to trigger reactions and see how well you scored. Done properly, that could actually work!

Pulling Out Successful Features for a Twist

To be unique, it will be important to selectively prune your feature list prior to development. If every competitor's app has feature A, B, C, D, and E, within your niche, consider firstly that you'll have unique selling features of your own other than those common elements to fall back on. Then, for a twist, consider which of those A-through-E features you can live without or modify (the Picasso way), and then either cut or mold them to better solidify your app as uniquely identifiable.