One of the people at CocoaConf was Jaimee Newberry. One of her talks was called “Super Rad Brainstorming!”. Both she and Josh Smith talked about creating a Brain Storming Box.

A brain storming box contains markers, crayons, paper, clay, etc… Basically anything you would use to create a replica of a layout, colors, whatever you would keep in a box and use to create interesting ideas.

I used to have a lot of this stuff, but I keep losing it and getting rid of it because I don’t think I will use it or need it any more.

So I decided to get this together again today. I bought some cheap paper, colored pencils, and this awesome pseudo-mechanical pencil. It is a lead holder. It is used in drafting. It’s like a mechanical pencil in that it holds a pencil lead that you gradually let out as you use it, but it is also like a normal pencil in that the lead is very wide and you need to use a sharpener.

I also have markers and heavy paper for rendering more advanced versions of my designs. The husband says we will get a scanner at some point soon, so I can scan my drawings into my computer.

I have an Adobe suite that includes Photoshop and Dreamweaver, so that should be useful.

I think it is important to have apps and websites that are aesthetically pleasing. No one is going to use your app if it is ugly or unintuitive. I think it is important to know how to code, but it also important to think about how to make your app nice to use and look at.

I am also thinking about starting a podcast for beginning iOS programmers. There are lots of things I can’t find documentation on about layout and button functionality, so I would like to talk about that.

I am planning on the podcast only being about ten minutes long and focused toward beginners. So just a quick going over of some type of puzzle.

We will see how that goes.