Early in the design & development cycle of a website or application, it can be all too easy to be seduced by the endless ideas for features and functionality. You may find yourself saying “My tool will do this, and this, and this, and this!”

Having ideas rain from the sky is great, but can become problematic when you must begin developing a concrete plan for how to proceed. Suddenly, the seemingly infinite ranks of ideas begin to fight over the very finite number of chairs in the room. As such, clarity of the tool’s purpose will go out the window. Trouble!

In recently dealing with this problem, I poured over sketches and scribbles for a good while before wrestling away a working solution. It breaks down as follows.

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