CREATING AN APP

So you woke up in the middle of the night and had this great idea for an amazing
app -- you can picture it, you know it is useful, and you can imagine that many
people would like it, too.
Having a great idea is the starting point into every new project. Before you go
straight into detailing though, you must clearly define the purpose and mission of
your app. What is it going to do? What is its core appeal? What concrete problem is
it going to solve, or what part of life is it going to make better?
If this is your first-ever app development attempt, here is a brief guide on how to
get from A to Z and make the project a success!
1: DEFINE YOUR GOAL
Defining a clear goal for the app is also going to help you get there faster.
 2: START SKETCHING
By developing sketches you are laying the
foundation for your future interface. In
this step you visually conceptualize the
main features and the approximate layout
and structure of your application.
Having a first rough sketch of your app
helps everyone on your team understand
the mission. These sketches should be
used as reference for the next phase of the
project.
3: RESEARCH
This research has four main purposes:
1. Find out whether there are other apps doing the same thing
2. Find design inspiration for your app
3. Find information on the technical requirements for your app
4. Find out how you can market and monetize your app
While you may think that you have a revolutionary idea, you may get
your hopes crushed very quickly. There are more than 1 million apps for
Android and iOS, so building something that hasn’t been done before is
nearly impossible. Nonetheless you must not get discouraged by those
who may playing in the same arena. It is imperative that you focus on
your own project and your user acquisition. Learn from the key features
and mistakes of your competitors, and drop all other thoughts about
them.
This is also the right time to look into the technical aspects of your app. Find out what
your requirements are and get a clear picture of whether your idea is truly feasible or
not from a technical standpoint. In most cases there will be an alternative solution to
proceed on a slightly different route. This research extends into legal restrictions like
copyright and privacy questions, giving you a complete understanding of your
situation. If you have connections in the industry, get an expert opinion on your idea
right from the start.
Two other important points are marketing and monetization. Now that you have
confirmed the feasibility of your app, you should think about your strategy of getting
it out onto the market. Determine your niche -- know exactly how you can reach your
target user and how you need to approach him to make him see the value and use the
app.
Another important consideration is figuring out how your app is going to generate
money. Will you charge your user to download it? Or will you offer the app for free but
run ads on it? This model would require a large user base, so think about that as well.
There are various ways to monetize an app and it is up to you to decide on the channel
you want to use.
Write out the features for your app
The vision will undoubtedly evolve and change based on actual user feedback and testing
but for now, the sky’s the limit. Get it all down on paper and realize your idea and breathe
some life into it.
Do a business requirements gathering as it was the most important phase of the project
because it helps clarify what clients wanted. During this phase we sat down with the
stakeholders and ironed out every single detail and documented it. If there were any
confusions down the line, we would be able to refer back to this document and review
what was initially understood. What you want to iron out is what the user will be able to
accomplish.
For example, if your app idea is a social networking app, then you might start writing:
1. Users will be able to create an account.
2. They can create a new account using an email and password or they can login with
Facebook, Twitter and Google.
3. Users will be able to set a username, profile photo and short bio.
4. For the profile photo, the user should be able to select an existing photo from their
photo library or take a new one with the camera from inside the ap
Don’t forget to do MVP “minimum viable product” and the idea is that it’s better to launch
a small (but still useful) version of your product first so that you can get it into the hands
of actual users. That will help you get real world feedback from real users which can
guide and correct your understanding of what people actually want.
Based on that feedback, you release an update to your app with more features and
again, get it into the hands of users for feedback. You repeat this cycle over and over
and eventually arrive at a product that perfectly fits what the market wants. Contrast
this with spending a ton of money and time to build something and then finally launch
it… only to find out that people didn’t want it. Never build in a vacuum.
So take a look at all of the features you wrote down and think about what a simplified
version 1 would look like. Make sure that the app can still be useful to your audience
and solves the overall problem but it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) have all the bells and
whistles for phase 1. More than likely, the bells and whistles you thought of might turn
out to be not what your users needed in the first place.
Any feature that doesn’t directly contribute to serving the overall purpose of the app
can be considered for phase 2. All of the essential features that are left will be your
minimum viable product!
 4: CREATE A WIREFRAME AND
STORYBOARD
In this phase your ideas and features fuse into a clearer picture. Wireframing is the
process of creating a mockup or prototype of your app. You can find a number of
prototyping tools online. The most popular ones are Balsamiq, Moqups,
and HotGloo, which allows you to not only drag and drop all your placeholders and
representative graphics into place, but also add button functionality so that you can
click through your app in review mode.
While you are working on your wireframes you should also create a storyboard for
your app. The idea is to build a roadmap that will help you understand the
connection between each screen and how the user can navigate through your app.
5: DEFINE THE BACK END OF YOUR APP

Your wireframes and storyboard now become the foundation of your back-end
structure. Draw a sketch of your servers, APIs, and data diagrams. This will be a
helpful reference for the developer, and as more people join the project you will
have a (mostly) self-explanatory diagram for them to study.
Modify your wireframes and storyboard according to technical limitations, if there
are any.
6: TEST YOUR PROTOTYPE
Revert to your wireframes and ask friends, family, colleagues, and experts to help
you review your prototype. Grant them access to the wireframe and have them give
your app a test run. Ask them for their honest feedback and to identify flaws and
dead-end links. If possible, invite them to your studio and have them try out the
prototype in front of you. Monitor how they use the app, taking note of their actions
and adapting your UI/UX to them.
The goal is to concretize your app concept before it goes into the design process!
Once you start designing it is much harder to change things around, so the clearer
the prototype from the start, the better.
7: PUT TOGETHER AN APP
MARKETING PLAN
There are almost 2 million apps in the iOS App Store. In order to make sure
that your app gets seen, you need to have a plan to market it to the right
audience.
These days, a lot of the marketing work happens before the app is launched!
For example, building a pre-launch email list is standard practice these days as
well as leveraging paid marketing to promote your app.
1. Do a press release for your app.
2. Consider paid marketing
3. Email your pre-launch email list
4. Hustle and get the word out
 8: SUBMIT YOUR APP TO
THE APP STORE
You’re finally ready to launch your iPhone app into the App Store so that millions of people can download your
creation! There’s one more hurdle to overcome and that’s App Certification Team.
1.Make sure your app qualifies: Review it against these App Store guidelines. Fix up anything you need to first.
2.Fill in your app meta data: App Store Connect is a website where you can create your app listing and fill in all
the important details such as title, description, keywords and more. You’ll also set your screenshots and any
preview videos that you want to add.
3.Upload your app from Xcode: to App Store Connect. From Xcode, you package up your project and ship the
code to App Store Connect under the app listing that you just created.
4.Go back to App Store Connect and submit your app to review: Now that you’ve got your app meta data and
code in a neat and tidy package, it’s time to add any notes for the reviewer and submit it to the App Certification
Team.
5.Wait anxiously for a reply: That’s right.. you have to wait for someone to manually review the app that you’ve
submitted! They’ll be checking your app against the App Store guidelines (good thing you checked this in step 1!)
and that your app doesn’t crash or provide a negative user experience.
6.Get approved! Within about 2-3 days, you’ll get an approval or rejection. If you get a rejection, don’t worry
about it. It happens to all of us. You just have to fix whatever they didn’t like and resubmit it! If you get an
approval, then it’s time celebrate!
ASSIGNMENT:
Arrange a group of 3 to 4 person and discuss on how to create an App that you think
would be beneficial for our society.
Explain about what kind of app you will make, what are the features, and how you
will market the app. You also need to elaborate about who is the target market, and
what kind of profit will you get. Prepare a ppt for next week's presentation.,