Developing a new app
An Ideas2Executables customer who was in the early phases of designing her app expressed a common concern: how can she be sure that she’ll be designing the optimal user experience? The concern is that with so many apps striving to capture users’ attention, a less than perfect app will not thrive.
Of course, there’s no easy way to ensure your app will be a run-away success. However, as a new app creator, you have a number of strategies you can deploy to help get you there. Here are two common measures we recommend for nearly every project we work on.
Strategy 1: Know the problem you’re solving and be laser focused on making sure your app delivers. Yes, your app needs to be esthetically pleasing and needs to follow modern user experience guidelines. But those details should almost always take a back seat to the core question of whether you’re delivering on the problem you’re claiming to solve.
Let’s say after years of research and analysis you’ve got an app idea that’s sure to be a winner: your app helps parents get their newborn to sleep through the night. If your app works, parents aren’t going to care if you have a slick logo or not; or if it takes 1 click or 4 to complete the daily baby survey. All they are going to care about is that your app has single handedly changed their world for the better through the miracle of sleep. Sure, parents may have complaints about the app–they wish it was easier to use, or faster, or whatever. But if it actually works, they will stick with it.
The opposite scenario is true, too. If you fail to deliver on your promise, then the slickest user experience in the world isn’t going to save you. Sooner or later, probably sooner, users are going to see through the fancy veneer and abandon the app.
Strategy 2: You’ve identified your problem and you believe you have a top notch solution. But the concern is still there: what if the app you build is too cumbersome and users give up? There are a number of solutions to this challenge. You could pick an existing app that users love and more or less copy its user experience. You could hire a user experience expert who could give you professional advice on building the app. Both of these strategies have value and both have limitations, the latter typically in the form of budget concerns.
The tool we use to overcome this issue is iterative development. That’s a fancy way of saying you build version 1, share it, learn from what users have to say, build version 2 and so on.
Most products don’t have the luxury of iterative development as an option. If you are building a solar powered car, you need to design, build, market and sell the very best version of the car. Undoubtedly, there would be early adopters who would be eager to buy version 1 of the car, but these same users would quickly tire of being stuck with this early, limited version.
But in the case of app, users don’t just get version one, they get all versions. What may start off as a basic app, will over time, turn into a fully featured robust one.
What’s beneficial about this strategy is that the app owner learns from real users between iterations. You don’t have to guess at what users want, they’ll gladly tell you.
Imagine our hypothetical baby app from above. You may imagine parents want a ‘share on social media’ button that they can click when their baby has slept through the night (#parentingisntthathard #supermom #wonderdad). When in fact, what they really want is ‘Dark Mode’ so they can check the app without waking their little one. The time and money spent on designing and implementing the ‘share on social media’ button would be lost, and a delay would be introduced for the ‘Dark Mode’ feature.
Iterative development works hand in hand with ‘Strategy 1’ above. The very first version of the app has to deliver on solving the problem. That can’t come in future versions. But the user experience tweaks and additional features, those absolutely can. And they can be driven by actual user needs, not educated guesses.
You’ll find both of these strategies baked into our development process. First, we identify the problem the new app creator is solving, and work rigorously to ensure that the very first version of the app meets this need. We also regularly push back on features and ideas, asking: is this core functionality critical to the app, or something we can delay to a future version? This saves development time and creator resources and gets your app into the hands of users sooner.
If you have questions about this Case Study, or how Ideas2Executables can you help you address a challenge in your own application, Contact Us. Or give us a call at (703) 688-3084.