Introduction to App Development
Application or app development is skyrocketing in the current digital era. Whether you're an aspiring developer or a business owner hoping to create an app to solve a problem, understanding the basics of app development is important. We hope to ease you into our world. At the end of the article, you will have an understanding how a successful application is created from the ground up as we walk you through the necessary procedures and techniques.
Understanding App Development
App development can be Mobile, Desktop, Web, Embedded, Server, or Cloud Application. It is a very broad field but follows some general key steps. It is best to gain an overview of each of the key steps for you to create and realize your idea through our introduction to app development.
Key Steps in App Development
Step 1: Planning Your App
It's essential to carefully design your app before beginning development. Specify your objectives. What issue does your software aim to solve? Who is the intended audience? Developing a feature set will assist you in comprehending the amount of effort needed to complete it.
Step 2: Designing Your App
A similarly functioning application is often judged by the users through its design. This makes good design a requirement for a successful application. This is where two design characteristics come into play, User Interface (UI) design and User Experience (UX) design. UI design is about the look and feel of an app while UX design is how friendly and intuitive the navigation or features are to users.
Prototyping is an important step during the design phase. It allows everyone to visualize the application before actual development and usually gives the engineering team an idea on what kind of data is needed to get the design implemented. Tools for mocking up the UI/UX are Sketch, InVision, Adobe XD, Framer, and Figma are very helpful during prototyping.
Sometimes, an app can be developed with simply a wireframe of the application and it does not devalue the entire engineering outcome.
Tip: Did you know that Western and Eastern UI/X actually varies and that companies for some time now localized their web and application design based on audience. As our partners are varied, we have a good understanding of this.
Step 3: Building Your App
When creating an application, you have several options: native, web or hybrid. Choose the approach that best suits your projects. Choosing the right technology suite is also crucial. The development process involves coding, testing and refining your app.
Step 4: Testing Your App
Never underestimate testing. It is an important step in application development and is there to ensure that an application works as expected. The common types of testing are unit testing, integration testing, and user acceptance. There are done during various stages of app development. The use of the right testing tools and techniques will help identify and fix problems before an app is released.
Step 5: Launching Your App
After a good amount of time, an app will be ready for release, launch, or submission to Apple App Store and Google Play Store. This however is not the last step of the process. Pre-launch and post-launch marketing campaigns should be done to market and optimize it to reach the target audience.
We’ll list a few known pre and post launch activities.
Market Research
While market research usually means idea validation, a post-launch market research is for re-validation of the idea. There are many projects out there that are in development, knowing your competition and potential partners in the features you have and problems that you are solving goes a long way in ensuring better success.
Beta Testing
Before a full-scale launch, the app is made available to a select group of people outside the internal development team. The main objectives of beta testing are to find and repair issues, get user input, and make sure the software functions smoothly in real-world situations.
Submission
We wrote down Apple App Store, and Google Play Store but they are not the only Application Store out there. There are many more and submission to these stores depends on your target audience and platform.
Post-Launch
One of the key post-launch activities is to gather and analyze usage data to validate the design and usability of your application.
Strategies for Successful App Development
Several project management methodologies may have come across your research for strategies for successful implementation. Agile allows for flexibility and iterative development which ensures an app meets the target audience’s needs. A hybrid of any compatible project management methodologies is also known to yield better value to high performing teams than simply sticking to one’s gun.Implementation of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) is also a strategy that streamlines the development process. This ensures certain processes are executed and updated when specifications change due to market needs or simply to adapt to changes.
Resources and Tools for App Development
There are various tools and resources available to aid in app development, from IDEs like Xcode, Android Studio, VSCode, IntelliJ IDEA, Vim, and Zedo, version control systems like CVS, Subversion, Git, and Mercurial. Collaboration tools such as Slack, Asana, Monday, Backlog and Jira help teams work efficiently. Learning platforms like Udemy and Coursera offer courses and tutorials to enhance software engineering team’s knowledge and for your own use to leverage in managing which features to prioritize - helps you succeed.
Accelerate With Fullspeed
The steps in this article are general guidelines that'll help everyone be on their way to understanding how to succeed in the development of a successful app.