Hello,
I recently just converted my idea into an app and I’m happy to share my process. I was able to set up the website myself by purchasing a readymade Bootstrap template and making minor changes to the CSS. In this day of age, you want to purchase a responsive website template (works on both mobile and web and can be resized). If you’re not familiar with CSS or HTML you can often find people to help you.
A great site for this would be www.Fiverr.com (Fiverr is a global online marketplace offering tasks and services, beginning at a cost of $5 per job performed, from which it gets its name). You obviously need to host the website to advertise your app, stay with friendly providers such as GoDaddy if this is new to you.
From there I purchased a wireframing software called Balsamiq. Rapid, effective and fun wireframing software. Balsamiq allows you to start designing the screens. The screens are image representations of what you expect the customer to see as part of their journey when using your app.
The software is very simple to use with drag and drop elements that will greatly help developers to understand when they begin to build. You need to back up these wireframes with something called a “functional specification”. This can be a simple document that states all the elements on the page e.g. this is the home button,
when a user presses this button it will take the user back to the home screen when a user presses “Back” button it should take the user to the previous page they were on etc.
Once you have these two items you can use a website called www.AppFutura.com and put your app forward for proposals. You will receive a number of offers. Don’t go for the cheap options, you don’t want to spend your time minute managing and if you don’t have a background in product/project management you will become frustrated. Aim for mid to high end, I don’t want to suggest a price range because I don’t know your idea but take a few weeks to read all proposals, review their previous projects.
From there you can discuss how much work you want them to take care of e.g. testing, design and graphics, UX and of course building the app.
After the app is built you need to upload to Google or Apple each has it’s own process which can you read more about online. If you have any other questions please let me know.
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2.
Research
1. Find your target customers and find out if they like the idea
2. Ask them how you can improve it
3. Draw out some screens of how it might look and share these again to get further feedback
Design / Build
4. Whether or not you are a seasoned programmer in any language, tutorials will help very much in getting to grips with building an app, try to find code examples and tutorials that cover elements of what you want to do in your app.
5. Build a proof of concept that shows only one simple aspect of your app working – fake the rest using screenshots of other apps or hand drawings and share this again for feedback
6. Build another aspect of functionality – a lot of googling and a lot of time on Stack Overflow will help you through the seemingly impossible technical problems you will come up against.
7. Don’t give up now! Repeat step 6 again.
Refine
8. Now you have a working prototype with 2 or more working features, start sharing the app with the wider community getting more feedback.
9. Don’t be afraid to change core functionality if lots of feedback suggests it – however, don’t change something just because one person dislikes it, keep adding more functionality.
10. Release the app – Don’t give up and expect it to suddenly become the biggest thing overnight go back to step 8 and keep refining.
Finally don’t be afraid of starting again from scratch at any point – as long as you can commit to not giving up if you do.
