App Development Explained
One of the questions we are asked often by our clients is to explain to them the steps involved in a making a mobile app.
We’ve written a brief guide that aims to explain the mobile app development process in simple and non-technical terms. We’ve written this guide for people who have no knowledge of software or apps whatsoever.
Step 1: Requirements Analysis
Requirements analysis is simply finding out what the app needs to do! It involves speaking with the client about what they want their mobile app to do, what functions it needs to have.
We start by asking “what are you looking to achieve by making this mobile app?” This is a lot “wider” than just asking them what they want the app to do. By understanding the client’s goals, and also their business, it helps us to think and advise on additional features the app could include that would make it more successful and appealing to users.
This stage is the most important phase of any mobile app development project. It’s important that both parties understand what needs to be made, what features it will have and the features it will not have.
The output of this stage is usually a Requirements document which details exactly what the app needs to do, and how it should do it.
Step 2: User Experience Design
Have you ever used a mobile app and felt frustrated because you can’t seem to complete what you thought was a simple task? Well the chances are the app you were struggling with did not undergo proper “User Experience Design”. User Experience Design, or UX for short, involves a number of different tasks:
- Information Architecture
Information architecture is simply organizing and labelling the data in the app to make it easy to use. For example, let’s say you have a list of cities in your app. How should these cities be displayed to the user? On a map? In a dropdown list? Via a search bar so the user has to type in the city they are looking for? These type of questions will be solved by the information architecture stage. Information should be presented to the user in a clear, simple and intuitive manner.
- Interaction Design
The goal of Interaction Design is to make sure the mobile app is designed to enable a pleasurable end user experience. Interaction design defines how the app should “flow” to make it easy for users to use. The most common reason for mobile apps not performing well and getting poor reviews in the app store is that they are difficult or unintuitive for the end user.
Interaction Design covers the layout of the mobile app and will incorporate user and client feedback into the designs.
- Wireframing
The output of the UX design stage is a series of diagrams known as “wireframes”. These depict the blueprints of each screen, showing each screen and the flows through the app. These can be presented to the user in a pdf document, or they can be made “interactive” by providing them to the user on a mobile device and allowing the user to press through the wireframes to get a feel for how the app will work.
Step 3: Visual Design
The visual design stage will involve creating a unique style and look for the app. A graphic designer will take the wireframes, and graphically design the buttons, menus, fonts and all the visual elements that make up an app. The app icon will also be designed.
Step 4: Development
This is where the geeks do their work! The programmers write the code for the app, implementing the functionality that is required. This is the most complex stage of the process. The app may need to integrate with external databases, provide messaging functionality, etc. The more complex the app, the more lines of code that are required, and the longer the development will take.
Step 5: Testing
After development, the app will be thoroughly tested, to ensure functionality works as required, to make sure there are no bugs, and also to make sure there are no performance issues (i.e. is the app working fast enough?). Any bugs found during testing will be fixed, then retested. Once the app has been tested and the bugs fixed, the app is handed over to the client for their own testing, known as UAT (User Acceptance Testing).
Step 6: Submission
After the app has been developed and tested, it is ready for release. This will involve submitting the app to the Apple and/or Google app stores. This involves:
- Creating an app description to entice users to download the app
- Submitting screenshots of the app in action
- Submitting the code