Preparing to Develop Your App

“It will yield valuable feedback … more detailed feedback that you can then implement. Listen carefully and learn all you can.” This is how you can prepare to develop your app.

In another article about The App Development Timeline, we talked about the various phases  of the app development process. Now, it’s time we looked at why we need the different phases. What happens when you approach app development in the wrong order?

I was working with a cofounder who had been struggling for two and a half years to bring their app to market. They shared with me the challenges and obstacles they faced with different vendors they used.  To find out more information about their situation,

I began to ask more questions: How much work had been done? In what order? Was there any kind of design work? How many components had been coded? What condition were they in? The deeper I went, the harder it became for them to answer my questions, so they decided they would send me access to a shared folder with code, documentation, and mockups.

After examining the folder’s contents I was both inspired and pained at the same time. The product concept was brilliant! These co-founders had a lot of experience working in their industry, they knew the market, the need, and the opportunity… Yet, at the same time, they did a lot of the mockups themselves without having a background in UX design. The flow of the user through the app made relative sense, but the user interface didn’t really communicate a lot of confidence. You know what I mean … it’s that clean, “we know what we’re doing and we’re going to take care of you” look that apps need to have to be credible.”

With this experience in mind, let’s cover some preparatory stages you should go through before developing your app.

Market Fit

This is essentially what you do to validate that people are going to pay money to use your app, i.e. making sure that your app is able to solve a target audience’s problems.

Your value proposition should be compelling enough to compel the masses to spend their hard-earned money to use your product because your app really relieves their pains, and most importantly, brings them gains. If you would like to learn more about this, may I recommend using the template Value Proposition Canvas by Strategyzer and two books, The Lean Startup by Eric Reis and The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. The Lean Startup is so well known, it’s almost cliché, but the principles in it are really important. The Mom Test isn’t as well known, but it’s pure gold.

The books reinforce two important principles: 1) the only way to know if people will actually pay to use your app is to sell it to them, and 2) if you want to gather meaningful feedback about your app, you need to ask questions in a way that makes it safe for others to give you feedback. Basically, people will say things to protect your feelings, instead of telling you how they really feel. Learning to ask the right questions will help you avoid “false positive” responses from those you talk to.

If you’d like to learn more about market fit, watch these two videos on the Business Model Explained and the Business Market Example.

User Stories

User stories are short statements that describe the steps of your user through your app. In the business world, these are a form of business requirements. The purpose of user stories is to think of and create the path your user will take through your app. Writing these out is a very important part in preparing to develop your app. You should complete AT LEAST a first set of user stories before you start UX design. Draft. Revisit. Edit. Go on a walk. Revisit. Add some more. Come back. Edit. Revise. Get them as polished and as comprehensive as you can before you start UX design. Then when you start UX design, you can discover those few items that you missed and add them.

For more info check out this playlist for How to Write User Stories.

UX Design

The purpose of UX design is to transform the user stories into a set of mockups that the developers can use to build features. Basically, it’s a live drawing or rendering with some added data for the developers that show interactivity, margins, colors, typefaces, buttons, and other elements. If you do not have any professional experience with UX Design, then do not do this yourself. There are plenty of UX designers that you can find to help you, and it will probably be some of the best spent money you will ever invest into your app. It is so much less expensive to fix a design flaw during the design phase than it is to correct during development.

The goal here is to have your UX designer walk through the user stories and grasp the vision of your product so she can then turn around mockups, rendering drawings of how your app will look.

First, having mockups will help you think through all the features you need that you forgot and help you consider which features you don’t need. When you begin to see and visualize how the app is going to look, you may realize that certain features aren’t as important as you thought they would be, so you can save money and time by not developing them. Sometimes, you’ll figure out that other features may overlap in purpose, in which case you can get rid of one of them. Try not to have too many features for the first build of your app. Remember, you’re building an MVP, not a mature, fully baked, nice-to-have product.

Second, developers will need the mockups and the user stories during the development process, so that they can not only code the actual features on the front-end, but also how the back-end needs to work to realize this experience. From the mockups, the developers will be able to get the colors, fonts, and margins needed to create the app, down to the pixel.

Third, mockups can also be used later in market fit exercises. If you have mockups to show people, instead of pitching just an idea, you can let them see and “experience” your app (not to the full extent) by tapping through the mockups. It will yield valuable feedback … more detailed feedback that you can then implement. Listen carefully and learn all you can.

Fourth, if you are looking for investor funds, having the mockups will allow you to better communicate the vision of your product to your investors. Showing them two or three mockups of key experiences in your app may be what is needed to bring them over to your side. It will demonstrate that your product is a real thing. It’s happening. You’re making it happen. It’s more than just a dream. That’s powerful.

So to summarize it all, before you spend any money of software development, make sure you validate your market fit, methodically think through the user stories, and complete your UX design, if you do these three things, you’ll invest your software development money more effectively, and ultimately bring your app to life.