Facultad de Telemática

English
Activity 1 How to make an app

Teacher: Mercado Maciel Alejandra Margarita

Student:
Edgar José Gonzalez Montelongo
5G

Sept / 09 / 2021
Today we are going to see 9 steps that will help us to make an app.

1.- Sketch your app idea

Every app starts with an idea. It doesn’t need to be big, ground-breaking, or clever.
Just an idea is good enough.
Sketch out your app idea with pen and paper. The goal is to make the idea tangible.
You define how your app works and what its features are, before you start
developing the app. It’s as simple as that!
You don’t need any special tools to sketch your app idea. A pen and a notepad is
enough. Start sketching, make a list of features, and see if the idea comes to life on
paper. When you make an app, you want the app to be as lean and mean as
possible. That’s called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and it’s the first, simplest
version of your app.

A few questions you can ask yourself:

• What features can you leave out?

• Which feature is a unique selling point or money-maker?
• Are there any features that make your app bloated, or slow building it down?

2.- Market research

Market research is often skipped by app developers, even though it’s an important
part of making an app. You can save yourself time and effort down the line by doing
research up front.
Before you make an app, you want to know if your app idea is viable. You’re asking
questions like:
• What are alternative apps and competitors in the marketplace?
• What do potential customers want? What are their needs and desires?
• How much should I charge for my app? What’s a good business model?
Doing market research before you make your app can save you from making a lot
of mistakes early on. You validate assumptions and assess the needs of potential
customers.

3.- Create Mockups

It’s best to make mockups before you start to build the app. A mockup is a rough
sketch of your app’s layout, user interfaces (UIs) and flow.
Mockups don’t include:
• Fine-grained UI elements
• Exact positioning of UI elements
• Complex color schemes and effects
A mockup shows you what an app looks like, without distracting you with
unnecessary details. It’s a functional instead of aesthetic approach to your app’s
design.
A mockup should also describe the flow and interactions of your app. What happens
when you tap on that button? How do you get from screen A to screen B? What is
navigation flow of your app?

4.- Make your Graphic Design

Now that your project is taking shape, it’s time to make a graphic design for your
app. Your app’s design includes pixel-perfect visual details, graphic effects, image
assets, and sometimes even animations and motion design.
I recommend two approaches for making the graphics of your app:
• Do it yourself with a graphics template
• Hire a professional graphic designer
Professional graphic designers spend years practicing and perfecting their craft, and
a good graphic designer can deliver results 100x greater than an inexperienced
designer, such as yourself (assuming you’re a developer).
As an app developer you need to play to your strengths, and that means outsourcing
work you’re not particularly good at. Take advantage of platforms like Upwork or
Toptal to hire a professional graphic designer.

5.- Build your landing page

You should at least create an landing page for your app, and ideally before you build
your app. This is an opportunity to connect with potential app users early on, before
your app has been launched in the App Store. You don’t yet have an App Store page
to show to people, so a landing page website is crucial to have.
As an app developer you want to create a connection between you and a prospect
customer, to let a conversation happen. Such a conversation can then lead to a user
trying out your app or becoming a customer.
Your app’s page needs the following components:
• A clear headline at the top of the page
• A brief introductory paragraph or explainer video
• An app screenshot or iPhone mockup
• A call to action, i.e. to sign up or install the app
• A breakdown of app features and benefits
• A story about the app’s creators, or an “About Us” section
In 2021, many app developers still see their App Store page as the only channel to
market their apps. That’s a missed opportunity, because there are plenty of other
marketing channels that can bring in app installs. Many of those work best with a
website, so consider building a landing page when you’re creating your app.

6.- Make the app with Xcode and Swift

Now that you’ve laid the groundwork for your app project, building the app itself
becomes much easier. You’ve created mockups, your app’s design, and taken the
first steps in marketing your app with a website. Way to go!
You build iOS apps with Xcode and Swift. The Xcode IDE includes a project
manager, code editor, built-in documentation, debugging tools, and Interface
Builder, a tool you use to create your app’s user interface. Everything you need to
make an iOS app!
Swift is a powerful and intuitive programming language, and it’s the default
programming language to build iOS, macOS, iPadOS, tvOS and watchOS apps. If
you’re learning iOS development today, I recommend you learn Swift instead of
Objective-C. Next to UIKit and Storyboards, we’ve got a great new tool to build User
Interfaces (UIs) at our disposal: SwiftUI.
You can divide app development into two categories:
Front-end: This is the part of the app you can see. It includes layout, navigation,
graphics, user interaction, animation and data processing.
Back-end: This is the part of the app you can’t see. It includes databases,
networking, data storage, and user management.
A great number of tools can speed up the app development process. You don’t have
to code everything on your own. Most beginner developers struggle to go from
following iOS tutorials to writing code on their own, and that’s exactly where practice
leads you to mastery.

7.- Launch your app in the App Store

The process to publish your app in the App Store is straightforward:

1. Register for an Apple Developer Account
2. Prepare your app’s title and meta data with App Store Connect
3. Upload your latest app build to the App Store with Xcode
4. Apple reviews your app, following the App Store Review Guidelines
5. When your app is approved, it’s published live in the App Store
6. DONE! People can now download and install your app
When you’ve published your app, the work doesn’t stop. In fact, it has only just
begun! Once you’ve gathered some early adopter feedback (see below), you go
back to the drawing board to improve your app. You do some market research,
improve your mockups and designs, and build new features. You launch the next
version of your app in the App Store, and the cycle restarts again. This is an iterative
process.

8.- Market your app to reach the right people

App developers are problem-solvers. Your app solves a problem for someone, and
that’s what convinces them to install and use your app. But is that all there is to it?
Marketing helps to make change happen. Changing from an old solution to a new
one, for instance. As an app developer, part of your work is helping people make
that transition.
Marketing has a bad reputation, especially among tech-minded people. When
thinking about marketing, they think about the sleazy door-to-door salesman, about
how Facebook sells their private information, and about convincing people to buy
stuff they don’t need.
Where do you start? Ask 3 simple questions:
• What problem does your app solve?
• Who is your app for?
• How can you reach those people?

9.- Improve your app

Real user feedback is important for making an app. You use a user’s experience,
and their feedback, to improve your app. So how do you do that?
• Use app analytics to gather quantitive data
• Use surveys and interviews to get qualitative data
• Talk to your users regularly and build a personal connection
The easiest way to get feedback from the users of your app, is to simply send them
a personal email to ask how they’re doing, and how they’re using your app. You
literally ask: “How are you using my app?” No need for complex analytics!
The key is “how”. You don’t ask if they like your app, or how they want to see it
improved, or what they think about a new feature. You can ask those questions, but
they’re likely to give you opinionated answers. What you need is real-world answers.

Finally, it’s important that no creative work has ever been done by following a step-
by-step template. You now know the steps, but your implementation of those steps
is what counts in making a successful app.
Second, you need to treat your app as a business. It’s a business’ purpose to deliver
value, and to keep the ability to deliver value by charging a fee. You get paid for
being useful, and as a result you stay in business. It’s OK to play around, but it’s not
a playground.