Koda Kollectiv

How to create an App

The 4 phases in creating your first app

CONCEPT, DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT, and DEPLOYMENT

In a world that has rapidly adapted to digitalization, creating an app (mobile or web) is becoming highly essential in order to be heard by the market you want to speak and reach-out to. With developing an app, you can make your idea become tangible, using mobile phones and gadgets as mediums.

CONCEPT PHASE

How to create an App The 4 phases in creating your first app CONCEPT, DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT, and DEPLOYMENT In a world that has rapidly adapted to digitalization, creating an app (mobile or web) is becoming highly essential in order to be heard by the market you want to speak and reach-out to. With developing an app, you can make your idea become tangible, using mobile phones and gadgets as mediums. CONCEPT PHASE Before an idea becomes an app, you have to be clear how you want your idea to function. Do you want to solve a problem, make a work system efficient, or do you want to entertain? Is it a web app, mobile app or both? Once you have defined that part, you proceed with the basic features. These features should be coherent and co-exist to be able to deliver what your app is used for.

In this phase, these things should happen… for.

1. Name your app - be creative but logical.

2. Define your market or niche. Who is your target user?

3. Plan out the features that compose the app and that fulfill its overall purpose.

Defining these details are important. Document them and write everything you want your users / customers to experience. This will help any designer or software development firm to understand your ideas and take it from there.

DESIGN PHASE

This phase is an area that should require time and expertise. The design of an app dictates the mood and quality. It’s the one thing that keeps a user using - this is very much important during the first few times that the user opens the app. It’s so ironic how technology can be very complicated and yet the simplest and most user-friendly apps are the ones which really click and dominate.

In this phase, these things should be achieved…

1. Get a designer who understands the psychology of colors and flow. Most good designers should know this.

2. Creation of wireframes which will guide the flow of use of the app and will dictate the experience of the user.

3. Creation of mock-ups. The final form. The blueprint model of the app. The mockup is a visual representation of the application and dictates the final look of the application once it is built.

4. Sign off on the design work.

DEVELOPMENT PHASE

This is when the app starts to come to life. A good developer with the appropriate tech-stack and skillset should be chosen for the work. All your documents and designs made will be gathered and will be analyzed by your software developer for development. Each software developer has their own methodology or way of development.

To give you an idea. Here is a method we follow for an MVP(minimum viable product) build:

1. Architecture. Creation of organized specification document outlining scope of development and milestone schedules. This is based on all gathered requirements and designs blueprints.

2. Sprint Planning. Organization of the development plan in chunks of time called sprints. Tasks are organized per sprint allowing manageable completion of milestones.

3. Frontend Development. User Interface development following a customer experience centric approach to engineering. This approach create the outer shell of the application and allow early prototyping of the app in the hands of the client. It is important that the client see the app in the customer’s eyes – early into the development. Many times in this process, missing features are detected, realized and added to the grand design; saving time and cost on rework and adjustments on the code.

4. Backend Development. Developing the actual functions of the app into the frontend shell. The creation of the app's connection to the cloud and the data storage management. Processing of its data also falls in this category.

5. Integration. Full merge of Frontend and Backend. Quality control happens through rigorous testing of all user case events, and scenarios. Before releasing the app to the world, we need to make sure everything works as expected; in all the ways the customers will use it.

DEPLOYMENT PHASE

This is the phase to release the app in the Web or submit to the AppStore or Google Play platforms for mobile apps.

For web apps, engineers need to do pre-launch preparations and configurations on a chosen web hosting platform and write the necessary code to run and launch your web application on the Internet.

For mobile apps, there is an additional step of submitting the application for approval on their respective releasing platforms. AppStore for iOS devices and Google Play for Android devices.

Once everything checks out the app is good to go – saying “Hello!” to the world.

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