App building and ensuring the product hits the mark

Building high class mobile apps – Part I

We live in a world of apps; apps for directions, weather, health and fitness, and ordering food. People want them, use them, and need them. So what are the keys to building high class apps for businesses in this mobile, always-online connected world? Mitra Innovation – a Sri Lankan/UK company with years of experience in digital transformation, programming, app development and Cloud-to-Cloud integration – shares its advice in this two part series.

By Derek Bell 

Building high class mobile apps is not easy. High class applications need to go beyond serving just simple requirements. Apps need to be backed-up with a strategy in order to attract the users and make them love the app. Doing so ensures the users return back to the app again and again. So how can businesses ensure their app hits the mark?

1. Analysing problems, meeting unmet needs

First and foremost, businesses, app developers and entrepreneurs need to understand an existing problem that customers may face very often – a problem which has not been addressed, or is not being addressed effectively by anyone else. 

As an example consider the restaurant app ‘OpenTable’ which not only shows us the nearby locations of restaurants in our area, on a map, but also provides reviews of each restaurant, tells us the likely cost of meals, allows us to make instant reservations, and shows us how to get there. This is perfect when we’re meeting friends for lunch, we don’t know what restaurants are in the area, we don’t know if the restaurants are any good, and we don’t know what space is available.

True, we could alternatively Google the restaurants and look at each website, but who wants to do that? Because the makers of the ‘Open Table’ app analysed the problem restaurant goers face, and saw a gap in the market, they now provide us with all the information we need, all in one place, right at our fingertips, instantaneously.

Open Table approached the issue in the right way and we can learn a lot from their example. So, think about the problems your customers are facing. How can your new app solve their problems in a way that no-one else currently is?

2. Make apps fun to use and addictive

When building a great new app, try to make the users embrace the app happily. Google was successful in this regard by building ‘Ingress’ – an augmented reality multi-player location based online game – which could be seen as a pre-cursor to the much-talked-about ‘Pokemon Go’. Ingress was launched on Android in 2012 and became very popular amongst players (or ‘agents’), because, as stated in Trendblog.net: 

“Players are forced to physically walk (or drive) to a portal to be able to interact with it. If you want to achieve something in Ingress, you have to do something besides sitting on a couch, pushing buttons on your gamepad. While playing Ingress you’ll meet new people, explore your surroundings and be active!”

Both ‘Ingress’ and ‘Pokemon Go’ have been successful in huge part because they are fun, addictive and interactive.

3. Simplify, simplify, simplify

Don’t forget to simplify the problem your app is supposed to solve, and then list a do-able set of the most important functions when building the app. You might have a great idea and a set of other good supportive functions, but if your developers try to implement all of them, the app will become a mess. The initial development time will increase radically, it will become over complicated and the initial idea of the app will be broken. 

Keep your business ahead by building the Minimum Viable Product – then ship it before other businesses get hold of the idea or it becomes too complicated to finish and push out to the market!

4. Get the user eXperience right (and the UI)

Without doubt, User eXperience (UX) makes and breaks products. For example, there were lots of mp3 players on the market before the iPOD launched. Many of them were cheaper, with equally good, or better, sound quality, and yet the iPOD managed to dominate the market. How? Simple, it was easy to use, and it was cool. People loved to have one, and to be seen using it.

Think about this example when developing high class mobile apps. Remember, if your app is irritating to the user, then it creates a bad UX and will not become popular. 

In order to build high class apps, ask the developers in your business to create both a good user experience and a good user interface (UI). To build a great UI, there must be a clear understanding of how to structure the application flow. Unlike a desktop application, the screen size is limited on a mobile device. Therefore, the designer must craft a clever way to make use of the available space effectively. 

And, of course, you must also recognise that the device gets input from the user’s fingers and that most of the devices do not have a physical keyboard most of the time. Therefore, making buttons small generates problems for the user when they try to select the buttons. And the user won’t be able to select a small area effectively as they can do with a mouse. This is one of the most important things to consider when making a good mobile app user interface.

5. Get the fonts right

It may sound simple, but selecting a good font can be the difference between a good app design and a design which is just okay. Using a font which matches the objective of the app is very important. As an example, a font like Times New Roman should never be used for games because it can be seen as quite formal and old-fashioned.

As with font selection, the font-size is also very important. App designers must consider the fact that the user cannot always look closely at the screen when operating a small screen device. Furthermore, forcing the user to look closely at the screen will only damage the UX. 

6. Animations have their place

When developing apps, ask your developers to use the animation of objects on the screen wisely to gain an advantage over others. People like to see subtle transitions which brings an aesthetic touch to applications, because the fluidity at which the animation occurs brings a sense of satisfaction to the users. These little things play a big role in building high class apps.

Animations can also be used to attract the attention of the user to a specific location on the screen. As an example, a game could highlight and animate the ‘Play’ button so that the user will be prompted to start a new game. This sort of guidance makes the user automatically embrace the app.

7. Leverage the power of mobile devices

Anything that smartphones lose in power and screensize, they more than make up for in convenience and flexibility. They all have GPS locators in them; they all have bright, easy to read screens; and we carry them with us wherever we are. This is the power of mobile, so ensure your designers factor this into your app design. 

Many of the best apps use data from the GPS locator to serve up information for the location users are in. This is really helpful to users. Satnav apps are probably the most obvious example, but apps to help customers find the nearest DIY stores/restaurants/obtain the local weather forecast are also really helpful. Think about how your business can use ‘location’ to enhance your mobile app and overall customer experience.

8. Tablets aren’t just big smartphones

You’ve probably already used the mail apps on a smartphone and tablet. Whether Android or IOS, they have both taken the same route: The apps behave the same, but look different – because they’ve been optimised for device screensize. If your tablet app is just the smartphone app but bigger, your users will notice, and they won’t be impressed.

We hope you’ve found these tips useful. Look out for part two in the series ‘Building High Class Mobile Apps’ titled ‘The software engineering rules required to make your app a sure-fire success’.

(The writer is COO, Mitra Innovation.)