Vision & Requirements
You have a vision for an app. It may be just a high level concept of the business or social need you want to meet. It may be a detailed design all ready for development. Or, you may be at any stage in between. We can take your ideas and turn them into the data structures, coding logic, and user interfaces that will make a clean, intuitive app.
We’ll start by gathering all your requirements, whether that means brainstorming with you all the things you want your app to do, or going over the design you are already working on. We will explore your goals, business model, target audience, and design preferences and help you decide if you need one, two, or three (iOS, Android and web) platforms. Once you are comfortable that all of the requirements are down on paper, we’re ready to move to the design phase.
User Experience – UX Design
The user experience design is what makes your app efficient, intuitive, and powerful. It refers to the app’s flow as people interact with it. We take into account the functions that we need to accomplish on every screen and link them together so that people follow an intuitive process so they feel they are accomplishing what they set out to do – even if they’ve never used the app before. We will create a set of wireframes that define how the interfaces works through every function of the app so it works well and feels seamless.
We’ll turn the wireframes into a mock-up so you can move through the app and visualize the experience of your users.
User Interface – UI Design
Once the functions of each screen are defined, it is time for graphic design, so that your app will look great. We can provide logo and branding services, or incorporate your branding elements. Layouts, colors, fonts and graphics will all be created in design software by a graphic artist before any coding begins. We’ll walk you through a process of developing a theme of UX elements, colors and fonts that will be consistent across your app. Then we’ll fine-tune the layout of a sample screen and “paint” it with your elements to show you what the app will look like. Once you approve the look, we will paint all the screens to create a complete design.
Application Development
Once the design is approved, we move to the development phase. We have specialists in iOS, Android, website and back-end development who will work as a team to create an integrated experience across platforms. Developing an app for one platform can easily take 300-600 hours of programming. The different platforms can be developed concurrently, but it still means that most apps take two to four months to code. We’ll keep you updated along the way and establish milestones for completing various phases.
Once development is complete we will test the app, submit it to you for feedback, and work out any bugs. Depending on the complexity of the app, this can take from a couple of weeks to a couple of months.
Launch to the App Store
With your app complete we can help you set up your own accounts on the app stores, upload and manage them through our accounts, or just deliver the code to you to deploy yourself. We’ll make sure you app gets through the approval process and is ready for download.
Maintenance & Optimization
Once your app is launched, we are there for support and upgrades. Once an app is running, most people think of extra features they want and UX or UI improvements. Changing technology may also create the need for upgrades and updates. We will always be available to support and upgrade your app so it can continue to grow its user base throughout its life.
