Maybe there a lot of you among the iPhone users, which would like to create customized applications; maybe you have a great idea and it might be useful to a lot of people, but you don’t know how to transform it from idea into a real application? Here is a short guide for creating iPhone utilities. This will take you for a walk through the steps of making your great ideas reality. Here you can find some ideas, techniques , resources and tips which may come handy if you are planning to transform your ideas into reality.
Even if the idea might seem revolutionary for you, it might be useless for others. You must filter your ideas, and put in practice the best of them, and for this, you must give yourself answers to some questions, which will tell you if this will be successful or not.
Will this application solve a problem?
Do I have a target group?
Is it funny?
Is this application bringing improvements to others, similar?
Will the application be interactive?
These are some simple marketing rules, but take them into consideration when you start planning taking your ideas in the real life.
A new application should solve some problems, or make them easier to handle,and has to have a target public. You must create this application for yourself at first, but think who are the people who could find it useful too. Chop the public into segments and choose one to be the target group for your product. It will be much more successful this way, because it is better to satisfy a small number of people, than having all the world against you because the application is incomplete or it doesn’t satisfy some needs. Specific audience is the key word, and you should pay a lot of attention to it. Another important aspect in application planning is to point out some funny aspects. People love to be entertained, they love colorful and simple things. If you manage to make them laugh, then they are your public. Create the things from the users’ point of view, and adapt the application to their needs. If there are more applications similar to the one you want to create, but they lack specific feature, be the one who brings change in the market. Being involved in action is very important for users, so give them the possibility to customize as much as possible the utility, let them choose what they like when they use it.
When you have setup an action plan in your mind, and when you have an idea about all this will be about, start gathering the tools you need, and off to work! You should first join the Apple iPhone Developer Program, of course, get an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you will also need an Intel-based Mac with OS X 10.5.5. and a Non-Disclosure Agreement. The newest version of iPhone SDK is required too, and a notebook.
All successful entrepreneurs said that “it takes a team to make a product successful”, and this is very very true. Check your skills and see where you could hire professionals, if you feel you can’t handle one or more aspects of the application creation process.To sell an application in the App store, you will need to have an idea about what works, and which are low quality product in the existing range of iPhone Apps, you will have to make research on the market, outline application’s functionality and also to sketch it. After this, you will have to take care of the GUI Design, program it, and when it is done, you should promote it and apply some marketing strategies.
It is important to know iPhone capabilities before you start working on applications for it. You should analyze the possibilities you have, and you can do this by studying the Apple User Interface Guideline, a small encyclopaedia about iPhone. Try to link your application to the special features offered by Apple through iPhone, like the accelerometer, pinch, expand and rotate functions, and also the swiping features. Intersection between real life and design should be visible, and you should do this link in a pleasant manner. It doesn’t matter if your application can find all the coffeeshops in a huge area, if this requires a lot of taps and typing, and we all know that people look for this information when they are hurrying, driving, and they don’t have time to spend with complex procedures.
Next step would be to sketch your idea, and see how it would look on an iPhone screen, and you should draw several images of what your application consists of. This will help you a lot in defining the product, and then you can go to the next step: designing the application. If you are a designer you can use iPhone GUI Photoshop templates or iPhone PSD Vector Kit.If you aren’t a designer, you should do what I said few paragraphs up, hire one. Professionals know what’s best in creating applications, and they might come with important suggestions and feed-back. Programming is the core step in this process. It is very important, and you should pay attention to what coding skills sets will you use, according to the application’s type (game, utility). It is recommended to work in XCode, and maybe you should keep an eye on what professionals say, so follow some forums and read some specialized resources before starting the work, and even while the programming is on the way.
You can simply use a timeline map for this application developing process. It simplifies the whole activity and it optimizes time management.When the application is finished, the last steps are: creating Certificates, defining the Application ID and the Distribution Provisioning Profile and compiling the application. The final step is uploading it to iTunes Connect, and then you can start the post-release activity, promotion.
It is very important that during this application development process to stay focused, and see all of it as a whole, but pay attention to details too!