brainstorming Archives - LunarLincoln

Sep

Initial Questions for a New Mobile App Project

It can be daunting to know the first place to start after you know you want to build a mobile app. We are here to help. We can help you focus in your project goals on what makes sense.

Ultimately only you will be able to provide the core vision for what you need. As you ask the questions below, think through the lens of what needs to be in front of users first.

Let’s Build a Minimum Viable Product

Source: Kunal Naik

Since building technology costs money, having priorities will save you money. So what are the priorities? As we explore this question, keep in mind that it’s always smart to build a minimum viable product (MVP) first. Rather than having a little of everything that works ok, focus on building one aspect of your vision well so that it’s a great foundation. That may mean focusing on one platform before doing both iOS and Android. It may mean we should focus on core functionality before adding extra features.

Have an idea of what’s a must-have versus things that aren’t crucial. This will help you know what you should invest in first. It’s always better to get a smaller, great product in front of users, rather than an app that has more, but doesn’t work great. Having an MVP also helps you get to market faster, which has huge advantages. If you keep launching major updates to your app every 6 months, you’ll be learning what works and what doesn’t. This saves you money since you know which ways you need to pivot your thinking. It often doesn’t make sense to work on a large app for years, without getting feedback from users along the way.

That’s the critical piece of advice I’d give any of my friends who are involved in getting an app built. Keep in mind you’re building a MVP, and not the kitchen sink when considering the questions below. Here are some common questions we get when people reach out for a quote. This should help prepare you for a conversation with us.

Let’s Play Common Questions Bingo

If we wanted to build a Bingo board with the common questions that come up during a conversation about building an app, we’d be winning lots of Bingo. If you don’t know how to answer the questions below, spend some time thinking it over and reach out if you’re stuck. We can point you in the right direction.

You want to know: “How much will it cost?”

We need to know the answer to some of the questions below before we’re able to answer this one for you. In general apps are expensive to build, and zeros are involved. Thankfully a round number can get more focused as we learn more.

So what will we ask to get to the answer for that question?

What’s the big idea?

What makes this app unique and different? What will compel people to use it? What is that one thing that absolutely needs to come across when someone uses this thing?

What kind of features are you envisioning?

What are the core thing someone can do with your app? It can be helpful to see if you can distill your app in 2-3 user stories. A user story is a high-level description of one of the things a user can do with your app. Here are few examples:

As a car driver I can swipe my app while paying for gas to earn rewards.
At the gas station, I can show my app to redeem rewards at the counter and get a free Coke.
As a beer enthusiast I can scan a beer’s barcode to see details about a beer.
As a movie buff, I can search for a movie and mark it as watched.

Does this need to be an app?

Hang with me. Sometimes people will have an app idea that may not lend itself to the app format. If you want to build an app for writers that helps them build up their typing speed, it may work better as a website or desktop app, where people are more likely to have a keyboard when using it. What’s the advantage to people having this product on the go?

Who is this app for?

What’s your target demographic? Who will be using this app? This can help decide how the user interface works.

How do you plan to make money with this app?

This may sound a big harsh, but what’s the business plan? If you haven’t considered the longterm plan for how the app makes you money or meets your goal, you may be missing a core feature that needs to be in the app.

What’s the play? Should users be able to subscribe monthly to the app? Are there in-app purchases? Are there ads or messages from you or partners? How does a user give you valuable information such as their email address so you can reach out and tell them about your next rally for saving the rainforest? Does your app help you reach your goals?

Do you have a specific timeline in mind?

Do you have time pressures tied to your app? For instance, are you building an app that helps you create custom emojis that you’d like to release on the same week that the next Emoji Movie releases? Or do you have investors or stakeholders with expectations on when the app will be rolled out?

Based on the timeline, we may recommend what would be doable within your desired time window.

What other apps are your competition?

This question helps in a couple ways. Are you building an app that already exists? If so, what is your competitive advantage? If you’re building something different or better than someone else, how will that inform the features you’re wanting?

If you do have competition, what do they do that you also want to do? One advantage to not being the first on the scene, is that you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. You can likely glean from others what is already working in your space.

How fleshed out is the design?

Do you need a designer? Or is everything already mocked up? If you need some help with the ideation phase, we can help figure out a plan. Knowing how far along you are in this step will inform how long the process may take.

What devices will be able to run your app?

On what devices will your app be able to run? Can it only run on iPhones? Or just on Android phones? Both? What about tablets? Should the app look different for users using larger screen sizes? The answers to these questions greatly impact what needs to be built.

What other technology will accompany the app?

Do you also need a website?
Does an API need be built so that the app can access the data it needs?
Do you need an interface that allows you to edit or see user details?
Do you need analytics about the app so you can see reports of how people are using it?

Bingo!

If you have the answer to 5 of these you’re off to a great start. Keep going. If you don’t have all the answers, that’s totally fine. We can help you think through all of the questions above. These are just some introductory questions we often cover so we can start to figure out the size of your project.

Reach out when you’re ready to figure out your app’s next steps!

Feb

Solving Hard Software Development Problems

One luxury we as programmers often take for granted is the vast wealth of others’ experiences available for perusal at our fingertips. Rarely do we encounter a software development problem so challenging that Google and StackOverflow cannot offer assistance. However, when working with cutting edge technology, these elusive obstacles arise more frequently and I’ve dealt with my fair share of them here at LunarLincoln.

While there is no steadfast problem-solving algorithm, most code artisans (I’m hoping this name sticks) will first consult the web. More often than not, the hunt ends here. An experienced developer will know the specific keywords that will help narrow the search for the solution to their problem.

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But what if you encounter a problem that nobody knows how to solve?

Worse, what if nobody else has ever tried to do what you’re doing?

This is where we have to break out the big guns. Let’s use an example.

When I worked on Compass, I was tasked with figuring out how to stop it from draining the user’s battery so much. At the time I hopped on the issue, Compass was tracking location data, motion data, HealthKit data, calendar events, photos, weather and more. All the time. Yikes.

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Unsurprisingly, most phones didn’t react well to this kind of stress, and the largest complaint we got from testers was the drain it had on their phones.

Since everybody knows that premature optimization is the root of all evil, I had lots of avenues of attack. The first matter of business was to figure out the biggest culprits. Using Apple’s Instruments program, I was able to run the app and observe the battery usage levels as well as find out which parts of the app were consuming most of the CPU cycles. As it turns out, recording a user’s location was creating huge spikes in battery consumption. Knuckles cracked and fingers wiggling, I was ready to take a stab at it.

Adventure Time Deer

The first thing I did was dig into the current implementation to see how it worked. The app was always tracking location, even in the background, with the highest quality accuracy. And that’s great for results, but bad for battery. Fortunately, I had a place to start looking for a solution. Todd had a pull request ready which he said improved battery life but was ruining the accuracy of the location data. His idea was to use geofencing. He would wait until a user stopped moving, disable the GPS, and activate a geofence around the user. When a user had moved a significant distance, the geofence would trigger, and the app would resume high accuracy tracking until the user stopped moving again.

I thought that was a brilliant solution, but as I researched all my options for tracking location, I learned it wasn’t going to work as we wanted. Geofencing just didn’t offer enough precision.

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The location logger app

The second solution was the phone’s motion coprocessor.

We were already tracking the user’s activity state, and I opted to hijack this information to determine when to activate and deactivate the GPS. When a user is stationary, turn off the GPS. Otherwise, crank it up.

Now I needed to create the algorithm to make this happen. To iterate on the fine details of algorithm, I created a really small, ugly, but highly functional app that tracked my location and let me plug in my actual activity state (to make sure the motion coprocessor was accurate). I would walk and drive around the neighborhood to test its accuracy while measuring its battery consumption. (Ben even went on runs to test the running measurement, and may or may not have eaten it on a piece of random construction material. Sorry Ben!)

The location accuracy visualizer app

When the tests were done, I would export the data and compare the location data to the route I actually took. I created another tester app just to map the travel lines. Using this, I could see whether my algorithm was precise enough to meet our needs.

In the end, I was able to create massive gains in battery performance without any noticeable hit to location accuracy. Of course, the app still needs a lot of battery, but my models showed that multiple more hours of idle use could be seen, especially when stationary.

This form of rapid prototyping helped immensely in crafting a solution to this open-ended problem.

Surely this wasn’t the only way to solve this problem, nor is this guaranteed to be the best solution. But one of my favorite ways to tackle a problem is to build myself some proper tools.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” – (Probably not) Abraham Lincoln

Aug

Do your homework

In the beginning stage of building an app and even in the later stages – its always important to “do your homework”. What is your homework exactly? Checking out the scene, the market, other peoples work.

Really “your homework” is actually asking to see a copy of your friend’s homework right before first period because you weren’t sure how to do yours, or maybe you were too lazy to do the initial parts or maybe they just had better answers. Or…maybe that analogy got off the tracks there.

A little story to explain clearer. Wiley loves Kerbal. A. Lot. If Wiley could actually be in space like the Kerbal’s he would. But for now he has to settle for entire Sunday’s of stranding Kerbal’s in orbit around Mun INSTEAD OF FINISHING UP LUNCHTIMER *ahem*. Shipping dude, shipping.

A while back we got into a discussion about a simpler form of Kerbal. A physics game with planets and exploration and lots of nerdy easter eggs. We got excited. Really excited. We started planning our rocketship game. We drew pictures and argued about rewards systems. We named our levels/planets – Tyson, Sagan, Hadfield.

Then we looked in the app store to see what was out there already – surely nothing as awesome as what we were planning. But…Angry Birds Space had launched the day before….we had just spent two hours subconciously recreating all of Angry Birds Space. That was some crappy homework discovery.

But it was important. Sometimes homework doesn’t kill your app, but makes it stronger – gives you a broader view. You’re building a to-do app? What about to-do’s for kids? for elderly people? to-do for a specific industry? for everyone? for super anal people (who are honestly the only ones who actually use to-do apps beyond the first few weeks)?

Sometimes you’ll discover that people have already built your app…but…they didn’t do it as well, or with this feature, or with nice colors, or they didn’t bother to build it for Android. (Android needs love too)!

Love the “description” for this one in the google play store:

Now don’t straight up “copy your homework” like the above. But get to googling, dribbbling, smashing, and browsing.

Get inspired. Get informed.