Smartphone Application Development: Guidelines for Beginners

Although the recent years have seen application development for smartphones coming a long way, there are still aspects of this field that confuse developers; especially beginners. With technology taking the evolutionary path, new and more innovating products are coming to the market that needs to be studied in details. This rapid pace has created a lot of room for developers to make many mistakes on their way to creating valuable and productive applications. These are often such mistakes that could jeopardize the developed product or the corporate image. When experienced developers fall for this, it doesn’t come as a surprise how challenging the situation may be for beginners.

No matter how fresh and innovative you are as a developer, you often come across some issues while creating a new product that needs to be addressed before moving forward. Let us take a look at some of the major issues that beginners as well as experienced developers in smartphone application development face. The first hurdle that developers have to overcome is the choice of operating system for running applications. Android or iOS; this is the initial deciding factor that determines the course of action.

If you are entering this profession, you need to keep the audience in mind when choosing the operating system. For this, you have to understand the purpose of the application being planned for development. No can set a mind for launching an application on iOS before going through the nitty-gritty’s involved. You have to understand what the app is expected to do and based on that decide the platform, which can help you deliver the final product in the best manner possible. If you want to make use of openness, then Android is the answer you are looking for. Easy access to APIs is one of the major reasons why Android is chosen by developers.

Whereas, if you want an application that can be released on one version and operate on all, then iOS is your solution. Often developers refrain from using Android due to its various versions, which can make things slightly complicated for them. Since the Android market is fragmented in nature, developing a smartphone application that will function uniformly in all versions is quite a challenge in itself. This is something easily manageable in case of iOS, where you can release an application on one and rest assured that it will work perfectly across other models as well.

Coming to the second hurdle, developers often take their creation for granted and ignore testing. In order to ensure that the application works smoothly in all environments and conditions, it is imperative that ample amount of testing goes into it. Say, if you have developed an application related to securing information remotely then test that app in various places around the city. It may be outside your office or inside subways or any other situation; the application needs to be tested to its utmost levels. Another thing that developers need to keep in mind is that the final version of the application that is sent for QA (Quality Assurance), cannot be changed. Not even a single piece of information or code can be altered, as a tiny string removed or changed can affect the environment of the app immensely. So, you have to lockdown your app, once it goes for QA.

Moving on to the next consideration for beginning developers – discovery of the app by users is another issue you will come across. When your app is ready for launch, the first thing that developers think about is how users will find the app. This is a very important step as you need to determine the category your app belongs to and choose the correct keywords to describe the app. App Store Optimization is essential when it comes to stay ahead of your competitors. However, do not go overboard with the marketing of the application, as it may backfire. In the eagerness to stay ahead of others, many developers send out press releases, even before the app is tested and is in the store. This only account for the disappointment users feel when they read about an interesting application and cannot find it in the app store. So, instead of sending out wrong messages, be careful on the marketing and consumer discovery front.

Furthermore, since pleasing the end user is the ultimate goal of an application, developers often go that extra mile to appease their users. Every now and then, applications are updated, bringing something new to the overall experience, but at the same time take away some of the existing features. Now, this is a tricky zone, as users who are used to the existing one may not always revel at the prospect of having an additional feature added to their app. While, there are many who may actually enjoy the new feature that an update proposes. So, this is a dicey one where you have to use your discretion in understanding how utilitarian and easy the latest update is. Whether the new feature can make a user happy or act otherwise, is completely difficult to guess. So, you can try checking reviews of similar features launched in other applications to get an idea of how users may possibly react to yours.

Finally, another issue that developers come across is whether they should work in collaboration with designers or separately. This has been debatable for quite some time. However, recent leaders in smartphone application development and design believe that a collaborative effort is something that can reap rewards. Getting the interactions and user-flows designed prior to the development stage sounds reasonable, as success or failure of an application largely depends on the design that goes into it. So, if both these teams work together and closely on an application, the chances of having improved software increases to a large extent. No matter what issue arise, you will always solve it together. This way you avoid chances of having a design that over-defines functionality and instead of smoothening the user experience, makes it counter-productive.

Thus, by keeping these few considerations in mind, beginners in development of smartphone application can see easier solutions to these issues.