MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT Will Yeo

July 2015

WHAT I DO: DURING THE DAY

MS Office UX developer

Develops Office shared controls

Especially on mobile platform (tablet/phone)

WHAT I DO: IN THE EVENING

Guitar app (2009)

App Review

사랑의기도Reference (2013)Photo management (2012)

Browser (2014) Hand bell app (2014)

HOW TO MAKE MILLION DOLLAR APPS

I’ll share my story behind app development.

There are many different approaches – different objective, team size, budget, time constraint, …

Yet there are some commonalties you would catch from my experience.

Stop me for any questions!

HANDBELL SOLO

WHAT IT TAKES TO DEVELOP AN APP?

XCode

IDEA – WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BUILD?

Technology is meant to benefit us, but sometimes tear us apart…

Can it help us become closer together?

IDEA – HAND BELL CHOIR

A choir consist of people with mental disability

How to teach them to play in harmony?

Used color coded panel to signal the time to ring

C BD E

CAN WE MAKE IT BETTER WITH TECHNOLOGY?

Synthesia

WAIT, IS THIS ALREADY THERE?There are so many apps, and increasing very fast.

You have a good idea? Chances are that there’s already an app for that.

There are several hand bell apps but not like what I think…

BEFORE YOU START

Device

MacBook / Mac Mini

iPhone 4 / 5 / 6

Developer account

$99/year (Apple), $25/year (Google)

LLC (Limited Liability Company)

Optional

Need registration here and there / tax liability / …

FEASIBILITY STUDY

Business side

This is important which I didn’t really pay attention

Technical side

Cross-platform

Good sound font

Animation

Song management

…

TECHNICAL: CROSS-PLATFORM SUPPORT

Do apps need to be multi-platform? Earn more money?

Social feature requires multi-platform

Resource issues Never done Android development before

Tight budget

Tight time frame

Cross-platform framework – One code to multiple deployment Xamarin: http://xamarin.com/

Cocos2d-x: http://www.cocos2d-x.org/

Titanium: http://www.appcelerator.com/titanium/

Corona SDK: http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/

CORONA SDK

Chose this because

Inexpensive (or free)

Graphics support (vs. web based x-plat framework)

Accelerometer support

OpenAL (sound library) support

iOS / Android / Windows support

Enough user base and support

OVERSIMPLIFIED VIEW

Editor (e.g., Sublime)

Language: Lua script

iOS executable

Android executable

This can be also published to Windows Store and Amazon App Store

(I haven’t done it yet)

TECHNICAL: HOW TO PLAY GREAT SOUND?

Requirement

Sound should be clear and beautiful

File size matters

Things to consider

Sound font: Like a building block to synthesize different sounds with minimal size information

Pitch modification

Short sound / long sound

Volume

…

TECHNICAL: ANIMATION

Animation is critical in user experience

HTML5 is great but still more ways to catch the fluidness of native apps

Cross-platform framework is additional layer and can’t use the hardware rendering that the native apps support

Not good, but ok enough for this app

DESIGN: DO IT YOURSELF

My hand

App icon that I drew

Free, but lots of time for me

Icons borrowed from Apple

Post-processing took at least 6-7 hours

ICON DESIGN: FIRST OUTSOURCING

A few iterations on design and colors (work description)

15 Different sizes for iPhone/iPad

Outsourced via UpWork.com (formerly oDesk)

Designer from Malaysia

$100

ICON DESIGN: SECOND TIMES

A few iterations on design and colors

26 Different sizes for iPhone/iPad/Android

Outsourced via UpWork.com (formerly oDesk)

Designer from Serbia

$40

DESIGN: BELL 3D MODEL

3D model

A few iterations on design and colors

Outsourced via UpWork.com (formerly oDesk)

Designer from India

How much?

$16.67/hour

~9 hours -> ~$150

DESIGN: EVERYTHING ELSE

Table border, background, selection, …

Bottom menu – bar, button different state, …

Background (chosen from 3 options)

Designer from Serbia

$240

OUTSOURCING: TRANSLATION

App description into 9 languages Chinese

Japanese

Portuguese

Spanish

German

French

Arabic

Russian

Korean

About 6 lines of text

~$4 per language -> ~$30

Professional service would charge at least +$200

TIME LINE

Started Aug 2015

Published right before Christmas

Took 5 man/month

Learning new SDK, language, libraries, development, design, etc

I have quite challenging day job

I have two demanding (but lovely) boys, age 7 and 3

If it were full-time work, probably ~1.5 month (without waiting time for contractors)

BALANCE SHEET

Spending

Developer / business license : ~$250 / year

Outsourcing : ~$450

Device purchase: iPhone 6 / MacBook

My precious evenings

Earning

Less than the half I paid for contractors (yet!)

Lots of learning

CLOSURE: MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT

With proper tools, not much more difficult than other SW development

Making money isn’t easy (is it else where?)

If you really want something, you can outsource the whole process

My experience is one data point. There are lots of other experiences our there.

THANK YOU!