I have an idea for an app. Now what?

Our CTO Albert Padin has built several startups and apps for clients, and this is the process he uses to take an app from an idea in someone's head to a product in people's hands. The idea is only the start, and the road from there is long with plenty of twists, so be as clear as you can at every step.

Validate

Before you start work, talk to people. Describe your idea, get their feedback and listen. Try to find the parts that confuse people most.

Then draw your idea so it is a bit more concrete. Show the drawing to others and use their feedback to see where you can improve it and make it clearer.

Find out which parts of your idea "click" with people and which parts they don't care much about, so you know which features to build first.

When you can describe it to different people in your market and they get it the first time without many questions, it's time to design. (Bonus if they already want to use it and even pay you for it.)

Design

It's tempting to design everything at once, so resist it.

The last step told you which features your market cares about most. Focus on those, since they are the solution your market is looking for, and design their details first.

The hard part of design is getting the idea out of your head and into the world. That takes clarification and time, and we call it the Discovery process. It looks something like this:

1. You describe what's on your mind.
2. The designer creates a design based on what he/she understood.
3. If the design is missing some details, go to step 1.
4. When it's right, you're ready to validate again.

Discovery starts with working out what the idea is. Talk about it and describe it. Show other sites or apps that are related to it, explain how you want it to work, draw flowcharts of how a user would use it, and give lots of detail.

You won't get it right straight away. The more detail you give, the more progress you make and the less risk you carry into the next step.

Design to Validate

Check your idea again. Changing a design is much easier and cheaper than changing a product you've already started building, so validating now saves time and money.

Build a clickable design prototype. It won't necessarily work, but it shows much more clearly how a user will use the design.

Don't let the fear that someone could steal your idea hold you back while you validate. You have the head start.

The thing to worry about is skipping validation, because then your chances of failure go up. You find out what to change too late, after you've done a lot of work, and it costs more in the long run.

When people use your prototype and start asking you for the real thing, it's time to build.

Build

Building usually takes the longest, which is why we put real effort into validating first. We want to be sure we are building the right things, and then building them right.

Building things right takes time, and there is a lot to decide. Should it be on Android or iOS, or both? Should it work when the user is offline? How does it work on smaller screens?

So decide which things matter most, build those first and push the rest back. When a feature works consistently, validate it again.

Validate and Iterate

Each feature, component or item in your product goes through this cycle:

1. Idea
2. Design
3. Validation. If it doesn't work, go back to #1.
4. Build
5. Validation. If it doesn't work, go back to #1.
6. Rollout
7. Measure. If it doesn't work, go back to #1.

"How much will making my app cost?"

We can't put a price on something that doesn't exist yet. Every idea is different, and the total cost depends on how long the project takes, what resources it needs, how fast you want to go and how big a team it needs.

If you have an app idea you want built, send us a message and we'll talk through what's possible.