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App Development

Stages of mobile application development

Stylization and design concept.

The application should have its own corporate identity based on the color palette, fonts, illustrations and icon. It gives the application a unique mood that affects the user’s attitude towards it and, consequently, your business. The task of the designer is to “dress up” a visually inexpressive prototype in the corporate style.

He will do this in several variations, each of which is called a design concept. You choose the one you like best.

Make the right choice, because this is how your application will look

Development of a mobile application.

Developers get the design layout of the application through the Zeplin platform. This is convenient and has become a widespread practice, so you will probably be offered to create an account in Zeplin and connect to the project.

After the developers study the design, they may see new challenges in the implementation of the application and reevaluate the project. But you were warned about this at the stage of communication with the account. The task of developers is to bring the design to life, that is, to lay out each screen and write code that logically combines them and allows the approved functionality to work. Also, with the help of code, they establish interaction between the visible part of the application (frontend) and its invisible part, where data is stored (backend).

At this stage, you communicate primarily with the project manager. He tells you about how development is progressing, what problems arise, how they are solved and whether you meet the deadlines.

Development management. The project can be managed according to two methodologies:

“Waterfall”

The project develops linearly: from the approval of technical specifications to design, prototyping and design, then to development, testing and support. Such a methodology does not imply sudden changes – new proposals are made only after the completion of one stage;

“Agile”

The general name for agile project management methodologies, the most common of which is Scrum. The bottom line is that there is a total amount of tasks (backlog), from which the manager and developers form a stage (sprint). The stage lasts one to two weeks: we completed one part of the tasks, summed up the results, scored the next ones, and so on until the tasks are over. The results of one sprint can affect the composition of the tasks of the next sprint, this is the difference from “waterfall” with its strict sequence.

Some studios (including Live Typing) find it convenient to combine waterfall and Scrum. Large stages are performed one after another, but they are estimated in time and are divided into sprints within themselves. At the end of each sprint, you see the result and thus control the process.

Testing. No sprint is complete without testing. Its goal is to fix most of the bugs in the operation of the application.

Performance testing involves several types of testing. They are automated and manual and are used at different stages of the project.

The backend is checked to see if it can withstand a large number of requests at the same time and not break.

The final product must work on different phones, so testing is not possible without a large fleet of mobile devices. Ask the studio how extensive its park is.

The QA engineer responsible for the quality of the product receives the build of the project, runs it through all the necessary tests and prepares a report for the developers, which indicates all the shortcomings. The developers fix them and send the build back to the tester. After that, she comes to you. You are expected to review the build and provide feedback on its performance.

Release.

The finished application must be submitted for moderation to the App Store mobile app stores.

and Google Play. This is the responsibility of the project manager.

Before publishing to the App Store, the project manager must:

1. Create an account in the App Store for the client, if the client does not have one, or offer to publish the application from the account of the developer studio.

2. Prepare marketing materials (icon, screenshots, text, video for app preview).

3. Attach a digital signature certificate to the application assembly.

4. Set up payment for using the application.

5. Submit the build to the App Store.

The first check can take from several hours to a week. Moderators check how unique the application is, whether there is any unused code, whether the purpose and content of the application matches its name and age rating, if the links work, and if there is a privacy policy.

Before publishing to Google Play, the project manager must:

1. Create an account in the Google Play Developer Console for the client, if the client does not have one, or offer to publish from the studio’s account.

2. Issue a Privacy Policy.

3. Prepare marketing materials (icon, screenshots, APK, banner, text, promo video).

4. Attach a digital signature certificate to the application assembly.

5. Set up payment for using the application.

6. Send assembly to Google Play.

It has long been observed that moderation for Google Play takes less time than moderation for the App Store.

The application may be disqualified for adult content, extremist and immoral content, drug advertisements, the ability to mine cryptocurrency and binary options trading, plagiarism, non-compliance with security conditions and annoying ads.

Refusal to publish is not a sentence: after eliminating all the reasons for the refusal, the application will be approved, and it will be possible to download it from the store.

Support and update.

Support is provided under the contract. You pay for a certain number of hours per year and you can count on experts to sort out problems on your project. Also, over time, you will want a new design or new features, or decide to remove some features if they turn out to be outdated or not used. Support tasks include:

  • Library update;
  • Monitoring the performance of hosting and server;