Even with all the evidence pointing in favor of creating your app, don’t decide to go ahead lightly. With more than 1.5 million apps in each of the Apple and Google Play Store apps, it’s important to run through the mobile app development process and know how your app will fit in with your marketing goals and niche. The mobile application development life cycle is just a representation of the conventional software development life cycle (SDLC) from the perspective of a mobile device.
1. Research
All apps start with an idea, even if yours is just for a mobile app presence. Refine that idea into a solid foundation for an app. Make sure your initial analysis includes real demographics, motivations, behavior patterns, and goals of your buyer persona. During every stage of the mobile app development service process, you should keep your end-user in mind.
Now, try to think about the life cycle of your client, once its characteristics are defined. After reaching them, you need to acquire, convert, retain, and build loyalty. In the end, you need to understand how the customer will use the digital product. Doing this early on will put you on a firm footing and your clarity will give you and your investors much-needed confidence.
2. Wireframing
The next step is to document and structure the application to understand future functionality. Although time is not on your side at this point, drawing detailed sketches of the intended product helps you uncover usability issues. Drawing does so much more than just following in your footsteps. It can be a powerful communication and collaboration tool. When you’re done drawing, wireframing will help refine ideas and organize all of the design components in the right way.
You can overcome any technical limitations that you encounter in the backend development process at this early stage. Now try to develop a clear understanding of how the proposed features and ideas will be merged into a functional application. You should also create a roadmap or storyboard to demonstrate the relationship between each screen and how users will navigate the application. Look for opportunities to incorporate your brand, focus on the user experience, and consider the differences in the way people use a mobile app versus a mobile website.
3. Assessment of technical feasibility
You may already have a clear understanding of the images, but you also need to consider whether your back-end systems will be able to support the application’s functionality. To know if your application idea is technically feasible, you need to access public data by obtaining public APIs. An application, depending on its format (smartphone, tablet, wearables, etc.) as well as the platform (iOS, Android, etc.), will have different requirements. At the end of this exercise, the team may have different ideas for the application or have decided that some of the initial features are not feasible. At this point, brainstorm, ask questions and review the status.
4. Prototype
Build a quick prototype. Fast is the keyword here. You can’t really understand the touch experience until you touch the app and see how it works and flows. So, build a prototype that puts the concept of the application in the hands of the user as quickly as possible to see how it works for the most common use case. Use approximate and non-exhaustive wire diagrams for this phase. This will help you see if you are heading in the right direction. Include stakeholders in this process, allowing them to touch the prototype will give you feedback and implement it in your work. Additionally, the prototype will give different stakeholders a first look at your application and help validate the information you have collected.
5. Design
Once you’ve got this step out of the way, you can dive into coding. Your user experience (UX) designer designs the interaction between design elements, while the user interface (UI) designer creates the look and feel of your application. This is a multi-step process with many review stages. What you get are planes and visual direction, which inform your engineers about the intended end product and how the interaction should move, feel and flow.
6. Develop
The development phase of any mobile app development company in India usually starts quite early. In fact, once an idea acquires some maturity at the conceptual stage, a functional prototype is developed that validates the functionality, assumptions, and helps to understand the scope of work. As development progresses, the application goes through a series of stages.
In the initial stage, the main functionality, although present, is not tested. Note that the application has many bugs and that the secondary functionality does not exist at this time. In the second stage, a large part of the proposed functionality is incorporated. Ideally, the application has gone through light testing and bug fixes, although some issues could still be present. In this phase, the application is released to a specific group of external users for further testing. Once the bugs in the second stage are corrected, the application will proceed to the deployment phase, where it will be ready for launch.
If yours is a complex project where user requirements change regularly, use an agile methodology. Helps with flexible planning, progressive development, early implementation, and constant improvements. A large application can be divided into smaller modules and an agile methodology can be applied to each of these small parts.
7. Test
In mobile app development, it’s a good idea to test early and often. Doing this will keep your bottom line costs low. The further you go into the development cycle, the more expensive it is to fix bugs. Consult the original design and planning documents as you create the various test cases.
Application testing is extensive, so make sure your team covers all the necessary facets. The application should be tested for usability, compatibility, security, interface controls, stress, and performance. In user acceptance tests, find out if your mobile app works for the intended users or not. To test this, hand out your app to some of your target audience and ask the relevant questions.
Once your application passes the user acceptance test, you know that your solution “works.” And also make your application available for beta testing, either by enrolling previously identified groups or an open application to participants. The feedback you receive from beta users will help you find out if the app features are working well in a real-world situation.
8. Deployment
Your application is ready to send. Pick a day and schedule a formal launch. For different app stores, the launch policies for an app are different. And keep in mind that this is not the end. Application development doesn’t end with launch. As your application reaches users, they will receive feedback and you will need to incorporate them into future versions of the application. Each application will need updates and new features.
Usually, as soon as the first version of the application is released by mobile app development companies in India, the development cycle begins again. Make sure you have the resources to maintain your product. Aside from the money invested in building a digital product, keep in mind that it is a long-term commitment.