The first phase of the mobile app development process is defining the strategy for evolving your idea into a successful app. You may include a more significant part of this in your overall enterprise mobility strategy. As one app's objectives may differ from another, there is still an app-specific impact to the mobility strategy to address during the development process.
In this phase, you will
- Identify the app users
- Research the competition
- Establish the app's goals and objectives
- Select a mobile platform for your app
Analysis and Planning
At this stage, your app idea starts taking shape and turns into an actual project. Analysis and planning begin with defining use cases and capturing detailed functional requirements.
After you have identified the requirements for your app, prepare a product roadmap. This includes prioritizing the mobile app requirements and grouping them into delivery milestones. If time, resources or costs are a concern, then define your minimum-viable-product (MVP) and prioritize this for the initial launch.
Part of the planning phase includes identifying the skills needed for your app development initiative. For example, iOS and Android mobile platforms use different development technology stacks. If your goals are to build a mobile app for both iOS and Android mobile platforms then, your mobile development team should include iOS developers and Android developers.
Have you selected the name of your app yet? Mobile app names are like domain names and have to be unique within each app store. Research each app store ensuring your app's name isn't already in use!
UI / UX Design
The purpose of an app's design is to deliver seamless and effortless user experiences with a polished look.
The success of a mobile app is determined based on how well users are adopting and benefiting from all its features. The goal for mobile app UI / UX design is creating excellent user experiences making your app interactive, intuitive, and user-friendly. While polished UI designs will help with early adoption, your app must have intuitive user experiences to keep app users' engaged.
