One tip for creating a successful iPad app

Once upon a time in the distant past

I think that most of us have not so many memories from early childhood. In any case, this is the case with me, but there is something that remains in my memory forever, imprinted in it by bright moments. More often it is joyful events, because we remember the good better than the bad.





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When I, a freedom-loving, thirsty adventure and knowledge, was sent to a kindergarten, I was indignant. To mitigate my righteous anger, the father, who worked at that time as an artist, arranged with the administration of the kindergarten and outlandish creatures appeared on the walls of the corridors and rooms in which we were sharpened.



As further research conducted by the scientific council of independent experts of karapuz showed, the creatures were called animals. For the most part they were representatives of the African savanna: flamingos, parrots, elephants, giraffes, zebra, antelope, rhinoceros and many others. This knowledge quickly spread among the prisoners of the younger group, and everyone could easily distinguish the peacock from the cockatoo.

There is only present

Two months ago, our designer Tanya decided to move to the glorious city of St. Petersburg. And the city, and the designer certainly lucky. I am always happy for the employees when their career develops successfully, after breaking up with our company. Nevertheless, I was faced with the task of finding a new designer, because the work was accumulated with incredible speed. After reviewing 30 or 40 profiles with illustrations on the freelance website, I found one that excludes any comparison with the others. The status showed “busy on the project”, but I still wrote a letter with a job offer, realizing the illusory chance to get a positive response.



So began our collaboration with Nastya. Despite the unconditional talent and wide experience in creating digital illustrations, there was no work in the design of mobile games and applications, so we decided to create the first trial project on a contractual basis.



I wanted to do something simple, but beautiful. I remember childhood memories from a distant past.



Fortunately, these days it is not necessary to paint the walls to give children the opportunity to see beautiful pictures, because there is an iPad with a large bright display. So it was decided to create the application "Funny Animals".







The idea is very simple - parents together with their children identify animals from the picture, substituting the correct name for the next random illustration. A voice-over encourages the baby and pronounces aloud the correctly guessed animal.







The interface is intuitive - even a kid with time will be able to learn to move signs with the names of animals.

The project through the eyes of developers

Nobody had high hopes for the success of the “Merry Animals”. I just wanted to do something nice for the children and check out the designer who has become a full member of our team today. However, I have long noticed that the most profitable of my investments are good deeds committed from the heart.



We have been trying to move away from custom development and focus on our own projects for a long time. Several commercial products were made, for which we spent many months of time and thousands of dollars, but none have yet become successful. “Funny Animals” was fully programmed in 2 weeks by one developer, illustrations took 4 weeks.



The application is free, with one built-in purchase and contains no advertising: http://itunes.apple.com/ru/app/veselye-zivotnye/id513271905



Without conducting any advertising campaigns and without a single press release, we received the following statistics for the first 9 days:







It's incredibly nice when the result of your work is not just gathering dust on the hard disk in the Apple server, but brings joy to people and especially children. We made very large and popular custom-made projects that were bought by hundreds of thousands of users, but for some reason small “Funny Animals” deliver no less satisfaction from the work done.



Finally, I would like to share my advice with those who are creating their own projects for iOS or are just planning to do this. It is better to come up with something simple and do it flawlessly, than to spend a lot of time and money on a complex product with a lot of flaws and be disappointed in the end.



I would be grateful to everyone who downloads the application. It is free and beautiful: