How to make good applications (under Windows 8 and not only)
This article is a description of the process of developing and deploying a Windows 8.1 application. The opinion of the author is based on the experience of its own design, as well as working with developers of mobile applications. The whole process of working on the application is divided into 4 stages.
Although this stage seems simple, it should be given special attention. Errors at this stage and its insufficient study will significantly affect in the future.
1. Formulate the need that the application meets
Why this application for users? Even if the application is free, people spend time and attention on its use. They need to download this application, understand it, interact with it. The task your application solves should be more important to the user than the resources he spends.
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2. Determine on the basis of which metrics you will determine the achievement of the goal.
Formulate for yourself the timelines and metrics that you want to achieve. These can be: the number of downloads, the average time that a user spends in your application, the rating of the application; monthly profit or average profit from each user.
What will you measure it? In addition to the information you get from the Windows Store, look towards integration with Flurry , Distimo or other similar services.
3. Match each metric with an expected numeric value.
In order to roughly evaluate the metrics, you need to imagine the target audience of the application and the size of the market you are targeting, channels for promotion, monetization strategy and estimate the amount of work. Moreover, the monetization strategy should be able to download at least some version of the application for free.
4. Form a minimum viable product description (MVP)
Think over your minimal product, that is, an application that will allow you to do something useful for the user with minimal effort. It is better to focus on a small number of functions and do them well, than to do many functions badly.
Anyone has already come up with any good idea before you, so you need to check the idea with the market. Key questions: Are there any other ways to solve this problem and how is your method better? If there is no way, is there a need? Any idea is based on a set of hypotheses and facts. Therefore, further it is necessary to highlight hypotheses and form the rules for their verification. After that, it remains only to clearly formulate it in the form of MVP, which will help to check at least some of these hypotheses.
Read more about planning an application on MSDN .
After certainty with MVP, you can begin to develop a prototype. It can be a layout in balsamiq, .ai / .psd, an application without design, and even paper drawings. It all depends on how you quickly shape your thoughts and hypotheses into something that you can see and test.
To implement your idea, you chose a platform; in this text, Windows 8.1 will be such a platform. Further ideas about the user, the platform and guidelines, which will be useful in the development of the prototype.
1. User
You are well aware of it and know what its need should satisfy the application. Some more obvious facts about him:
Physical
The user interacts with your application in some context and environment. It depends on how it will hold the device, which in turn determines which areas of the device’s screen are more and less accessible to it (frequently used controls, respectively, should be placed in areas of the screen that are easier to reach and vice versa). Also remember that the fingers of a person are sized and the controls in the application must be large enough.
Psychological
The basic principles of design are based on the collective unconscious:
- close objects are perceived by the user as connected;
- objects of the same style as belonging to the same type;
- red means something wrong, green, that everything is OK, etc.
In addition, the user gains experience using the operating system and other applications. Accordingly, one can either use this knowledge or try to “retrain” it.
2. Platform
The Windows 8.1 platform defines a set of features and limitations of software and hardware nature.
Iron
When developing it is necessary to take into account the specifics of various devices running this platform:
- support for touch control (the basic rule of support for various input methods - design under the touch and support for everything else will get automatically);
- various sensors, the use of which often favorably distinguishes the application from others;
- a variety of screens, both in size of the diagonal and in the density of points .
Soft
Inside the operating system there is an application store that provides a set of distribution and monetization mechanisms, and is also an ecosystem of applications. And Windows 8.1 itself forms user-friendly ways to interact with the device.
3. Heidlanes
Guidelines are an attempt to describe a set of rules for creating an application interface, that is, the very experience that users get by interacting with the OS and its applications. They perform a double task. On the one hand, the use of guidelines when designing an application allows reducing the time for designing, by using ready-made solutions. On the other hand, it reduces the time the user spends learning how to work with your application.
All gaydlans are available in MSDN at design.windows.com or in the .pdf file format . At the same time, the pdf-version is more complete and easier to navigate.
Any set of ready-made solutions are not perfect. What if the solution that offers guidelines does not suit you? Guidelines are recommendations , you can break them. In order to understand whether it is worth breaking them, how best to do it or to design something that is not stated in the guidelines, use the following rule:
A. Look at existing applications in the application store and how the necessary functionality is implemented in them or in applications from the library . The Windows design language is live and the guidelines do not always have time to be updated.
B. If there is no such functionality or its good implementation anywhere, refer to the basic principles of Windows design .
C. If this was not enough, look at the set of materials that inspired the designers when creating the Windows design language.
After your prototype is ready, test it by showing it as a potential user. It is important that at the time of acquaintance with the prototype, the user had a minimum of information about it. After receiving feedback, correct the prototype and test again, repeat several times.
Moving on to creating an application based on tested mockups. Next checklist what you need to check.
1. Design
Binding of interface elements to the grid
Contract support for charm buttons, especially search and sharing
Privacy policy, if your application uses the Internet, GPS, confidential user data, etc.
Using Application Panels
Live tile
All necessary graphics (better in vector)
2. Extreme cases
What does the first launch look like?
If the application uses the Internet, what happens to the application when it goes offline?
What if the device has no touch support? And what if the only way to control this is touch? Does the emerging keyboard close important parts of the interface?
How does the application work on devices with a very small diagonal? And with a very big one? Similarly, about devices with different dpi.
What happens to the app when you rotate the device?
And when translating the application into different window modes (changing the window width)?
How about saving states when minimizing and quitting an application?
3. Localization, globalization and special features
Planning to release an application in several countries? Check that in addition to changing the language of the application, you also change the local features (date, time, currency format).
Have you provided for the use of the application by people with disabilities?
So, the application is ready for publication in the Windows Store.
1. Get the necessary accounts to publish.
First you must have a Microsoft account (LiveID). Further, in connection with this account, a developer account is created. If you are a student or a start-up, you can get a developer account for DreamSpark and Bizspark, respectively. Details about the registration process in the article on the example of free registration using DreamSpark.
2. Make beautiful packaging of your application in the Store
Acquaintance of the user with the application does not begin when he first starts it, but at the moment when he saw him in the app store. Read in MSDN about how to make a good page of the application and about updating the page with the application in Windows 8.1
3. Publish the app in the store
More about the description of this process in Habré or in MSDN . Before sending the application for certification, make sure that it first passes the Windows App Certification Kit .
4. Make it so that you know about your application.
The marketing company may include, for example, publications in the social. networks, article on Habré and reviews of the application on other sites. In MSDN, you will find all application marketing guidelines : how to use the store’s logo on the application's landing pages and banners, a set of different devices for the substrate for the application, etc. Pay attention to the section on preparing an application for a promo, this is a good way to significantly increase the number of downloads of the application.
The application began to download, so information for analysis began to appear. There are many useful data slices inside your account. Well, if you add additional analytical tools, there will be more information. Also, users will begin to send you feedback to the mail you provided when sending the application and leave feedback to the application.
All this is necessary first of all in order to test the initial hypotheses and form new ones. Which brings us back to the first item and starts the entire application development cycle from the beginning. And with each new cycle, your application will become better.
Application planning
Although this stage seems simple, it should be given special attention. Errors at this stage and its insufficient study will significantly affect in the future.
1. Formulate the need that the application meets
Why this application for users? Even if the application is free, people spend time and attention on its use. They need to download this application, understand it, interact with it. The task your application solves should be more important to the user than the resources he spends.
')
2. Determine on the basis of which metrics you will determine the achievement of the goal.
Formulate for yourself the timelines and metrics that you want to achieve. These can be: the number of downloads, the average time that a user spends in your application, the rating of the application; monthly profit or average profit from each user.
What will you measure it? In addition to the information you get from the Windows Store, look towards integration with Flurry , Distimo or other similar services.
3. Match each metric with an expected numeric value.
In order to roughly evaluate the metrics, you need to imagine the target audience of the application and the size of the market you are targeting, channels for promotion, monetization strategy and estimate the amount of work. Moreover, the monetization strategy should be able to download at least some version of the application for free.
4. Form a minimum viable product description (MVP)
Think over your minimal product, that is, an application that will allow you to do something useful for the user with minimal effort. It is better to focus on a small number of functions and do them well, than to do many functions badly.
Anyone has already come up with any good idea before you, so you need to check the idea with the market. Key questions: Are there any other ways to solve this problem and how is your method better? If there is no way, is there a need? Any idea is based on a set of hypotheses and facts. Therefore, further it is necessary to highlight hypotheses and form the rules for their verification. After that, it remains only to clearly formulate it in the form of MVP, which will help to check at least some of these hypotheses.
Read more about planning an application on MSDN .
Stage 2: Application Prototyping
After certainty with MVP, you can begin to develop a prototype. It can be a layout in balsamiq, .ai / .psd, an application without design, and even paper drawings. It all depends on how you quickly shape your thoughts and hypotheses into something that you can see and test.
To implement your idea, you chose a platform; in this text, Windows 8.1 will be such a platform. Further ideas about the user, the platform and guidelines, which will be useful in the development of the prototype.
1. User
You are well aware of it and know what its need should satisfy the application. Some more obvious facts about him:
Physical
The user interacts with your application in some context and environment. It depends on how it will hold the device, which in turn determines which areas of the device’s screen are more and less accessible to it (frequently used controls, respectively, should be placed in areas of the screen that are easier to reach and vice versa). Also remember that the fingers of a person are sized and the controls in the application must be large enough.
Psychological
The basic principles of design are based on the collective unconscious:
- close objects are perceived by the user as connected;
- objects of the same style as belonging to the same type;
- red means something wrong, green, that everything is OK, etc.
In addition, the user gains experience using the operating system and other applications. Accordingly, one can either use this knowledge or try to “retrain” it.
2. Platform
The Windows 8.1 platform defines a set of features and limitations of software and hardware nature.
Iron
When developing it is necessary to take into account the specifics of various devices running this platform:
- support for touch control (the basic rule of support for various input methods - design under the touch and support for everything else will get automatically);
- various sensors, the use of which often favorably distinguishes the application from others;
- a variety of screens, both in size of the diagonal and in the density of points .
Soft
Inside the operating system there is an application store that provides a set of distribution and monetization mechanisms, and is also an ecosystem of applications. And Windows 8.1 itself forms user-friendly ways to interact with the device.
3. Heidlanes
Guidelines are an attempt to describe a set of rules for creating an application interface, that is, the very experience that users get by interacting with the OS and its applications. They perform a double task. On the one hand, the use of guidelines when designing an application allows reducing the time for designing, by using ready-made solutions. On the other hand, it reduces the time the user spends learning how to work with your application.
All gaydlans are available in MSDN at design.windows.com or in the .pdf file format . At the same time, the pdf-version is more complete and easier to navigate.
Any set of ready-made solutions are not perfect. What if the solution that offers guidelines does not suit you? Guidelines are recommendations , you can break them. In order to understand whether it is worth breaking them, how best to do it or to design something that is not stated in the guidelines, use the following rule:
A. Look at existing applications in the application store and how the necessary functionality is implemented in them or in applications from the library . The Windows design language is live and the guidelines do not always have time to be updated.
B. If there is no such functionality or its good implementation anywhere, refer to the basic principles of Windows design .
C. If this was not enough, look at the set of materials that inspired the designers when creating the Windows design language.
After your prototype is ready, test it by showing it as a potential user. It is important that at the time of acquaintance with the prototype, the user had a minimum of information about it. After receiving feedback, correct the prototype and test again, repeat several times.
Stage 3: Attention to details
Moving on to creating an application based on tested mockups. Next checklist what you need to check.
1. Design
Binding of interface elements to the grid
Contract support for charm buttons, especially search and sharing
Privacy policy, if your application uses the Internet, GPS, confidential user data, etc.
Using Application Panels
Live tile
All necessary graphics (better in vector)
2. Extreme cases
What does the first launch look like?
If the application uses the Internet, what happens to the application when it goes offline?
What if the device has no touch support? And what if the only way to control this is touch? Does the emerging keyboard close important parts of the interface?
How does the application work on devices with a very small diagonal? And with a very big one? Similarly, about devices with different dpi.
What happens to the app when you rotate the device?
And when translating the application into different window modes (changing the window width)?
How about saving states when minimizing and quitting an application?
3. Localization, globalization and special features
Planning to release an application in several countries? Check that in addition to changing the language of the application, you also change the local features (date, time, currency format).
Have you provided for the use of the application by people with disabilities?
Step 4: Publish the application
So, the application is ready for publication in the Windows Store.
1. Get the necessary accounts to publish.
First you must have a Microsoft account (LiveID). Further, in connection with this account, a developer account is created. If you are a student or a start-up, you can get a developer account for DreamSpark and Bizspark, respectively. Details about the registration process in the article on the example of free registration using DreamSpark.
2. Make beautiful packaging of your application in the Store
Acquaintance of the user with the application does not begin when he first starts it, but at the moment when he saw him in the app store. Read in MSDN about how to make a good page of the application and about updating the page with the application in Windows 8.1
3. Publish the app in the store
More about the description of this process in Habré or in MSDN . Before sending the application for certification, make sure that it first passes the Windows App Certification Kit .
4. Make it so that you know about your application.
The marketing company may include, for example, publications in the social. networks, article on Habré and reviews of the application on other sites. In MSDN, you will find all application marketing guidelines : how to use the store’s logo on the application's landing pages and banners, a set of different devices for the substrate for the application, etc. Pay attention to the section on preparing an application for a promo, this is a good way to significantly increase the number of downloads of the application.
What's next?
The application began to download, so information for analysis began to appear. There are many useful data slices inside your account. Well, if you add additional analytical tools, there will be more information. Also, users will begin to send you feedback to the mail you provided when sending the application and leave feedback to the application.
All this is necessary first of all in order to test the initial hypotheses and form new ones. Which brings us back to the first item and starts the entire application development cycle from the beginning. And with each new cycle, your application will become better.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/196174/
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