Recent weeks have seen an explosion in the number of enquiries to our team regarding the steps involved in bringing an idea to a functioning, money making app in the iTunes App Store.

The primary concern of everyone with an idea is the protection and ownership of it.
Trust me when I say that we are not interested in stealing your idea.

The best way for us to help you to bring your idea to life is for us to become as excited and invested in it as you are. So the more detail you can provide early on, the faster and more accurately the project can progress.

In saying this, here are some simple steps that you can use to brief us on your idea.

Step 1. Brain Dump

Get EVERYTHING on paper. All of your thoughts, user interactions, features, design ideas, EVERYTHING relating to your ponderings and thought process surrounding your idea should be written down in whatever format you are comfortable with.

Step 2. Small Chunks

From your complete brain dump, identify three (3) core features or functions of your App.
These will form the basis of the app, and provide a platform for future expansion.

Once you have your core features identified, group your other feature ideas into three additional groups

Core Features
Nice to Have but not essential
OMG this would be awesome to have
Is this actually possible?

These groups will help us to focus the project into the core needs vs wants and give everyone a development road map. Not everything may be possible within your budget so grouping features into multiple development phases will help manage expectations and deliverables.

Step 3. Research

Trawl through the app store looking for other apps that have similar features to your idea. Create a Pro's and Con's list for each app and write down your thoughts on each, how does it appeal to you visually, is it easy to use, how would you improve or simplify it?

You should also try and identify who you believe would benefit from or like to use your app and why. Sell your idea to yourself.

Step 4. Get Creative.

A great way to help you to refine your idea is to expand on your research and try to put together some basic sketches of how you envision the interface looking and working.
It doesn't need to be pixel perfect, this is purely an exercise in extracting as much as possible from your mind which helps to refine and clarify the goals and objectives of the app.

Step 5. Put together a brief

You should now have a pretty clear idea for what your app does, how it works, who will use it and why.

It's now time to put together a summary of your findings. This should be a single page overview of the app idea and it's basic mechanics.

Where functions need further explanation, create separate documentation explaining in as much detail as possible what this function is and how it should work.

Step 6. Set a Budget, then increase it.

Try to remember that you are looking to build a potentially complex piece of software that could be used by thousands (and hopefully more) people who will be giving you their money to use your app. You have an obligation to your users to ensure that their money isn't wasted on a poorly thought out, or cheaply developed thing that doesn't meet their expectations.

There are likely to be dozens of variations of your idea already in the App store and making money, your challenge is to stand apart from the competition because you have a better design, more intuitive interface, more feature rich functionality or meet a need better.

Any and All of these requirements require investment in both time and money.

Step 7. Choose a Developer

When choosing a developer consider which of the following three outcomes is most important to you and remember that you will never get all three.

 

 

If cost is your primary concern then be prepared to sacrifice Speed & Quality
If speed is your primary concern then be prepared to sacrifice Cost & Quality and
If Quality is your primary driver then be prepared to sacrifice Cost & Speed.