Evolution of mobile applications

Jul 18,2022 by Tarandeep Kaur
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Still, having trouble deciding how to go with developing an app for your company? Learn how Cyfuture has impacted the app development process. The mobile app business has developed along with technology. Mobile app development is a must for everyone, from the Fintech and Insurance sectors to the fashion and retail industries. The evolution of what began with something as basic as the Flappy Bird app has advanced to the point where it is now meeting all human requirements. The mobile application has changed as a result of user needs and corporate innovation, but the development process itself hasn’t changed much—either via additions or removal of steps.

In this post, we will examine the “How to Build an App” technique used by app development businesses to produce both unique, high-quality applications and ones that have already been adopted. We will also provide you with a birds-ey perspective of how Cyfuture internally develops apps.

The Important Aspects Of The Development Process For Apps

Verifying the Concept

The following issues must be addressed before moving forward to ensure that you are not marrying the incorrect concept and that the idea is worthwhile for your time and work.

  • Why do you want to create a mobile application? In your company, is it truly necessary? In light of the requirements of your business or target audience, is your idea acceptable or a perfect fit? Do you have sufficient funding to advertise it?
  • Who is your target audience, exactly? Who are the likely customers?
  • What are the key features of the app? What draws users to your app in particular? What makes your app appealing to your audience? How will you distinguish?
  • Analysis of your competitors: Who are they? Do they use a comparable application? If so, does your suggestion for resolving the issue outperform theirs?
  • Investment: Developing an app will cost you time, money, and effort. In readiness?
  • How and when will your application be promoted via app marketing? What is your marketing plan for the initial 500 users?

Market research

The most crucial step in your path should be taken right now. Market research reveals the true demand or interest of the market; as a result, you may alter your concept, and the study can provide you with a detailed list of criteria that can assist you in setting priorities for the task. Of course, the topic at hand is: How should one conduct market research? You can see the entire process of market research here:

More benefits of conducting market research include the following:

  • It aids in the continual improvement of your comprehension of your clients.
  • Get a good understanding of your rivals
  • Enables you to thoroughly evaluate your goods before launch
  • Aids in defining the audience you want to reach?
  • Discover the business opportunities
  • Gain access to the feature list and user requirements

Determine how your app will function and appear using UX/UI design.

To begin with, let’s define what UX and UI represent. Simply stated: How an app functions is called UX (User Experience). The appearance is the UI (User Interface). From a commercial perspective, well-designed UX and UI are crucial. In the end, they have an impact on the retention rate. Users will adore and utilize your application development services if they offer a seamless and delightful user experience, and if the app’s design makes them feel good. As part of the process of developing a mobile app, generating

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User Journey Diagram

A user journey map is something you (alone or with your development team) build. It shows how users navigate across your app. It narrates the course of the user’s journey. The User Journey Map at Cyfuture is either produced using Figma or as a drawn schema on the wall (we wrote about it here). It often forms part of Project Discovery, but we’re presenting it here to illustrate why it’s so important for developing wireframes and user interfaces.

Wireframes (UX)

The future app’s digital, streamlined visual conceptions are called wireframes, and they are created by designers. They outline the product’s organizational scheme, level of the hierarchy, and connections between its constituent parts. It functions as the framework of an app.

Then, using wireframes, designers produce a clickable prototype, a live, interactive representation of your program. A real-world product is stimulated by it. Clickable prototype illustration:

Design (UI)

Your app’s style guide, user interface, and motion design are all worked on by designers. You receive movies showcasing the motion design (animations & screen transitions) in your app as well as mockups displaying the finished appearance of your app.

In conclusion, even if your app idea is brilliant, you won’t succeed if the UX and interface design are poor. Verify that the UX and UI Design procedures are carried out thoughtfully. Be active throughout the whole product design process so the team can mold the final designs to match your preferences. Last but not least, always keep the users of your app in the forefront of your thoughts.

Quality Assurance in app development

During that stage, programmers begin writing the code and creating your product. How do they manage that? The process of creating mobile applications is iterative. Probably, you’ve heard of the terms sprints and scrum. In essence, this implies that you divide up all of the development work into smaller milestones and create your mobile app in cycles. Planning, development, testing, review, and retrospective will all be included in each cycle of improvement.

Refinement

The act of maintaining the backlog updated, organized, and tidy is known as sprint refinement (Product Backlog Refinement). An orderly list of everything that is known to be required for the product is a backlog. The process of refinement needs to be continuous. A scheduled meeting for refinement, though, is helpful.

At Cyfuture, for instance, we talk about the tasks at the top of the Product Backlog, ensure that their acceptance criteria are explicit, and estimate them. Then, planning is simpler at the planning meeting since there is less information to review.

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Refinement only begins in the first Sprint; Make sure you are prepared before you start. In the future, the Planning meeting will begin each Sprint.

Planning

Maximum 2-hour meeting for sprint planning (for 1-week Sprint). Its objective is to choose the tasks that have to be a part of the subsequent Sprint. The team discusses the tasks at hand, making sure that everyone understands and agrees upon the acceptance criteria for each one. To actively participate in the planning of the following iteration, the Product Owner (you) joins this meeting (maybe through Skype).

Coding

Code is being written by developers, who are also putting Sprint’s planned features into action. QA engineers are performing automated tests. It’s beneficial when developers use code review. Code review is not necessary to create an app that doesn’t crash, but it is a good practice to write code that is clear and transparent so that future developers can easily update and improve it.

Testing (QA)

We work on a platform called AppCenter while developing. It enables us to send testers, customers, and other developers the in-development version of the software privately and securely. The platform offers crash reporting, automatically alerts users of new builds (ensuring that everyone is testing the most recent version), and makes sure that only authorized testers have access to your program.

A method of preventing errors in programs that have been built and issues while delivering them to users is quality assurance or just QA. Every phase of development includes it.

Consider the following examples to illustrate how Quality Assurance might apply to the development of an app:

  • Developers write the code, and quality assurance professionals write automated tests.
  • Pull Request: A developer notifies others about a newly added section of code.
  • Execution of automated tests, which are tests that run automatically to see whether new modifications haven’t broken any already-implemented features. Included are:
  • Developers write the code, and quality assurance professionals write automated tests.
  • Pull Request: A developer notifies others about a newly added section of code.
  • Execution of automated tests, which are tests that run automatically to see whether new modifications haven’t broken any already-implemented features. Included are:
  • To discover crashes in Android apps, we employ virtual device testing. It acts as a dummy user of an app.
  • Manual Tests—manual testing of the application based on predetermined use cases. made by QA experts.
  • The function is complete. Throughout development, the procedure is repeated several times.

The following is a collection of quality assurance best practices that you should take into account while dealing with an outside development team:

  • Before anything else, confirm that your partner has quality assurance experts that will ensure the highest level of product quality throughout the whole development process.
  • A committed specialist who will oversee comprehensive QA for your project should be part of the development team. Why? He will have a mental map of the entire project. Pair testing is acceptable for work cleanliness, but frequent tester changes increase the project’s danger of messes and chaos.
  • It is not up to you to spot obvious mistakes and discrepancies between what was requested and what you received.
  • The two professions are distinct. Your partner claims that although they lack a quality assurance expert, it is OK since a developer would test the software. Well, not quite. A developer shouldn’t review their code. The author has a tougher time recognizing their errors. Developers might also disregard something as not being a mistake since they are aware of what they have typed. Extra eyes are usually beneficial.
  • QA needs to be guaranteed from the outset. Never postpone quality assurance. Future difficulties might arise from even minor mistakes made during the early stages of development. The sooner you begin QA, the fewer issues you will face down the road.
  • The results of the exams ought to be clear to you. What characteristics have been tested thus far? Which bugs have been discovered? You should be aware of how the testing is going as the app’s owner. 
  • Smartphone Test Farm (STF), an application that enables developers to execute automated tests using specialized software like Bitrise that enables testing applications on several devices simultaneously, is a fantastic option.
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Review

The Scrum Team and stakeholders discuss Sprint’s accomplishments at the Sprint Review. The Sprint Review is held following the Sprint to look at the Increment (all tasks completed during the Sprint). For a Sprint of one week, it might take up to an hour. If your development team sends you the following after Review:

  • A prototype of an app (so you can check if the created app fits your expectations)
  • A thorough evaluation of what was accomplished
  • Information on how many hours the team spent working on the project during the Sprint

The PO may choose to attend the Review meeting or may want to receive the aforementioned material by email.

Read More: The Complete Guide to Mobile App Development Process for 2022

Retrospective

Sprint reviews are usually followed by 45-minute retrospective meetings. You and the team discuss how to improve the team’s work practices to improve product quality at this discussion. The Sprint Retrospective has the following objectives:

  • Examine how the latest sprint performed in terms of the participants, relationships, activities, and tools.
  • Examine what worked well and identify areas for improvement.
  • Make a strategy for putting improvements into action.

Please take the time to study the whole article on how to create apps using Scrum and understand the Scrum Sprint Workflow with all Scrum events. However, the development process involves planning all features, implementing them, testing them, and approving them with the product owner as a part of a continuous integration process. Planning, coding, testing, reviewing, and process and product improvement are all conducted in this manner. You have a lot of freedom with this method since it’s simpler for you to keep an eye on the procedure and the final result and implement modifications quickly.

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