Shout! Omaha

Killer Apps

Mobile application development straight from the coders’ mouths

With the new eyePhone, you can watch, listen, ignore your friends, stalk your ex, download porno on a crowded bus, even check your e-mail while getting hit by a train.

–Futurama, “Attack of the Killer App”

When a recent episode of Futurama cheekily lampooned our ubiquitous smart phones, the hilarity was derived mostly from recognition – we know acutely what it’s like to do anything and everything on our versatile little devices, whether that makes our life more efficient or more distractible. Whatever we need to do (check mail, order pizza, rent a car, start a revolution), we can do on-the-go with a stunning range of mobile device applications.

And while we may love our Foursquare, our Google Voice, and our Plants vs. Zombies, few of us have any notion of what goes into making these handy digital nuggets of practicality (or frivolity). Shout! asked four local application developers – Andy Peters of Ninth Division, Kevin Berry of Confurrent, Jim Boutcher of Smelly. Puppy., and David McRae, Jr., of Sojern and Systematic Thought – to let us in on the development process and behind-the-scenes details that are part and parcel of everything you love about your eyePhone. Excuse me, iPhone.

The exact process of app development may differ from company to company, depending on client needs, platforms, and personalities, and “the process from start to finish is quite fluid,” said Peters. Still, here are five steps that most applications will see before they ever hit your screen.

The idea.

When creating applications for a client, this means sitting down, understanding their business and their needs, and determining the direction of the project – much like any client meeting in any industry. And for the developers who create applications for themselves, the ideation often comes from a problem and a proposed solution.

“I always build things I need myself,” said Boutcher. “I set off to build [Get Your Bearings] after getting into a disagreement with a friend on what direction Lincoln was while sitting in a bar in Omaha. I figured, I’ll make a game out of it.” And QuickCal, a meeting management app and Smelly. Puppy.’s other creation, was the result of frustration: “Although the vast majority of the Mac OS/iOS is a usability dream, the calendar apps seem to be the exception,” he said. “I wanted to make my life easier.”

“I started [Systematic Thought] with the idea of solving problems that I needed [to] solve,” McRae agreed. “You can find an app to do anything. My focus is to make apps that I would want to use, and make them in a way that they are user-friendly and simple.”

“I work mostly with business-to-business development,” said Berry, whose company, Confurrent, creates software to enhance conferences. “I prefer to develop projects that increase productivity for customers and give them access to information that they didn’t have a way to track or access in the past.”

The plan.

This means generating the design, the interface, the navigation, the information – creating the look, feel, and plan for programming. This step may also include checking the current marketplace for similar apps and researching other apps with potential solutions to the same problem. Sometimes developers run this step solo; other times, company designers or friends or coworkers will step in with aesthetic work or feedback.

The code.

Once the plan is in place, one or two developers sit down and code away, a process that can take anywhere from a week to several months, depending on the project’s complexity. Coders have to know the right framework and programming languages, like Objective-C for iPhones or Java for Androids. Often, this means that a company will specialize in one platform or the other, with many apps not made available to all users, while some companies, like Confurrent, create multiple versions. “I develop the Android applications for our company,” said Berry, while another programmer works the iPhone applications. “We both work together to create a unified user experience across both platforms.”

Other developers create or use new frameworks, like PhoneGap, that seek to bridge the multiplatform problem. “[It] allows you to build your application [in] HTML, CSS, and Javascript, so basically, the same thing you would use to build a website,” said McRae. “Now you can build one set of code that you can use for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, with only slight modifications.”

Additionally, coding for a phone is slightly more limited than for the internet, as anyone who has tried to view a Flash-heavy site on their mobile browser can attest. But again, changes are on the way. “The fact is,” said Peters, “much of what folks want [with] Flash can be done nowadays with HTML5 and CSS3 – new standard web technologies that work on an iPhone, Android, iPad and desktop with no extra software.”

Toss in Google’s recent introduction of the Android App Inventor (see side) – and once-concrete limitations are quickly becoming creative flashpoints.

The fix.

After coding, there is user testing, reviewing, debugging, tweaking, and general housekeeping. This might include cross-platform smoothing, if programming for both iPhone and Android; client reviews, if programming for a business; or maybe just arm-twisting friends into testing the app. But even after this step, programs are rarely bug-free. “My most recent app, QuickCal Mobile, still has some bugs that I need to fix, but the app is extremely usable in its current state; the reviews coming in are validating that,” said Boutcher. “I will probably now be spending one to two hours every morning, while I’m enjoying my coffee, cleaning up bugs and adding some more basic features to ensure the folks who have purchased my app so far get the quality [expected].”

The sell.

Once the app is complete, it is uploaded to its respective platform’s marketplace. For iPhones, this means the app must now go through an approval process, a steppy but recently sped-up system that can take anywhere from three days to three weeks. “In the last eight months we’ve seen a lot of great improvements from the approval process,” said Peters.

“[For] my last app, Apple [went] out of their way to ensure the process went smoothly,” said Boutcher. “I had created a screencast demoing some of the new features coming soon, while the app was still in review, and LifeHacker picked it up, ran it, and people were obviously confused and upset because they [had] paid money for the app that didn’t have the features they expected. I shot an email to Apple, who expedited the process for me under an exception, and the update was on the store within 24 hours.”

The Android marketplace has no approval process, eliminating any concern that an application that cost considerable time and money might be rejected. Apps are immediately uploaded to devices or to the market, “but if enough people mark the application as malicious,” said Berry, “then Google will remove the application from the market” – almost a wiki approach to approval.

There is also the issue of pricing to consider: should an app be free, $0.99, $9.99? “For a while we’ve seen a lot of apps floating between free and a dollar, but that is starting to change,” said Peters. “Generally, users are demanding better quality apps and are willing to pay for that.” And for companies that need customized applications, the development cost can run tens of thousands of dollars.

“I think 99 cents for [Calc Loan] is a great value,” said McRae. “When searching for a car, I used my application and actually saved around $400 in interest over the loan by being able to calculate the loan amounts right on the spot.”

Whether the apps are financial calculation tools or time-wasting  Tetris knock-offs, they herald a new era of mobile technology. “We get to build software that hasn’t even been thought of until now,” said Peters, “or has been tried, but didn’t work because the user was strapped to a desk.” The world is transient and immediate, and developers are filling the gaps.

“The thing that I like the most about mobile development is how the new the whole market is…really, only about three years old,” said Berry. But that newness breeds challenges as well: “You not only have to convince businesses that this is something that they actually need – not just the newest novelty out there – but you also have to continually keep up with all of the changes throughout the platforms.”

And if you can do that, you’ve contributed something to an emerging and ever-changing  media field, where user needs are met in the space of a pocket or purse. “I love the amount of information that can be in your hand now with these phones,” said McRae. “I really think that these small applications are going to replace a lot that we would normally search a Google or a Bing for.”