Week 1: Building An App — Planning and Designing.

Product focus and minimal designing the of your app before writing code.

Product Goal

Our goal at RNA labs is to create beautiful apps. What that means for us is more than just visual. The apps have to seamlessly bring the user closer to the goal. Which brings me to our first topic. Defining your goal.

You must condense your app into one sentence in the most simplest way possible. Don’t use filler words. Pick one main feature. Use this template.

The user does _______ and ________ happens.

Uber: You push a button, and in five minutes a Mercedes picks you up and takes you where you want to go.

Snapchat: You send photos and they will self destruct, never to be seen again.

Facebook: You type someone’s name and find out a bunch of information about them.

The purpose here is not include special features, you simply cut to the core of what your product does.

Here are more examples of past contracts at RNA labs.

Quibil: You sit at a restaurant and order food from your phone, and then a waiter brings your order.

Muvn: You photograph your room and moving company sends you their estimate

Uhoo: You enter a cafe and your phone shows photos of people who want to talk to you.

After you figure out your goal, write it down. It’s easy to get distracted by features that will slowly steer you off course. So having a clear cut goal memorized will keep your idea on track every step of the way.

Wireframing and Design

Im not a big fan of creating final or detailed designs for apps. Whatever design you’re envisioning in your head right now is going to change drastically by the time you launch. It’s best to stay flexible. I stick to pencil and paper, no need to use fancy graphic software.

The most important part of wireframing is sketching the user flows.

Remember that goal you wrote down? One example of a user flow is all of the screens, buttons, and gestures that user goes through in order to reach that goal.

Another example of a user flow are all the screens and actions the user takes to onboard themselves into your app. The sign up page, getting a phone number verified, or sending an application

Some flows are simple and short, like profile editing which usually involves going to a profile screen, clicking an edit button, updating info, and then clicking the save button.

The average app has around 10–15 user flows.