Creating Apps With 4+ Rating is Not an Art, It’s a Craft
Can anyone guarantee that a product will be successful?
Probably not, since customers vote with their money (or their equally valuable attention), and that only happens when you go live.
But the real question is: Can we promise that a product will be loved by customers? We believe the answer is yes.
We believe we are a creative bunch here at Supercharge. Creativity is the source of innovation and originality, therefore it is an essential quality for any sound product development team. But creativity itself won’t result in great products. You need to have the right process — with constant validation and iteration — if you are to succeed. And creating great products with the right process isn’t an art, it’s a craft, with predictable results.
One of our latest endeavours was creating a real estate browsing mobile application for the largest classified ads site in Hungary. With over one million monthly active users they truly are the center of the online trade in the country. It was a rewarding job as the user need is very tactile and the right product can make life easier for a great deal of people. To spice things up a bit, we struck an unusual deal with our client: we promised the app would have a rating of over 4.0 or else we would pay back a good chunk of our fee. We love challenges, but we don’t gamble. The reason we could do this is that we had complete control of the concept, design and development process and we knew very well: creating great products is not an art, it’s a craft.
Fast forward 4 months and the app boosts an impressive 4.3 rating in the Play Store. Instead of just attributing this to our skills, we decided to think deeply about the factor that we believe really leads to apps with 4.0+ ratings: our product development process.
There is no magic at all; the secret ingredients include lots of experience, best practices, analytical thinking, common sense and empathy towards the users.
We built our process on the principles of User Centered Design. As the name suggests, we simply keep the users in mind at every step of the product development process. The key is understanding what they think: to map their existing mental models and get to know their habits and expectations. Our process focuses on constant feedback and we try hard not to make unvalidated assumptions about what the users need. We rather include them in every step and iterate based on their reactions. Validation is the real secret ingredient.
First: formulate a clear strategy
The product strategy phase is the groundwork for the product. Digital products are abstract and intangible, so it’s very easy to lose focus without a solid shared understanding of the goals. We have seen too many projects fail because the team simply skipped this stage, thinking they are all on the same page.
When it comes to digital product strategy, the equation has two variables: user needs and business goals. We use various user research techniques to uncover the former; most importantly conducting as many live interviews with users from the target group as possible. But we don’t forget about the latter either: we always start by making sure our clients have a clear vision for the project. Intensive product discovery workshops are excellent tools to solidify these ideas. From the two elements, we formulate a sound UX strategy: we define what the product is and what it is not, and how it creates value for both sides. We set goals and clarify requirements while striving to create harmony between users and the business. This phase must result in a crystal clear understanding for all stakeholders of what exactly we are trying to create and what the success criteria are. A strategy doesn’t really qualify as one if you can’t determine if it was successful.
Second: design for your users, not for yourself
Now that we can build on solid foundations, it is time to turn requirements and goals into the detailed plans of an actual product. At the beginning we focus on structure and logic — much like an architect first defines the type of the bricks before even considering which tiles to put on the walls. We create user journeys, context scenarios and storyboards to help us communicate how we actually envision the experience. We start to plan the layout, information architecture and the interactions on sticky notes and wireframes. We love wireframes: these low-fidelity sketches are fast to create and easy to throw away. This phase is really for experimenting, as too much effort invested into one concept makes you attached, and we want to avoid that. Some ideas emerge victorious, others are dismissed by the client, the user tests, technical feasibility or just our own judgement.
One thing is key here: during the design phase we constantly consult with engineers to ensure the technical and financial feasibility of the plans. After we verified that our plans fulfill the business goals and harmonize well with user expectations and mental models, we move on to create the actual look and feel. UI Design has plenty of artistic elements but its most important purpose is to create interfaces that are highly usable for the target group. So whenever we need to decide between aesthetics and usability we prefer the latter. That being said, in addition to being usable, a product also needs to delight the users. This is probably the least scientific part of our whole process: adding that extra human touch here and there, creating something with unique character and allure. As the product starts to resemble its intended form, we actively include users to test our ideas — we build clickable prototypes from our designs and run usability tests on them as often as possible. Being user-centered often means that we — people who spend our days looking at the latest digital products — design things that we don’t particularly fancy, but they suit the needs of the target group the best possible way.
Third: build for performance
We strongly believe that one of the most important prerequisites of a successful, on-time and on-budget software development project is — simply — planning. This includes various activities such as road-mapping, Functional Specification writing or architectural planning. But the purpose is the same: to have a crystal clear, common understanding across all stakeholders. This takes a lot of analytical thinking, and meticulously going through all the possible outcomes of user interactions, leaving nothing to assumption. It is also important to note that planning doesn’t go against staying agile. You don’t need to cover a year long product plan, but not having a plan at all is not being agile. It is unplanned chaos.
Mobile apps are not simple anymore: they are complex software, usually requiring a myriad of backend services, so the importance of optimal technology and architecture choices have skyrocketed. Again, planning is key to making the right choices.
The first development sprint can only start when we feel that the project is sufficiently prepared. We have our roots in engineering, so it is not hard to imagine that detailing our software development process could fill multiple articles in itself. Robust Continuous Integration, daily peer reviews, various automated testing processes ensure that the plans of our designers materialize in the highest quality. Front-loading our QA process at the code level has also really paid off as delivery times have been cut drastically while quality increased.
Performance, maintainability and security are key aspects that we build for. With MVPs you can sacrifice a bit on each for the sake of quick validation. But the larger products we create — such as mobile banks and self-care apps — are different: they stick around for years and need to keep up with the highest standards. This is why we aim to avoid technical debt and always build for a high level of performance.
Plus one: analyze, because a successful digital product is never perfect
Following this process, we can upload the application to stores with confidence as the continuous user feedbacks assured us that we didn’t build on assumptions. We never delude ourselves into thinking that what we created is perfect: as technology changes swiftly, a digital product is never really finished. While qualitative user research techniques help to uncover mental models, needs and sentiments during the design, after the launch we lean more on various analytics to observe actual user behaviour.
Our apps are wired with a multitude of events — triggers that signal user activities — which we use to gather all the anonymous usage statistics. This is the key to further optimising the user experience. There is no such thing as a perfect experience, there is always something to fine-tune — regarding either the design or the performance.
To sum it up
The real estate browsing app created with the above process currently boasts a 4.3 user rating. We honed the process through the development of over 100 applications during the last 5–6 years, constantly adding new elements and cultivating well-tried ones. Creating apps that users love is the result of a User Centered Design process, not art or magic. Of course it is our team of passionate digital experts who execute it — we believe they are the ones who add a little magic.
