Software Development Dubai
App stores and in-app advertising
are expected to produce $693 billion in income for mobile apps in 2021.
Furthermore, by 2022, workplace mobility is expected to be valued $510.39
billion.
While many businesses are
attempting to capitalise on this trend, many are unaware of how to properly
develop an app. These growth estimates can help your firm succeed in the
competitive marketplace, but only if they're backed up by a carefully
maintained mobileapp development company in UAE
Six critical steps make up an
excellent app development process flow. We'll take a deeper look at each of
them in this piece.
Following this development
approach, regardless of the size or scope of your project, will ensure that
your enterprise mobile app development venture is a success.
1. Strategy
The first part of the mobile app
development process defines your strategy for converting your idea into a
successful app. You might want to make this a bigger part of your entire
corporate mobility strategy. Because the goals of each app differ, the mobility
strategy has an app-specific impact that must be addressed during the
development process.
During this stage, you'll:
·
Determine who is using the app.
·
Examine the competition.
·
Establish the app's objectives and aims.
·
Choose a mobile platform for your application.
Mobile apps typically cost between
$150,000 and $200,0 00 and take four to six months to produce. Your strategy
aids in concentrating your vision on a clear image of your app concept. With this
in mind, you're ready to move on to the next stage of the mobile app
development process.
2. Analysis and Planning
At this point, your app concept
begins to take shape and develop into a working product. Defining use cases and
recording precise functional requirements are the first steps in the analysis
and planning process.
Prepare a product plan when you've
defined your app's requirements. This includes prioritising and arranging
mobile app needs into delivery milestones. If you're short on time, resources,
or money, identify your minimum viable product (MVP) and prioritise it for the
initial launch.
Identifying the talents in your IT support company in UAE required for your app development initiative is a
part of the planning step. The mobile platforms iOS and Android, for example,
have separate development technology stacks. If you want to create a mobile app
that works on both iOS and Android, your mobile development team should
comprise both iOS and Android developers.
Have you decided on a name for
your app? Like domain names, mobile app names must be unique inside each app
store. Check each app store to make sure your app's name isn't already taken!
3. UI/UX Design
The goal of an app's design is to
provide a refined user experience that is seamless and effortless.
A mobile app's success is defined
by how successfully users accept and profit from all of the app's capabilities.
The purpose of UI/UX design for mobile apps is to provide exceptional user
experiences that make your software dynamic, intuitive, and user-friendly.
While beautiful UI designs will aid in early adoption, your app must also
provide intuitive user experiences in order for users to remain engaged.
Information Architecture &
Workflows
The first phase in the mobile app
design process is to figure out what data your app will show users, what data
it will collect, how users will interact with the end product, and how users
will navigate the app.
Enterprise mobile solutions
include users with varied responsibilities and privileges, and it's critical to
include these rules in the information architecture of your app. Workflow
diagrams provided by your IT support for a business companies aid in the
identification of every possible interaction a user has with the app, as well
as the navigation structure of the app.
Wireframes
Sketches on paper are a common
starting point for mobile app designers. Wireframes are a type of digital
sketch. Wireframes, also known as low-fidelity mock-ups, are conceptual layouts
that give visual structure to your app's functional requirements.
Wireframes are more concerned with
aesthetics and user experience than with colour schemes and styles. Wireframes
are a simple and affordable way to build app layouts and iterate through them
during the design review process. You should consider device specific design
when designing wireframes. So whether your software is used on an iPhone, iPad,
or Android phone or tablet, the user experience is easy and device specific.
Style Manual
Style guides are "dynamic
papers" that document an app's design standards, from your company's
branding guidelines to navigation symbols.
The following are some examples of
style guides:
·
What font family will the text in your app be?
·
What colour scheme will you use?
·
How will the app design represent your company's
brand?
The design strategy of an app is
aided by style guides. The efficiency of your mobile app developers is improved
by establishing a style guide early in the development process. At the same
time, sticking to a style guide will help your app maintain a consistent look
and feel. App design guidelines from Apple for iOS apps and Google for Android
apps should be considered as part of your app design.
Mockups
High-fidelity designs, often known
as mockups, are final drawings of your app's visual design. Your style guide is
applied to the app wireframes to build mockups. Expect more changes to your
app's information architecture, workflow, and aesthetics as the design
progresses. The most popular tool for making high-fidelity mockups is Adobe
Photoshop.
Prototype
Mockups use static designs to show
the functionality of your mobile app; with tools like Invision and Figma, these
can be turned into click-through prototypes. Prototypes are extremely
beneficial for modelling the user experience and app operations that will be present
in the final product. While prototype creation might be time-consuming, it is
well worth the effort because it allows you to test the design and
functionality of your app at an early stage. Prototypes are frequently used to
identify changes to the app's proposed functionality.
When an app's functional
requirements aren't thoroughly thought out, some organisations choose to do
prototypes during the wireframing stage. Alternatively, a focus group may be
required to examine the app's planned functionality.
4. App Development
The planning step of the mobile
app development process is still quite important. Before you begin any
development/programming work, you must:
·
Establish the technical architecture
·
Choose a technology stack and,
·
The development milestones must be defined.
Back-end/server technology,
API(s), and the mobile app front-end are the three main components of a typical
mobile app project.
Server/Back-End Technology
This section contains the database
and server-side objects required for your mobile app's supporting
functionalities. If you're using an existing back-end platform, you may need to
make some changes to accommodate the desired mobile capabilities.
API
An Application Programming
Interface (API) is a way for an app to communicate with a back-end server or
database.
Mobile App Front-End
The end-user will use the
front-end, which is a native mobile app. Mobile apps are typically interactive
user experiences that leverage an API and a back-end for data management. When
an app has to allow users to work without access to the internet, it may employ
local data storage.
For the backend, you can use
practically any web programming language and databases. You must choose a
technology stack for native mobile apps that is required by each mobile OS
platform. Objective-C or Swift are two programming languages that can be used
to create iOS apps. Java or Kotlin are the most common programming languages
used to create Android apps.
For developing mobile apps, there
are a variety of programming languages and technology stacks to choose from;
the key is to select the technology stack that is most suited for your app.
With new versions of mobile
platforms, mobile technology advances at a much faster rate. Furthermore, every
few months, new mobile gadgets are released. Agility is critical for developing
mobile apps within timeframes and budgets, especially since platforms and
devices change frequently. Use an agile development method if speed-to-market
is a top objective. This method allows for frequent software releases with
fully functional applications. Setting development milestones as part of an
agile development plan allows you to iterate on your mobile app.
Each development milestone is sent
over to the app testing team for review and approval.
5. Testing
Quality assurance (QA) testing is
an important part of the mobile app development process since it ensures that
the app is stable, functional, and secure. You must first build test cases that
cover all elements of app testing in order to assure thorough QA testing of
your app.
Test cases drive mobile app
testing in the same way that use cases do for mobile app development. Test
cases are used to run test processes, track fixes for retesting, and document
testing outcomes for software quality evaluation. Involving your QA team in the
Analysis and Design stages is a best practise technique. Knowing your app's
functional requirements and objectives will aid in the creation of accurate
test cases.
To deliver a great mobility
solution, your app should go through the following testing procedures.
User Experience Testing
The final implementation must
match the user experience defined by the app design team, which is a vital
phase in mobile app testing. Your app's visuals, workflow, and interactivity
are what will offer your end consumers their initial impression of it. Make
that your app's typefaces, style treatments, colour palette, and padding
between data, icon design, and navigation are all consistent. Making sure your
software adheres to the original design principles will have a significant
impact on user adoption!
Functional Testing
The functioning of your mobile app
must be accurate in order for it to be successful. It's tough to forecast the
behaviour and usage scenarios of every end user.
Your app's functionality should be
evaluated by as many users as feasible to cover as many possible testing
scenarios as possible. When two separate users try the same functionality but
get different results, you could be startled to find issues. Both users can
complete out the identical form, but they may submit different data, which
could lead to a fault being discovered.
The goal of functional testing is
to guarantee that your app's features and functioning are working properly for
users. It's further divided into system testing (how well the programme works
as a whole) and unit testing (individual functions of the app operating
correctly).
If you're developing a mobile app
for both iOS and Android, your functional testing should include a feature
comparison between the two versions of your app.
Performance Testing
For evaluating the performance of
your app, you can utilise a variety of quantitative parameters.
·
How successfully does your app respond to requests
from users?
·
How quickly do the app's displays load?
·
Is your software generating memory leaks or
draining the phone's battery?
·
Is your software making good use of network
bandwidth?
·
Is your app using up more space than it should?
Even if your app satisfies
fundamental performance standards, simulate the maximum number of concurrent
users to test the app, API, and backend for load. Even when usage surges, your
app should be able to handle the load and perform well.
Security Testing
For enterprise mobile apps,
security is paramount. A hack can be caused by any potential vulnerability.
Many businesses pay independent firms to conduct extensive security testing on
their software. To secure your software, your QA and development teams can take
a few basic steps.
If your app requires users to log
in, both the device and the backend should keep track of these sessions. When a
user's session has been idle for an extended period of time, the system should
terminate it (typically ten mins or less on a mobile app). If your app saves
user credentials on the device to make it easier for them to re-login, you'll
need to be sure you're utilising a reliable provider. For example, the Keychain
functionality in the iOS app development platform can be used to save a user's
account data for a single app.
Data entry forms in your mobile
app should be thoroughly checked to guarantee that no sensitive information is
lost.
Device and Platform Testing
Every 12 months, new mobile
devices with new hardware, firmware, and design hit the market. Every few
months, mobile operating systems are updated. Samsung, LG, HTC, and Motorola
are among the mobile device makers that use the Android platform, but they
tweak it for their devices (since Android is open source). The gadgets are
available in a variety of sizes and shapes.
Compare this to Apple, which has a
far more tightly controlled environment because they own both the hardware and
the operating system. However, there are a variety of iPhone and iPad (Apple
iOS) devices available.
This is where testing in the
mobile app development process differs from testing in the web app development
process. You can get away with testing your web app in a Windows environment
using only the Chrome browser. However, to ensure that your mobile app runs
smoothly for all users, it must be tested on multiple mobile devices or device
simulators.
Companies choose to design
corporate mobile apps for a single mobile platform due to the complexity of
testing on all mobile devices, continuous support costs, and difficulties of
mobile device management (and often provide mobile devices to their users). Most
firms, in our experience, design their corporate mobile app first for Apple's
iOS platform, and then construct an app for the Android platform only when
necessary.
Testing is critical to an app's
long-term performance, and it takes up a significant portion of our overall
mobile app development process. A well-thought-out mobile testing plan is
essential for producing a high-quality mobile app. There are several options
for sharing your app development builds to testers throughout the testing
phase. For iOS apps, the most frequent method is to use Testflight, while for
Android apps, email or Over The Air (OTA) instals are the most typical methods.
6. Deployment & Support
To release a native mobile app,
you must first submit it to the app shops, which are the Apple App Store for
iOS and Google Play for Android. Before you can launch your mobile app, you'll
need an Apple App Store and Google Play Store developer account.
The metadata for an app's
publication in the app store must include the following:
·
Your app’s title
·
Description
·
Category
·
Keywords
·
Launch icon
·
App store screenshots
iOS apps go through a review
process once they've been submitted to the Apple App Store, which can take
anywhere from a few days to several weeks, depending on the quality of the app
and how closely it meets Apple's iOS development requirements. If your software
requires users to log in, you must offer a test user account to Apple as part
of the release process.
Android apps do not go through a
review procedure and are available in the app store within a few hours after
submission.
Monitor your app's usage with
mobile analytics systems and measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to
determine its success once it's released in the app stores. Check crash reports
or other user-reported concerns on a regular basis.
Encourage users to submit feedback
and suggestions for your app to your firm. End-user support and frequent app
updating with enhancements will be critical to keeping users engaged. Unlike
web apps, where patch releases can be made immediately available to app users,
mobile app updates must go through the same submission and review process as
the initial submission. Furthermore, with native mobile apps, you must keep up
with technological advances and regularly upgrade your app for new mobile
devices and OS platforms.