My story on creating an app for the first time and the tool that really saved me
https://neiighbor.medium.com/fake-it-till-you-make-it-3b4f3335a848
We’ve all heard the phrase “oh, how the tables have turned!”
Normally, this describes a situation in which somebody else flips the script on us unexpectedly. Earlier this year, I realized that the tables had indeed been turned on me — but I did it to myself! I flipped my own script, so to speak.
It was unintentional, but I learned something valuable along the way and wanted to share my experience here.
A bit of background: I make a living designing and building things for other people. Over the past decade, I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours as a design and fabrication engineer. In this capacity, I’ve provided a wide range of technical services on a for-hire basis. I listen to people’s needs and requirements, and I devise solutions. Product designs, prototypes, display installations, on-screen props for film and television — anything, really.
I turn ideas into physical reality. And those ideas usually come from customers as partial descriptions, where my job is to work with them to fill in the blanks and develop the project to where there’s a full scope of work with a clear set of technical objectives.
Everybody thinks they have a good project description, but that’s typically never the case. There’s usually a boatload of missing information.
So, why does any of this matter? Why does it matter that I spend all this time working with customers to develop their partially formed concepts into fully-fledged and actionable projects?
Here’s why: for the very first time, I became the customer. I was now the one who needed something created.
I wanted to build something for myself: an iOS app. I needed to go out and hire somebody to do this for me — I was now assuming the position of somebody with ideas, who needed a professional to bring them to fruition.
So, what did I do? Well, without realizing it, I did the exact same thing that all of my customers do to me: I cobbled together some rough and underdeveloped ideas, and went out into the world in search of an iOS developer.
Easy, right? Obviously, I know what I need the app to do! Why is it so hard for somebody else to understand? It’s simple!
Shame on me. I really should have known better.
First, a little bit about the app. The driving philosophy behind the app is one simple message: “Look after one another.”
What does that mean, to look after one another? Simply put, it’s about health, happiness, and general welfare of the people you care about.
After a few recent health scares, both with members of my own family and with friends who live alone, I saw an opportunity to do some good by developing an app that helps families better check in on and manage their loved ones’ welfare.
So, I had the idea and decided that it was too good to pass up. However, with my modest team of non-coders, I had to look outside my own walls for a true iOS developer. So, I started to reach out with my trusty one-pager and slide deck.
Why did I think this was going to work?
How could I expect a developer to have a clear idea what it was I wanted to create from a 30-minute zoom call and a couple of slides? I had become what I feared most. I was now the person who was missing a boatload of information.
It was no surprise that the iOS development quotes were coming back at hundreds of thousands of dollars. These developers weren’t sure of the full scope of work, so they really padded their estimates. The lack of clarity was my fault.
At this point I didn’t want to waste any more developers’ time, if I kept this up they wouldn’t take my next call.
What I needed was a new approach.
I decided to fake it: I built an app before we actually had it coded. A duct-tape prototype.
After more than 30 sketches of each main screen panel of the app drawn out on paper, it was time to transfer it to the computer. My project manager Anastasiia suggested we use Figma, and she also wanted to take on the responsibility of developing the UI (something she nor anybody on our team had ever done before).
If you don’t know about Figma, listen up: Figma is an online prototyping tool and graphic editor that allows teams to create frames or “screens” of their app / website / digital product. One of the best parts of Figma is that it allowed me, my project manager, and my graphic designer to collaborate on the same living project simultaneously.
Figma gave us one central app prototyping hub, where we could do all of the work in framing out our iOS app — all of the UI/UX was designed and built in Figma, before anybody wrote a single line of code.
Even though the learning curve to Figma isn’t too high, the one tool that really accelerated our development was the iOS Design Kit. This kit provides users with templates for mobile app designs and a massive collection of core components made with intention of following the Human Interface Guideline.
You can find IOS Design Kit here:
https://iosdesignkit.io/ios-11-gui/
After a few weeks, we had created the first version of our app in Figma, along with a fully-featured walkthrough layer.
The walkthrough layer allowed us to demonstrate how the entire app functioned and to explain each feature that needed to be developed.
I then resumed my search for an iOS developer. My quotes started coming back at 1/8th the cost of my original quotes.
This was 6 months ago. By the end of this year, we will be launching neiighbor: a new way for people to look after one another.
If you want to get neiighbor when we launch our beta program in a few weeks visit us at www.neiighbor.com/beta to register.
