Creating an Original Application

If you have this book, you may already have a successful app for iOS, and the only reason that you bought the book was to make certain that you can market this iOS app as an Android application. If this is the case, then you have probably learned the hard way that very few (if any) applications are an overnight smash. Here is another fact that you shouldn’t have to learn the hard way: even the best marketing cannot take the worst application to anyone’s top-ten list.

If you have dabbled in the iOS app arena before, then you should still read this book. There are certain elements of marketing to the iOS crowd that apply to the Android crowd, but other elements that only apply to Android. Whatever your experience is with writing applications, you will want to go through this simple list of questions for Android applications.

What Do You Want Your App to Do?

This is a pretty obvious question, and I’m going to assume that you bought this book because you already have a great idea for an application, and you just want to figure out how you can sell it on the Android Market. In fact, you will discover that the more applications you put out, the more ideas for them you will have.

However, you may be the type of person who wants to get into a lucrative business, but needs some help on the creative side. If you are looking for ideas, the easiest place to start is to think about what you want to see on an Android device. Here are some possible questions of inspiration:

• What hobbies do you have that could be made more fun with an Android application?
• What games do you play that haven’t been made into applications already?
• What jobs that you do could be made simpler with an application?

You also might want to ask friends, family, and people in your social networks these questions. Another way of finding ideas is looking at newspapers and magazines.

After all, we should not have to wait for a big company like Microsoft or Google to create software to solve our problems for us. Android gives us the tools to build the solution ourselves. We are now living in an era where technology is getting easier to use, which is turning the average consumer into a competent developer. This is what makes the mobile application marketplace different from the traditional software industry; the small programmer can truly make and market a program that can do something better than a product from the billion-dollar software industry. Best of all, the programmer has the right to take his or her deserved piece of the pie, instead of seeing the great majority of the profits go to giant corporations. While I am on the subject of profits, let me just say this and get it out of the way: Google makes 30 percent of everything that is sold on the Android Market. So for every $0.99 application, Google is getting about $0.30 of that. All right, I’m glad we got that out of the way.

Anyway, the whole mobile application market has changed the way that business is done, and much of it is based on doing complex things in a simple way. Sometimes it is not about creating some grand and original product, but creating a terrific shortcut. The easier you make things for your users, the more they will appreciate you for it.

For example, there is an Android app known as Viewdle SocialCamera (see Figure 2-3) that allows the user to tag friends on their mobile photos and share them directly via Facebook, Flickr, MMS, and e-mail. Without it, users would have to take a picture, upload it to Facebook, and then tag it from their computer. Viewdle SocialCamera allows users to skip a step in the photo-tagging process, and becomes very useful for those who like to tag pictures on their social network.

Figure 2-3. Viewdle SocialCamera provides a way to tag friends from mobile Android phones. It is a good example of how a good Android application doesn’t have to be too complex, just a simple time-saver.

In other words, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel when coming up with the next great mobile application. Sometimes it is just a matter of creating the vehicle that can put that wheel in better motion. If your Android application can do something in one tap rather than two, then it has a reason for being. Also, have you ever noticed that a lot of iOS applications are not on Android yet? Imagine if you were the one who made it possible!

Now all you have to do is figure out how to use the tools that Android provides to put your idea in motion. Yes, that is the hard part, and if you want to contract someone else to do it on a site such as www.odesk.com/, I don’t blame you.

Is the Application Simple to Use?

I have downloaded several scheduling applications for Android that I ended up erasing because they were too complicated to use. Considering that most people often use their Android devices with just one hand, you should figure out how to make your application do as much as possible with just a few finger swipes and very few touchscreen finger touches. I find that speech-to-text is valuable for navigation and texting, so you should probably make certain that feature is available on your application to make it even easier to use.

What makes the aforementioned Color Flashlight application so successful is that it is so simple to use. If it took several swipes to access the flashlight, then I wouldn’t use it. As it is, the flashlight is its default setting, with a bright light coming on the moment the icon is activated. The other features are easy to find by clicking the menu button.

You should consider the framework of your program, and make certain that the dumbest user should be able to manipulate the most complex of its features.

What Problem Does Your Android Application Solve?

I’m not saying that your Android application has to make the world a better place, but it had better solve some sort of problem, even if it is just boredom.

You might have seen a recent commercial for Geico insurance where the announcer comes out to a blank stage and says, “Could switching to Geico really save you 15 percent or more on car insurance? Do people use smartphones to do dumb things?”

The ad cuts to three men at an office using their smartphones to make dumb sound effects, pop a virtual bottle of champagne, and use an Android application known as BroStache. As it turns out, BroStache is made by Geico (see Figure 2-4). Talk about marketing one’s apps!

The commercial ends with the three geeky guys using their phones as improvised musical instruments. One of them is a guitar, and the other is a trumpet, which sounds like the ever-so-popular fart applications that are on the Market in abundance.

Figure 2-4. Geico’s BroStache application for Android. When you hold up your smartphone to your mouth, the virtual mouth moves—proof that people use their smartphones for dumb things.

Yes, there are a lot of applications that do dumb things, and a lot of them actually sell. I’m sure Geico created the app to market its service, as well as have fun. A lot of applications are based on the premise of “quick-fix” entertainment. Not that there is anything wrong with that, because a vast majority of moneymaking applications are based on the temporary relief of boredom. I honestly don’t think that Angry Birds makes the world a better place, but sometimes, in the midst of a boring situation, it certainly makes my world a better place!

As a developer, you need to have a ready answer for when someone asks you, “Why did you make this application?” If the answer is not “for fun,” then state the problem that your application solves.

Some of the more common types of applications are those that are informational. A lot of companies have figured out that they can take the information that is available on their web site and put it in app form. While a user can simply take out their Android device and examine the web site, it can be difficult to navigate a web site on a device with a small screen. The application allows the company to put all the pertinent information in a smaller package, and give the user exactly what he or she is looking for.

The first application that I designed was for a church. I had been noticing that a lot of big churches were getting applications of their own, and I decided to help out a local church to get one of its own.

These days, there is an app for everything, and most apps are out to solve some sort of problem. I would not be surprised if we were heading to an age where everything had an application, just like everything has a web site. I would also not be surprised if the future revealed a way for end users to turn themselves into applications, just like Facebook and MySpace allow inexperienced computer users to create their own web sites. But for now, companies look to developers to solve the problem of applications.