Episode description

• Speculid Talk
• Development Alternatives
  • Ionic
  • React Native
  • Xamarian
  • Cordova
  • NativeScript
• Continuous Integration for iOS Options
  • MacStadium
  • Travis-CI
  • Jenkins 
  • MacinCloud
  • Xcode Server
  • CircleCI
  • HockeyApp

Complete Transcription

[00:00:00] Theresa Jasko (Host): I feel like last time we had our podcast you've maybe done a few speaking engagements. 

[00:00:06] Leo Dion (Host): I spoke at ArborMoon at the Ann Arbor Cocoaheads group about Try! Swift which is the conference, I went to Labor Day week. And then I also talked about Speculid which is a Mac App for developers that I've been working on for building graphics for apps. I just talked about how it works and kind of the guts of the challenges I faced building the app. 

[00:00:31] Theresa Jasko (Host): Nice, So what is IOS development? 

[00:00:34] Leo Dion (Host): IOS, of course, is the operating system for iPads and iPhones. So typically it's the process of coding, designing, testing, and packaging an app and delivering it in whatever way a customer would want.

[00:00:52] Theresa Jasko (Host): Yeah, so if someone's looking into doing that what kind of factors go into getting a quote for that kind of service.

[00:00:59] Leo Dion (Host): So really it depends on the features and kind of the timeline of the app. So faster timeline is going to mean a higher quote then integrating any sort of third party services. So if you're integrating something like Facebook or integrating any sort of special controls or sensors on the iPhone like motion controls then that's going to up your quote. And then the complexity of the data that's being used, especially if it's data that's going to be stored locally or remotely - there's going to be some complexity there and that will take take more time. 

[00:01:40] Because that's essentially what we're talking about is quality and time the more you pay the more time it will take and the more higher quality will also mean a higher quote for those Services because that quality also takes time of course. So offline capabilities - not a lot of apps necessarily need that but a lot of apps want to have the ability to just having online and offline capabilities so syncing and things like that. Any sort of UI complexity and any UX complexity, chat, the amount or number of screens is a good indicator of how complex an app is going to be and how much the price is going to be. 

[00:02:26] And then this is much more an issue on Android but as far as iOS is concerned, It's what operating system versions you support. What devices you support. So is this just an iPad app is it just an iPhone app is a support iOS 12, iOS 11 how far down the chain are you going and that usually factors into the price of the quote for developing an app.

[00:02:53] And also another thing to mention is in many cases we're thinking a green app, but starting an app from scratch that has its challenges but also picking up an app that's already been developed on has its challenges as well. So that's something to that will weigh into the quote of developing an IOS app.

[00:03:17] Theresa Jasko (Host): Yeah, so when you talk about like those factors just now is there like a common app that you could use it as an example of like kind of illustrating some of that stuff? Is there maybe like a weather app or something like when you talk about like UI ux complexity and things like that? I'm having a hard time envisioning what that means in real life.

[00:03:38] Leo Dion (Host): Sure. So the way I think about it is a lot of times customers depending on how much they want to do when it comes to getting requirements for an app have a pretty good idea of what screens they want. And so I usually get into the process of asking them - Okay, what does this app do? What are you trying to do? What is your end goal and then figure out - okay, we'll need a screen for this and a screen for that and then the screen will go to that. Then I'll start thinking about like different edge cases because we always have to think like what happens in this case what happens in that case. What I do is in spreadsheet will write out the different screens that an app will need in order for it to essentially work. 

[00:04:26] For instance, we developed a nurse training app and that uses about four different tabs and probably each of those have different dialogues for adding credits for a nurse. And so we'll have say 12 screens in that app. Just kind of roughly and so that I look at the complexity how much data is being entered is it like one field, 2 fields, 3 Fields? How complex is that data? Is that data dependent on certain variables? Is there a certain range of acceptable values and then that factors into some of the UX that's involved or the user experience because I want to make sure that the user is walked through the app. Easily and knows what they need to do and it's intuitive.

[00:05:17] So I kind of rough guess how many hours that's going to be for each screen. We also talked about for instance with a brand new app, there's some setup time usually involved. And then for each screen, there's going to be testing involved say every week or two weeks so that gets added in as well.

[00:05:41] And then of course at the end, there's the issue of getting into the App Store assuming it's a app store app and there's always time involved there because you'll always find all sorts of issues when you get into App Store. There's also dependencies for their marketing or graphic design folks to make sure that they have the assets that are needed to get into the App Store.

[00:06:02] Theresa Jasko (Host): Hmm. Wow, do you find that when people approach you about getting a quote or something? Do they have a full understanding of the things that you're talking about are usually have to really kind of work with people to even explain that?

[00:06:17] Leo Dion (Host): Usually what I like to do is kind of do a rough tree of how the app is going to work. And then from there I'll go ahead and make estimates for each of those things. Sometimes I might do something like an initial consultation for a fee depending on how complex the app is. And then what I like to do early on in the project is have basically an app that doesn't work but at least has the UI and the workflow that they expect out of the app so that way early on in the process they're there confirming how the app is going to work eventually at some point. 

[00:07:00] Theresa Jasko (Host): What are the things - you know what - let's say someone wants to do a development project and they get let's say three different quotes. What's the reasons you know, if the prices are kind of varying pretty significantly what could be different there? What would you be maybe missing out on if you g...