2. WHAT I DO: DURING THE DAY
MS Office UX developer
Develops Office shared controls
Especially on mobile platform (tablet/phone)
3. WHAT I DO: IN THE EVENING
Guitar app (2009)
App Review
사랑의 기도
Reference (2013)Photo management (2012)
Browser (2014) Hand bell app (2014)
4. HOW TO MAKE MILLION DOLLAR APPS
I’ll share my story behind app development.
There are many different approaches – different
objective, team size, budget, time constraint, …
Yet there are some commonalties you would catch from
my experience.
Stop me for any questions!
7. IDEA – WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BUILD?
Technology is meant to benefit us, but sometimes tear us apart…
Can it help us become closer together?
8. IDEA – HAND BELL CHOIR
A choir consist of people with mental disability
How to teach them to play in harmony?
Used color coded panel to signal the time to ring
C BD E
9. CAN WE MAKE IT BETTER WITH TECHNOLOGY?
Synthesia
10. WAIT, IS THIS ALREADY THERE?
There are so many apps, and increasing very fast.
You have a good idea? Chances are that there’s already an app for that.
There are several hand bell
apps but not like what I think…
11. BEFORE YOU START
Device
MacBook / Mac Mini
iPhone 4 / 5 / 6
Developer account
$99/year (Apple), $25/year (Google)
LLC (Limited Liability Company)
Optional
Need registration here and there / tax liability / …
12. FEASIBILITY STUDY
Business side
This is important which I didn’t really pay attention
Technical side
Cross-platform
Good sound font
Animation
Song management
…
13. TECHNICAL: CROSS-PLATFORM SUPPORT
Do apps need to be multi-platform?
Earn more money?
Social feature requires multi-platform
Resource issues
Never done Android development before
Tight budget
Tight time frame
Cross-platform framework – One code to multiple deployment
Xamarin: http://xamarin.com/
Cocos2d-x: http://www.cocos2d-x.org/
Titanium: http://www.appcelerator.com/titanium/
Corona SDK: http://coronalabs.com/products/corona-sdk/
14. CORONA SDK
Chose this because
Inexpensive (or free)
Graphics support (vs. web based x-plat framework)
Accelerometer support
OpenAL (sound library) support
iOS / Android / Windows support
Enough user base and support
15. OVERSIMPLIFIED VIEW
Editor (e.g., Sublime)
Language: Lua script
iOS executable
Android executable
This can be also published to Windows Store and Amazon App Store
(I haven’t done it yet)
16. TECHNICAL: HOW TO PLAY GREAT SOUND?
Requirement
Sound should be clear and beautiful
File size matters
Things to consider
Sound font: Like a building block to synthesize
different sounds with minimal size information
Pitch modification
Short sound / long sound
Volume
…
17. TECHNICAL: ANIMATION
Animation is critical in user experience
HTML5 is great but still more ways to catch the fluidness of native apps
Cross-platform framework is additional layer and can’t use the hardware rendering
that the native apps support
Not good, but ok enough for this app
18. DESIGN: DO IT YOURSELF
My hand
App icon that I drew
Free, but lots of time for me
Icons borrowed from Apple
Post-processing took at least 6-7 hours
19. ICON DESIGN: FIRST OUTSOURCING
A few iterations on design and colors (work description)
15 Different sizes for iPhone/iPad
Outsourced via UpWork.com (formerly oDesk)
Designer from Malaysia
$100
20. ICON DESIGN: SECOND TIMES
A few iterations on design and colors
26 Different sizes for iPhone/iPad/Android
Outsourced via UpWork.com (formerly oDesk)
Designer from Serbia
$40
21. DESIGN: BELL 3D MODEL
3D model
A few iterations on design and colors
Outsourced via UpWork.com
(formerly oDesk)
Designer from India
How much?
$16.67/hour
~9 hours -> ~$150
22. DESIGN: EVERYTHING ELSE
Table border, background, selection, …
Bottom menu – bar, button different state, …
Background (chosen from 3 options)
Designer from Serbia
$240
23. OUTSOURCING: TRANSLATION
App description into 9 languages
Chinese
Japanese
Portuguese
Spanish
German
French
Arabic
Russian
Korean
About 6 lines of text
~$4 per language -> ~$30
Professional service would charge at least +$200
24. TIME LINE
Started Aug 2015
Published right before Christmas
Took 5 man/month
Learning new SDK, language, libraries, development, design, etc
I have quite challenging day job
I have two demanding (but lovely) boys, age 7 and 3
If it were full-time work, probably ~1.5 month (without waiting time for contractors)
25. BALANCE SHEET
Spending
Developer / business license : ~$250 / year
Outsourcing : ~$450
Device purchase: iPhone 6 / MacBook
My precious evenings
Earning
Less than the half I paid for contractors (yet!)
Lots of learning
26. CLOSURE: MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT
With proper tools, not much more difficult than other SW development
Making money isn’t easy (is it else where?)
If you really want something, you can outsource the whole process
My experience is one data point. There are lots of other experiences our there.
