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TranscendenceTools
App Design Guide Consultancy Why Us? •
We build affordable solutions for entrepreneurs, individuals and businesses
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Our software engineers and creative developers are highly experience in their field
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Tight project startup and delivery schedules
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Innovative and flexible business models
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Development, artwork, design, testing and marketing under one roof
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A client portal to provide access to project and sales data
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Benefit from the cross sell in our target sector
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Facilitation and coaching available
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Dedicated account manager
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Flexible business models
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Transparent approach
At TranscendenceTools, our main intention is to successfully educate all our clients on how iPhone App development can directly benefit them or their business.
Surpass Usual Limits with TranscendenceTools Strategic Thinking: Strategic thinking involves gathering information, formulating ideas and planning action. Gathering Information: involves thinking analytically about what is changing in areas like technology, economics and markets. Formulating Ideas: involves thinking about the future. These skills involve forcasting, prediction, imagination and visualization, as well as critical evaluation. Planning Action: assumes that action to maintain things or to change things for the better is the intended result of our strategic thinking. Planning action involves thinking creatively about the possible action to take.
THE TRANSCENDENCETOOLS LOREM IPSUMS
SUMMER JULY2012 2010
Talk to your customers, understand their needs and concerns Identify New Openings A How will improvements in communication methods change the way you work with your customers, suppliers and employees?
Who are your customers? A key factor for the design of your application is in understanding your potential user group. Use the following questions to help you evaluate your customer base:
B What are the implications of new technology for training?
A Where do you operate, provide services or sell products?
D How large is the market? How many competitors are there?
B What are the characteristics of the people who use your products or services?
E How could your customers obtain the benefits they get from your unique service in another way?
C How many customers do you have? D How many potential customers are there?
F How do your competitors set about getting business?
E Why do your customers do business with you?
G Are your competitors quick to respond to your customers changing needs?
F What features of your products or services do your customers like the most? G Could your products or services be sold in other markets or elsewhere in the world? H Could you help your customers to solve a problem or be more effective? Your Growth Strategy Concentration: Your resources could be focused towards the continued and profitable growth of a ‘single’ product or service in a ‘single’ market. This can be achieved by attracting new customers or by increasing their usage rate, or, where feasible, by attracting customers away from competitors.
Product Development: You could think about what modified products or services you could offer to your existing customers. This is generally less risky than trying to find new customers for existing products or services. Market Development: You could build on your existing strengths, skills and capabilities in order to market your present products or services to new customers. This often requires new or renewed approaches to advertising, promotion and selling. Innovation: This implies the development of products or services that are new, as apposed to modified. Innovative organizations can keep ahead of their competitors by introducing new products or services.
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THE LOREM IPSUMS TRANSCENDENCETOOLS
SUMMER 2012 JULY 2010
Decide What to Build What solution will you be providing to your end user? Who are you building your app for? Who is your target audience? Imagine that you are your user when you start to think about the design of your application. From this perspective you are designing a solution to a problem that you have. Rather than building your app for ‘everyone’, build it for yourself. Alternatively you could design your application for a user that you know has a need.
What solution are you providing?
Explore the iTunes App Store Your App users may have a limited patience and attention span depending on the circumstances that lead to the download. Your users may not have the time available to learn how to use your app. It is worth spending some time exploring the App Store and understanding what people expect from applications. Look at some of the popular apps on the app store and take these take these ideas into consideration when you design your application. Consider the Competition Yes, there may already be an app out there that does something similar. What is it missing? If there is something that you would like that application to do, the chances are that there are other people like you who are also missing something. Go for it! All kinds of new users are coming to the app store every day. Learn from the design conventions of other companies.
Think Solution Explore possible solutions for your application. What will your user need on the go? The goal should really be to provide information to your users with as fewer features as possible. People often make the mistake of putting the focus on features and putting as many as possible in their app. You can strike a balance on your features through feedback loops. Form a User Group Form a user group to help you to determine which of your designs is the best. Even asking friends and family will be vey useful in helping you to narrow things down. Once you have shared your ideas, gained feedback and narrowed it down, you will have a good idea what your app will look like. You can often find that you get better quality ideas when you focus on the quantity of designs that you come up with rather than putting the focus on the quality of one. The more time that you spend on thinking about what you want your application to achieve, the more cost effective your application development process will be. 3
THE LOREM IPSUMS TRANSCENDENCETOOLS
SUMMER JULY2012 2010
Get it down on paper
Consider Constraints Think about the size of the screen. Are you planning to publish for the iPhone or iPad? Be aware that iPhone users are accustomed to the App design features. It has been reported that users will use apps in very short bursts, often five minutes at a time. People don’t necessarily want to type excessive amounts of text on the iPhone whilst on the move so many apps are geared towards consumption rather than production. The iPad offers a much larger screen and additional features. There is an opportunity to taylor your application for the device and therefore providing an up-sell opportunity.
Sketch To help you with selecting minimal features for your application, get your ideas down on paper. Think about your audience, what does your user need? Keep narrowing down your user group. It’s much better to build a great app for a small number of users, than an app that’s half ok for a lot of people. If you have a small user group that likes your app a lot, you can always expand from there once you get feedback.
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Your Design Process Putting your sketches and designs in front of your users will give you some great feedback to work with. In fact a lot of your design process should be based around your feedback loops. Have a go at creating 3 to 10 completely different designs for your application. I suspect that creating your first 3 will be relatively easy. Creating 7 different designs may be more of a challenge. If you can design 10 you will have pretty much captured all of the possible features that could be included.
THE TRANSCENDENCETOOLS LOREM IPSUMS
SUMMER JULY 2010 2012
Trust Your Passion
Build a Paper Prototype Use one piece of paper for each screen. The idea is that this is a replica of your application for demonstration purposes. The value here is that you can have your user group use the application before it has been published. You can do this with a relatively small time investment and gain a much richer feedback than simply just showing your sketches. It will quickly emerge that people will like some functionality and not others. The final thing to do at the prototyping phase is get feedback on possible interactions such as shaking or rotating the device.
Your first attempt may be far from perfect. Its much easier to fail to impress in the early stages than later on when your application is already in the App Store.
Instructions Think about how you will let your customers know how to use your application. Do you intend to provide instructions, use the discovery method or perhaps integrate both? You may find that you need to provide prompts and instruction where the use is not clear to the user. Some apps rely on discovery and delight users when they find a new function. Paper prototyping and feedback from your user group will most certainly help you to understand what is required.
Success Built to Last by Porras Emery Thompson
Trust Your Passion There is one thing that billionaires, the best CEO’s, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi and all enduringly successful people do consistently. The one-shared value that they all have in common is integrity to what matters to them. They do not waste their time if it doesn’t matter. Life takes “passion, determination, and skill”, Rice Cautions. You can’t skip any of those three and expect to enjoy success built to last.
Fail Early Be flexible. Remember that nothing is precious, its okay to bin your design and start again. The more that you are comfortable with this idea the faster your application will be published.
The fear of criticism This fear is almost as universal as the fear of poverty, and its effects are just as fatal to personal achievement, mainly because this fear destroys initiative, and discourages the use of imagination. Some of the symptoms of fear include: Lack of initiative: Failure to embrace opportunities for self-advancement, fear to express opinions, lack of confidence in one’s own ideas. Lack of ambition: Mental laziness, lack of self-assertion, slowness in reaching decisions Think & Grow Reach by Napoleon Hill
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TRANSCENDENCETOOLS THE LOREM IPSUMS
Co-branding and Endorsing If two or more brands have similar or complementary values then the partnership may have a synergistic effect. The argument for linkage again comes back to what each brand adds to each other. Employees and customers also read these connections. If they feel that the co-branding bolsters their sense of esteem they are more likely to be positive than if it in some sense their sense of worth or challenges their identity. To use the brand in this way there needs to be clarity as to the values and there also needs to be clear service-level agreements to which everyone adheres. A Does the core idea of the brand support the business concept? B Would the brand positively influence perception and interest in the intended products/service?
SUMMER JULY2012 2010
A Compelling User Experience The iPhone allows an immediacy and intimacy as it blends mobility and the power of the desktop. A compelling user experience enables users to do what they need to do with a minimum of fuss and bother. Meet the expectations of the user based on the context in which they will use your application. The iPhones unique software and hardware allow you to create an application that enables the user to do something that may not be practical with a laptop computer. The iPhone has the capability to be an extension of the user, seamlessly integrated into his or her everyday life, and able to accomplish a singly focused task, or step in a series of tasks, in real time, based on where he or she is.
C Is the brand/brands values supported by the product/service? D Does the brand strategy deliver new customer benefits? E Does the proposed product title suggest that the product/service attributes are ‘on-brand’ with the values?
Predicting the Future A Will your competitors stay as they are over the next 5 to 10 years? B Is your company prepared for responding to increased levels of customer service? C Will your technology allow you to compete in the next 5 to 10 years? D What do you intend to sell or provide in the future? E Why would people use your products or service rather than others? F How do you reach your customers? G How do you sell to your customers? H How do you support your sales or services?
Think about the possibilities that open up to you when your application can easily do the following: A Access the internet B Know the location of the user C Track orientation and motion D Track the action of the user’s fingers on the screen E Play audio and video F Access the users contacts G Access the users pictures and camera A compelling user experience has to result from the interaction of several factors: A Interesting, useful, plentiful content. B Powerful, fast, versatile functionality. C An intuitive, well-designed user interface. 6
TRANSCENDENCETOOLS THE LOREM IPSUMS
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Compelling Content
How to Productise
Great iPhone and iPad applications have one thing in common - focus. They address a welldefined task with a time span that is appropriate for that task. Present your user with information in short duration, or broken up into a series of short and engaging steps.
Create a unique identity: Give your service a unique name that the customer can remember and talk about.
One aspect of a compelling user experience is that all the pieces of an application work together to tell a story. If the tasks in your application are completely unconnected, perhaps they should be separate applications.
Support your main brand: Make the service compatible with your company brand, extend a product brand with a service.
Make it easy to understand: Create a description, white paper, website or brochure of the service.
Simplicity and ease of use are fundamental principles for all types of software, but in iPhone applications they are critical. Why? – Multitasking. iPhone users are probably doing other things simultaneously while they use your application. Base your application design on how your user interacts and thinks about the world.
Feasibility Analysis and Tool Strategy
Make it easy to sell: Make the service easy to sell and buy by defining a service blueprint, a price list, and respective resources.
A specific tool is feasible when you get measurable benefits from a repeatable process in your business. Consider the following questions:
Make it repeatable: Create a service manual, standardise procedures and tools.
A Are clients experiencing similar problems or challenges that could be met with a similar approach?
Develop with customers: Define how you constantly learn from the customers and develop the service with the customers.
B Is there a way to define the problem and solution in a structured way?
Focus on profitability: Outsource suitable parts of the service, automate, offer self-service extensions.
C Does enough knowledge exist about the subject matter in order to turn it into a systematic method?
Measure: Set measurable goals, measure and manage. Educate: Educate employees and partners, create training material, collect and distribute knowledge.
D Is there a large enough, possibily global market for the tool?
Keep it flexible: create a service platform with modules that can be combined to meet individual needs.
The App strategy is the answer to the basic question: Who is the customer? What is the problem that we intend to solve? How are we going to do it.
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Your Potential, Our Passion Market niches are now within reach economically. TranscendenceTools recognise that demand is diverse. Reaching niche markets has never been easier. TranscendenceTools help companies of all sizes enter into new markets in new ways, using information technology. We aim to accelerate growth through innovation. Are collaborative working style aims to develop automated revenue streams. We are flexible and transparent in approach to ensure that we build thriving partnerships.
Bringing Ideas to Life
TranscendenceTools Limited 17 Latham Lane Gomersal Cleckheaton West Yorkshire BD19 4RX England
Michelle Andre +44 (0) 1274 875257 michelle@transcendencetools.com www.TranscendenceTools.com