Turning 21 iPhone Application

The process of making an iPhone app is a long and involved practice, from conception to actualization. It took the efforts off all the team members using their skills and knowledge in order to get things done. During the process we found many obstacles and problems we had to overcome, but with teamwork and dedication we were able to modify our original plans and still come out with a fun and enjoyable application for people to use.

The first part of the production process was brain storming. We all had ideas on what would make a good product that we could then market to a larger audience. Many of us had our own demographic, college students, in mind. My original idea was to create an application that allowed for people to stream the on campus online radio station KSUN. The only problem with this idea was that it was too simple and would not be very involved in order to make. Later I came to find out KSUN was already working on something quite similar.

That leads into the next problem that other people and their ideas faced, which was finding out that their idea had already been made into an application. With the world full of app developers, two people are bound to come up with something of the same idea. We discovered that when we wanted to make a North Star Tahoe Skiing application and realized that it was already out on the market. We had some good ideas to augment the application like adding a friend locator feature but, once again it did not make sense to pursue this idea.

We decided on doing an application about all the things people should do once they turn 21. This sort of idea is right up our ally because most of us have either turned 21 recently or will soon. We decided to break up what the each person would be doing into several different sections called “Choose Your Scene.” From there the user would be given a number of tasks to complete by the end of the night. We wanted to include functions inside of our app that would allow the user to take pictures and video of the event, in order to document the night and have memories of what happened. We also included several dozen drink recipes as well in our Mixology section. We had a great idea and we summed up our entire application in our design document. After we completed our design document, came one of the most difficult parts of the whole process, finding a programmer or engineer to build it for us.

As part of the Computer Science department I went and investigated possibilities for people in the department to help us. I discovered that there was a class in which the students were learning how to build smart phone applications. I had a discussion with the instructor of the class Ali Kooshesh and he agreed to allow our class to pitch our app ideas. Unfortunately, only one of the groups actually got a programmer out of that endeavor. It seemed from a codeing side some of our projects were lacking in difficulty, which would not give them a good enough grade.

The second idea I tried was going to the Computer Science Club meeting and pitching our idea to them there. Unfortunately even though I mentioned that there might be compensation involved no one was interested.

We also, as a group, tried a number of different things such as putting out a Craig’s list ad for a programmer. As well as investigating a number of online app generators. We finally settled on using the website Buzz Touch. This website allowed us to create an approximation to what we wanted for our original application. The website actually had just launched in April so we were some of the first to use the service. For the most part, use of Buzz Touch was pretty simple and easy to understand. As the days went by we were given more options on what we were able to include in our application such as YouTube videos, links to websites, like Black Mango Media, and graphics and other artistic design decisions. Through the use of Buzz Touch we were able to create our application with no need for programming experience. We were not able to include everything that we wanted, but we got most of the content included.

We are now at the final stage of development. Soon we will pitch the idea to the class and explain what it does and what we wanted it to do. We will be presenting with the idea keeping in mind that we want to pitch our application to a company with ties to alcohol such as Blue Fin. From there we hope our application could be a useful marketing tool to get new drinkers to buy their products.

All in all while there were difficulties in creating this application. It was a lot of fun and yet still hard work. A lot of thought and planning had to go on in our own little four person group in order to get aspects of the application just right. I can only hope that we can actually market our application and release it to the public for consumption. If so, I will be able to say with full confidence that I am an iPhone application developer.