Learning from others is a powerful tool. When looking to develop a mobile application, it is important to get different perspectives on the industry and hear others’ experiences with the development process, so you can hear what works and what doesn’t work for them. You can then apply someone else’s experiences and knowledge into your own project to make something that was once just an idea into a beautiful and amazing product. 

Recently, I had the privilege to speak with Lea Marolt Sonnenschein, CEO & Co-Founder of Presevent, and hear about her experience developing this beautiful app.

Check out the app here!

For those who may not know, Presevent alerts you to upcoming Election 2016 speeches, forums, and fundraisers, so you can sync your calendar with our next President’s! With the help of Presevent’s candidate locator and event tracker, you can promote transparency and engage in the Republican and Democratic primaries by seeing your favorite candidates face-to-face.

 

Where did you come up with an idea like that for your app?

The idea came from a discussion with my co-founder Joe in mid May about the lack of

quality mobile tools for political engagement. We were both about to graduate from

Grinnell College in Iowa, the first caucus state, so we were very aware of the upcoming

influx of political events. I had a lot of experience in creating mobile applications, having

co-founded Grinnell AppDev, and Joe thought it might be a good idea to leverage that

experience in creating an application that would track all Election 2016 presidential

candidates’ events. I loved the idea, and we both jumped right in. We started to work on

it before we even graduated.

What problem are you trying to solve?

The problem with many modern political campaigns is that they target event invitations

to likely supporters, not curious voters. This narrow targeting blatantly disregards

America’s storied history of face-to-face democracy. Presevent is trying to combat this

targeting by harnessing publically available data about upcoming Election 2016 events

and presenting that data in a visually appealing and scannable format. Our users can

share information about upcoming events with their family, friends, and communities,

which translates into a more diverse and transparent political discourse.

Did you develop this app yourself or did you hire someone?

I’ve been developing iOS apps for a few years. I’d be too embarrassed to hire someone

else :D! So, yes, I developed and designed the app myself.

What were some of the biggest struggles you had over the course of developing your app? Did you have to learn new APIs? How much experience did you have?

From the get-go, we decided that our most important features were ease of use and

minimalism in design and interactions. Keeping in line with those constraints proved

very difficult from time to time and provided some interesting design challenges–both

visually and architecturally.

Since everything (except for the Parse backend and 2 CocoaControls) was developed

“in-house,” I didn’t have to learn any new APIs. I did, however, learn a lot of other iOS

related topics. For example: How to use size classes and autolayout–a topic I avoided

like the plague before Presevent. I also learned a lot about “best practices” in application

development. I knew I wanted to build an app that we could modify and extend easily,

so from the beginning, I built the app out by abstracting the classes into smaller

self-contained units.

I had about 2 years of actual application development under my belt, and about 1 year of

learning and failing before that :D! Prior to Presevent I lead 4 other iOS apps into

production. I’m also currently working as an iOS Developer for Rent the Runway, so I’m

continuously improving my craft.

How long did it take to develop this application?

It took about 3 months to design and develop the first iteration of the app that we put on the App Store.

If you could go back and change something what would it be?

To be honest I don’t think there’s much I would change. We’ve had a lot of fun creating

Presevent, we’re learning a lot, and we’re trying to make a positive impact on the world.

What more can you ask for?

How are you getting the word out about your app?

We’re using Facebook and Twitter to promote Presevent and its cause. Another great

resource is our growing list of early adopters, who tested the app in its BETA stage and

helped shape it into what it is today. They’re not only helping us improve the app but are

also generating enough buzz that’s brought in new users.

We also just applied for the Knight Foundation’s most recent News Challenge. We’re

hoping that’s going to be a big help in connecting to curious users.

What are your future plans for this application?

As far as the app itself goes, I’m working on improving the architecture quite a bit to

make the app faster and more responsive. Joe is also working on improving our event

coverage, so that no candidates’ events are left out of our database. We’re also constantly taking

in feedback from our users to make sure that the product we’ve developed is the best it could

possibly be in terms of usability.

As far as the bigger picture goes, we know that if we truly want to have a big impact on

democracy, we can’t limit ourselves to just the iOS platform. So the next steps for us are

definitely creating a web and Android platform for Presevent, to make it truly accessible

to everyone with an Internet connection. In order to build those, we’ve applied to

FbStart and the Knight Foundation. If anyone wants to help us out, though, feel free to

shoot me an email, and we can have a chat (: !

Why should someone download your app in one sentence?

People should download Presevent to have more in-person and unfiltered conversations

with Election 2016 presidential candidates and promote a more transparent and

positive political discourse.

Presevent’s Website: http://presevent.com/

 

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This week’s App of the Week is a simple utility that helps people with “reading later”.

“Pocket was founded in 2007 by Nate Weiner to help people save interesting articles, videos and more from the web for later enjoyment. Once saved to Pocket, the list of content is visible on any device — phone, tablet or computer. It can be viewed while waiting in line, on the couch, during commutes or travel — even offline.” via www.getPocket.com

One of Pocket’s greatest elements is the ability to save an article, video, or other webpage from just about any platform. Whether it be on your phone, on your computer, or on your tablet, as long as you’re signed into you’re account, you’re all set. Ready to read? Just open up the app, and all of your content is right there waiting for you!

When looking at many successful apps, you will notice they are available on multiple platforms. With that being said, this does not mean that you must launch on all of these platforms. Depending on your target audience, find out which platforms are used most, and focus on launching on that platform first. Of course, this could vary depending on what type of application you are making. If it’s a social network application, it is more important to launch on at least two platforms (iOS & Android for example). But if it is a utility app, it is less important. Take advantage of this to find out how users use the application. Which features should you add? Which features should you take out? Once you get a pretty good idea of this, then you can go ahead and build the application for another platform.

Check Pocket out if you haven’t already at www.getPocket.com

Tons of people out there who have an app idea in their head struggle with demonstrating how it works to others. Whether it be because they don’t know how to use programs like Sketch or Photoshop, or they’re working remotely and drawing something out on paper isn’t efficient enough to provide to the other party. With this week’s “App of the Week”, people can demonstrate how their app idea works in an easy and efficient way!

 

Prott – Rapid prototyping tool

 

One of the easiest ways to show other people what is in your head, is by using the good ol’ fashion pen and paper. Prott takes this to a whole new level. All you have to do is sketch out on some paper each of the pages of your application, snap a picture, and then inside of the Prott application you can bring your sketch to life!

 

With the app, you can select different parts of your sketch and have them segue over to another one of your sketched pages. Want to send it over to your developers to show them what you want done? Just copy the prototype url or enter in their email address and you’re all set. Whoever you are sending it to can even comment on the sketches and give back useful feedback!

This is definitely one of the top prototyping apps out there!

 

Check Prott out: https://prottapp.com/

 

This week’s “App of the Week” is a utility that I have found myself using more and more often.

To be completely honest, I am not a big reader. I like when articles get right to the point and tell me what I need to know. For years and years, going through grade school and even college, I have had to suffer reading through long articles trying to pick out the main points. Luckily in 2014, a high school sophomore created an application that helps this issue.

Points

Points is an application that makes it unbelievably simple to summarize web pages into a few key bullet points. All you have to do copy the page’s URL and paste it into the text box on the application. Tap the “Go” button and before you know it, you have a few key bullet points summarizing what ever is on that webpage.

Last year Hugh Jones, a high school sophomore developed this application using a proprietary language processing algorithm which will determine which sentences on the webpage are most meaningful.

This is one of MANY applications that became “big” by taking a normal every day task, and making it more efficient in a simple and easy way! Great job Hugh!

Feel free to check Points out at www.pointsapp.co !

This week’s app of the week is an app that makes it easy to invite groups of people to different events.

 

Looking to throw a small party and don’t want to make up invitations and mail them out?

Let me introduce to you, Hobnob.

Hobnob is an app that is currently available on the App Store that lets you create custom invitations with just a few taps on your screen. All you have to do is select a design, put in the event details (date, time, location, etc), select who you’re inviting, and tap “send”. Invitees will then get a text message with the invitation like below:

All the recipients have to do is reply “Yes” or “No”, and the user’s app will get updated with who’s going or not!

One of the greatest advantages and smartest moves by Hobnob is the ability for practically anyone with the capability to text message, to use the features of the app. With that being said, if someone’s 90 year old grandma who has no clue what an app even is, receives one of these invitations, even she will know how to interact and respond to the invitation.

Having a feature that combines app with text messaging opens up the market dramatically, because come on … who doesn’t have text messaging?

Looking forward to seeing where this app ends up in a few months!

Check out Hobnob here!

This week’s featured app is one that helps all of you “dual monitor” lovers out there.

 

As someone who is always doing multiple things at once on the computer, I am constantly using a second monitor to increase my speed and productivity. The only problem is that you can’t bring your second monitor with you to an airport, a restaurant, or pretty much anywhere easily. Luckily a few months ago, an app was released that has solved this issue.

I present to you Duet Display!!!

With Duet Display, all you have to do is download the app on your computer as well as any iOS 7.0+ iPad or iPhone, plug it into the computer, and open up the app, and you have gotten yourself a second monitor for wherever you go!

Not a mac user, but still have an iPad or iPhone? Duet Display is available for Windows 7+ as well.

Being an app that was developed by Apple ex-engineers, the performance is amazing with little to no lag!

I am not one to typically pay for apps, but this app is definitely worth the buck. Check it out at http://www.duetdisplay.com/

 

For this week’s “App of the week”, we have chosen an app that has been getting a lot of buzz the last couple of weeks. This app allows users to get their feet wet in the stock trading world at no cost!

Let me introduce to you (if you haven’t already heard of it), Robinhood!

 

Robinhood is a stock trading app with NO commission fees! Released a few months ago, lets talk about what has made this app get so much traction.

Pre-app Marketing
Before we even talk about the app itself, lets talk about pre-launch. One of the best strategies in my eyes that has helped get Robinhood so much traction is their Pre-app Marketing. Before there was any app available, www.Robinhood.com was all set up with an amazing promo video (https://vimeo.com/87163777) and a subscription page. By setting up something as simple as a webpage and a promo video with some pictures of what the app will look like, you can attract users and get a gauge on how interested the market is in your idea!

Along with this, another great Pre-app Marketing strategy is the waitlist. Often times with applications such as Robinhood, you don’t want to release the app to the entire world right off the bat and you will want to release little by little. This is where the waitlist comes in handy. On the webpage, there can be a subscription box to put yourself on the waitlist and get an email with an access code. One problem is that there could be tens of thousands of people on the waitlist which could discourage the potential user. To fix this, when ever a potential user shares a link to the site or gets someone else to sign up, they can get bumped up in the waitlist, and gain access to the app sooner!

Strategies like this can make an idea without even having an app go viral, very quickly!

Simplicity is key

Now let’s talk a little bit about the app itself. What exactly makes this app awesome? As with many great apps, the answer is simplicity. Especially when 25% of Robinhood’s users have never played around in the stock trading world, it is vital to make users feel comfortable and not confused.

Robinhood takes the minimum amount of features/information that is needed to buy and sell stock and implements it in a wonderful way. Once you are all signed up, on the home screen you are greeted with a graph of your earnings with a dollar amount of how much money you have between your account and your stock. Scroll down and then you can see the different stocks that you have bought or are on your watchlist. Without even tapping on any of these stocks you can see a mini graph of its earnings trend as well as a dollar/percent value of its change.

Last, but not least, once you tap on a stock, you are greeted by a page that is similar to the home page. At the top you see the dollar value, and at the bottom you see basic stats and a quick bio of the company. If you are looking to Buy or Sell, all you have to do is enter how many shares, review, and then submit and before you know it you have just completed your order.

One of the biggest controversies right now with Robinhood is that it does not provide enough features that people like to use to gain information on a certain company. But to be honest, this is a smart move on Robinhoods part. It is because of sticking with the core feature, keeping it as simple as possible, and learning how users use it, that makes this app so attractive.

Many times, apps will start off with one core feature, but then they end up cluttering the app with so many features. Though this is great in terms of being unique and providing features to the user, it is not attractive at first and can often times make the app confusing. — No good!

Take it from great apps like Robinhood and stick with a core feature, keep it simple, learn how your users adapt to it, and then over time you can roll out feature by feature!

If you haven’t been keeping up with TechCrunch Disrupt’s NYC Hackathon, here are some of the cool projects teams came out with!

Here are four out of tons of amazing apps

Gruberie

Gruberie is an app that takes out the need for a waiter taking your order.

Within 24 hours, the team was able to hack together a site, an app, and get a diner to test it out! The app utilizes Gimbal beacons that detect when users are sitting at a table. Once you’re sitting at the table, just open up the app, and check out the entire menu. It doesn’t stop there though! You can place your order from your device and even pay the bill!

Looking forward to see how this disrupts the restaurant industry!

Witness

Over the past few months, there has been a lot of hype about live streaming mobile apps like Meerkat and Periscope. This is a whole new section of the mobile app industry and its use cases are still being explored. Witness has discovered a new use case that could save lives!

With this app, all you have to do is tap the app’s icon, and it will begin to stream live audio and video to your emergency contacts that you have designated in the settings. Along with the live audio and video, your contacts can see your exactly location and where it changed throughout time.

Split

Ever get frustrated when you go out to eat with some friends, they order a full course meal and you order just a salad, yet you still have to pay more since the bill is split equally?!? Luckily Split was developed and it solves this problem!

With Split, all you have to do is take a picture of any receipt, highlight the different parts of the bill, and send each portion of that bill to the respective person. This integrates Venmo and automatically sends your friends a Venmo money request. Instead of having to search through all of your friends to find which ones you are actually eating or grabbing drinks with, Split utilizes geofencing to show which of your friends are nearby!

Awesome stuff!!!

Posture.io

Posture.io is a hack that helps people stop slouching when they are at a desk. This hack uses a Texas Instruments BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) sensor and an adhesive magnetic rubber strip. The sensor gets attached to the chair and the rubber strip gets stuck on the user’s belt. Through this application, you can set how sensitive you want it to be and be able to keep track of how well your posture is!

Along with this, the hack utilizes the Leap Motion gesture controller to help with atypical hand exercises which help prevent injuries that can occur from being at the keyboard for too long.

 

 

The “Uberfication Movement” is real!

Like Domino’s Pizza? Want to see where your pizza is? Dominos has developed an app that lets you track your order from the oven to your door!

This is one of many ways that mobile apps can keep customers engaged and wanting to use a service more often!