Neaxy — Implement and distribute an App
From research to implementation
The final steps behind the development of an app require its implementation. It needs to become real.
After the research process, the prototyping, and the validation of the App, it needs to be developed and distributed using a precise business model. During last month I focused on this last part, in particular in the coding, project management, storytelling, and the app business model.
The solution
After a long research phase about making young students motivated, we found a solution that gives motivation by staying together and receiving rewards.
Our solution is an App called Neaxy that will provide young students a gamification experience that they don’t have in their everyday lives.
Thanks to it, students will not feel alone anymore, and they will improve their attention and motivation with less effort.
In Neaxy, the more time students spend together in different virtual rooms, the more planets they will unlock, building a giant personal galaxy.
The first type of room is related to the school: youngsters can study with their friends. After that, there is a hangout room where they can talk and relax together. Eventually, the self-time room is meant to stay alone and reflect, choosing a mood that will change the background music.
Young students will be motivated to collect all the planets, day by day, minute by minute!
Project Management & Collaboration
The journey starts with an investigation into the technical aspects of the solution raised from the research process and the needed frameworks. Next, the team needs to be clear about how the collaboration will work, so in a first step, we created a collaboration map.
The first important aspect of the team working is the communication style of each member: knowing how a person usually communicates helps the others listen more effectively, interacting without clashing.
Then we must know the working style of each other; this leads us to create a complete team and improve productivity, positioning each member in what he is genuinely effective and satisfied.
Collaboration values and how we’d like to receive feedback play an essential role in avoiding conflict and respecting each other, generating a sane collaborating environment.
Eventually, setting personal goals and the team’s rules and rituals helps plan a weekly program on what each team member wants to reach.
Thanks to daily stand-up meetings, we succeeded in knowing each other’s results and obstacles in different fields, iterating and managing the workload.
We took the prototype and deconstructed it in distinct elements creating a learning and dev backlog to determine what needs to be learned and developed.
Business Model
One of the fields I took care of is choosing a business model for our specific market solution (App). It aims to balance our goals with the expectation of the target market.
Studying the value proposition and the App’s suitability with it, I chose a business model that will help us to share our product, strategically changing the model during the “life cycle” of the App.
Since the App is made for young students, I chose to start with a free model. We need to reach a great audience that isn’t only the youngsters, but also their parents and educators.
The first release of the App will become its presentation to the world, it will be free, and the whole experience will be enjoyed to receive the trust of the clients. Additionally, thanks to feedback and testing, it will better understand what needs to be changed or modified in the App.
At a certain point, I planned to provide a freemium model where non-consumable types of in-app purchases will be added.
In this way, the customers could purchase elements like special collections of planets, new avatars, or backgrounds to enhance the experience. Thanks to these premium features, there will be the possibility for the most engaged users to have exclusive items in their collection.
Of course, to maintain a safe environment and prevent kids from involving in commerce it will be added a parental gate so that they are required to ask their parents to make an in-app purchase.
Eventually, in the long term, I’m going to go further than the in-app purchases and maybe add the possibility to unlock new elements by redeeming codes provided by external partnerships. I don’t want to stop at the simple division between free and paid items, trying to match the customers’ needs with great flexibility.
The freemium model will be adjusted if an organization ( like the school ) chooses our product. Adapting the App to an internal use in the organization there will be a safe and private environment where the in-app purchases aren’t the responsibility of the parents. It will be the organization that will pay to add new users or exclusive items to the App.
Implementation and Testing
In the implementation part of the App, I focused in the first phase on the UX, in particular the navigation flow. Then I started the front-end development of the Hi-Fi prototype, with some insight of backend implementing basic features or helping the team with obstacles that required more work.
This phase raised some early usability problems, taking into account that it is meant to be used by children and some aspects need to be adapted to this age.
The development was done using the MVVM architectural design pattern to guarantee high cohesion and low coupling between SwiftUI’s domain entities.
Thanks to the usage of the MVVM, the code has excellent reusability, modularity, and scalability. In addition, the readability was improved without exceeding in the decoupling and using naming and conventions, as described in the API Design Guidelines.
After the first beta build was ready, we started an internal beta testing using Test Flight. In this first release, we focused on the user experience and navigation flow, changing the wrong dimensions and positions of the UI elements. Meanwhile, the main features of the App continued to be developed, and we chose to start another beta testing phase, this time inviting external testers.
Again, the use of Test Flight allowed us to receive a lot of feedback, adopting constant updates that aim to solve bugs and measure tester engagement. Eventually, we came up with an app that aims to be intuitive and user-centered.
Storytelling & Presentation
The goal of a product is to reach a large audience, but a great product needs to be shown to the customers with a great presentation. The storytelling and the presentation skills are as important as the product itself.
I have experienced, through workshops and sessions, that the user’s story will better explain the problem than a generic one. It gives value to the product.
A story can be told in different ways, but we can generalize that it always begins explaining the scenario and the situation.
There is a raising resulting in the climax represented by the complication, the moment that destabilizes the story. After that, there are the consequences, and the falling action begins.
The solution needs to be clear about how it solves the problem and deals with all the user pains and expectations.
The words represent only a part of a presentation; the use of distinctive and straightforward figurative elements, in addition to a clear verbal exposition and the body language, do the remains. A presentation needs to be extraordinary.
The way the result is presented to the world, the actions and the personality used are connected to the product itself, representing it. Isn’t the MacBook Air related to how Steve Jobs pulled it out of an envelope?
Conclusion
These are the main parts I have focused on during this implementation process.
I’m very interested in deeply understanding the whole process of developing a digital product. I’ve learned that the idea and the code implementation represent only a small percentage of the entire process.
What can determine the success of a product is your determination to never give up, adapt your product and business strategy, learn new things, and, last but not least, believe in what others say is impossible!
Thanks for reading! If you want to talk or take a coffee, contact me at vincenz.pascarella@gmail.com or connect via LinkedIn.
