How to Materialize your App Idea?

There are currently over 2.7 billion smartphone users globally, and 90% of mobile time is spent on apps.  Amongst the 4+ million apps that are already uploaded on the app store and play store, there are only a few that receive exceptional downloads, have a great user retention and engagement rate. 

The factors that separate a good app from a bad one are as follows:

• Lack of originality
• Inadequate market research
• Poor execution of the app idea 

Before an app is put into the development phase, it is important to measure the product/market fit. This will help to assess if the idea is practically feasible or the product is capable to satisfy strong market demands, sustain in the market, and generate profit. 

The first question that needs to be asked is “How to materialize an app idea and estimate its success?” In the latter section, we will discuss the ideal process to take an app idea into the execution stage. 

How to Discover Opportunities in an App Idea and Frame it? 

Being a software engineering company, we generally come across requirements to develop apps similar to Spotify, Zocdoc, Uber, Zillow, Whatsapp, or with a new business model.  Our prospects generally inquire about a fixed-price proposal along with timelines to develop the app and have a limited understanding of the features/requirements for the product. 

For such app ideas, we never proceed with requirement gathering and development straight away. In such cases, we recommend our customers to measure the product/market fit of their idea, discover the opportunities, and after understanding the viability of the product idea, we frame the roadmap for development. 

For scenarios like these, we have introduced an innovative workshop, known as Discover & Frame Workshop, which we feel is the leanest approach to materialize your product idea. The program is curated to assess the idea, target users, architecture, revenue model, cost, timeline, and more. 

Here is a brief introduction of how this D&F workshop helps businesses assess or materialize their app idea. 

Step 1: Concept Analysis and Discovery 

How powerful and unique your app idea is? Before moving ahead into the development phase, it is important to analyze if the idea is able to stand strong against the competition or if it is offering a comprehensive solution to the requirement of the targeted user base. Thus, at the inception stage of materializing an idea, it is crucial to assess the following factors: 

• What’s the vision of the business and if the market actually needs it
• What are the USPs, loopholes, and opportunities that the idea brings
• What are the possible revenue streams to derive a return on investment

Step 2: Requirement Analysis 

Once an idea is validated, the next step is to research and gather the requirements from stakeholders to build a solution. This is followed by curating the feature list, identifying user roles, creating flow diagrams and user stories (considering users, customers of the solution in mind).

RELATED READ: How to Write Epic User Stories?

Step 3: Framing the Solution 

Now the must-haves of the solution are recognized, the next step is to measure the product/market fit. A number of approaches, such as Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Proof of Concept (PoC), Prototype can help to validate if the product is the right fit for the market. 

RELATED READ: What’s the Best Approach to Measure Product/Market Fit?

Step 4: Technical Architecture 

Choosing the best technology stack is the most critical part of the development cycle. Depending upon factors such as feature set, budget, target audience, industry, third-party integrations, etc., a suitable technology stack can be selected.

Along with the tech-stack, selecting the right architecture is important so that scaling the solution in the future is seamless. An architecture illustrates how the system should be assembled/organized, how its components communicate with each other, and what are the constraints that the system is ruled by. 

RELATED READ: The Importance of Choosing a Good Software Architecture

Step 5: Techno-Commercial Proposal 

Once a team of business analysts, technology specialists, UI/UX experts, and project managers work on your business idea, the facts, figures, and findings shared by them are compiled into a techno-commercial proposal. This proposal gives an estimate of the scope of work along with the timelines, milestones, team metrics, technology stack, development roadmap, etc. 

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Materializing your App Idea? Let us do it for you

To come up with expected deliverables at the end of development, it is important for us to have a clear understanding of the app idea. Daffodil’s Discover & Frame workshop is specially designed to break down an app idea to define its functional feasibility. To validate an idea’s competency, we generally measure the product/market fit by building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). MVP helps to assess an idea by launching a product with minimum features. This helps to have an estimate about technical feasibility, user acceptance, market requirement, etc. before a complete solution is launched in the market. Meanwhile, depending upon the industry, idea, budget, and timelines, we select the most relevant model to measure the product/market fit.

Want to validate your app idea? Connect with our D&F team to start assessing your idea with minimum cost and time.