In this article, we’ll closely examine the benefits and considerations of native and cross-platform mobile app development, helping you make an informed choice. So get ready to understand both development approaches and uncover the possibilities each brings to the table. Let’s dive in.

What is native mobile app development?

Native mobile app development refers to creating applications specifically for a particular platform or operating system. Depending on the operating system you choose, your application is coded in the platform-specific programming language and framework.

Native Android apps require Java or Kotlin programming languages. While for iOS apps, Objective-C and Swift are used. Further, native applications also require their own platform-specific software development kits (SDKs) and integrated development environments (IDE). For Android, you need to use Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA, and for iOS apps you need Xcode or AppCode as your IDE.

Some popular examples of native mobile apps that we use every day are Google Maps, Pinterest, Spotify, and WhatsApp.

Advantages of native mobile app development

Native app development brings with it a range of advantages. These include the following:

1. Superior loading speed

Native application development prioritizes fast loading speed to enhance user experience. By utilizing platform-specific resources and compiling code into machine language, native apps achieve optimized performance. Direct access to native APIs enables efficient data retrieval and processing, resulting in quicker loading times. Effective resource management, asynchronous operations, minimized network latency, and optimized asset loading techniques further contribute to speedy loading.

These approaches reduce interpretation overhead, maximize system resource utilization, and minimize network delays. Fast loading speed plays a vital role in reducing user frustration, improving engagement, and ensuring a seamless user experience in mobile applications.

2. Robust offline support

One of the primary advantages of a native application is that it works perfectly even without an internet connection. It provides more convenience to users as they can access all the functions of the app in airplane mode or offline environment. This offline support function is important for users who live on a low internet connection, are in remote locations, or have limited data.

3. More intuitive and interactive

Native apps, being built specifically for a particular operating system (OS), provide an optimized user experience that is perfectly compatible with that OS. This compatibility allows the app to adhere to the design guidelines and instructions of the OS, resulting in a more intuitive and familiar user interface. Users can interact with the app using gestures and actions that are already familiar to them, enhancing the overall usability and interactivity of the application.

4. Better Code Debugging

Native app’s platform-specific approach also aids in better code debugging. These apps being specifically developed for a particular platform or operating system makes them less sensitive to the platform or SDK updates and changes, resulting in a smooth debugging process. In contrast, cross-platform applications may encounter challenges due to their need to be compatible with multiple programming languages and operating systems.

5. Excellent performance

Native mobile app development involves building and optimizing apps for a specific platform, resulting in a high level of performance. Native apps are known for being fast and responsive because they are designed specifically for a particular operating system and integrated using the platform’s core programming language and APIs. This focused approach enhances the efficiency of the application.

Further, native apps leverage the device’s processing speed and utilize efficient storage mechanisms, resulting in faster load times and a smoother user experience. The use of platform-specific programming languages and APIs enables optimized access to device storage in native app development.

Cross-platform apps also utilize device storage, but their implementation and level of optimization may vary depending on the framework used. And while advancements have been made in cross-platform development, native apps still have an advantage in achieving faster load times because of their platform-specific optimization.

6. Enhanced Security

Native apps offer enhanced security compared to other development approaches. This is because native applications are tightly integrated with the platform they are built for, allowing them to leverage platform-specific security features. For example, iOS native apps can utilize Secure Enclave, a hardware-based security feature, to protect sensitive data like passwords and cryptographic keys.

This hardware-based security makes it more challenging for attackers to access such data, even if they compromise the device. Further, native apps follow the platform’s guidelines and conventions, which facilitates easier review and auditing of security vulnerabilities. This scrutiny helps in identifying and addressing potential security issues before the app is released.

Disadvantages of native app development

Here are some drawbacks of native app development that you should consider:

1. No Code Reusability

Native app development requires separate coding and development for each mobile operating system, such as iOS and Android. This lack of code reusability means that significant time, effort, expenses, and resources are required to develop applications for each platform. In contrast, cross-platform apps have a shared code base that can be used for multiple platforms offering the advantage of code reusability.

2. More maintenance and update efforts

Not only do native app requires separate development but also maintenance efforts. Any bug fixes, performance enhancements, or feature addition have to be implemented separately for each platform, leading to double efforts.

3. Longer development time and higher cost

Separate development efforts for native apps result in longer development durations. With separate codebases, testing processes, and technical implementations for each platform, the overall development time increases. This extended development timeline is accompanied by higher costs due to the need for different teams with expertise in respective technologies. Allocating resources and coordinating development efforts for multiple platforms can add complexity and increase overall expenses.

4. Hiring and managing challenges

Developing native apps for different platforms requires hiring separate developers or teams with specialized knowledge. This can increase the effort and challenges involved in finding the right developers with the necessary expertise. Managing multiple teams and coordinating their efforts also adds complexity to the development process, requiring effective project management and communication.

What is cross-platform app development?

Cross-platform app development involves building a mobile app with a single codebase that can support and run on multiple platforms. This is made possible with cross-platform frameworks that use platform-specific SDKs, such as Android SDK or iOS SDK, through a unified API. These frameworks abstract the underlying platform SDK, providing access to various sensors like GPS, battery level, camera, and microphone. By accessing various platform SDKs and libraries, this approach simplifies the development process and allows for code reuse across multiple platforms.

Further, cross-platform mobile apps can be designed to resemble a native look and feel by integrating native UI elements. This integration helps the app closely resemble the native apps of the target platforms.

Flutter, React Native, Xamarin, and Ionic are some of the popular frameworks. In particular, Flutter and React Native are the most prominent in the cross-platform development market. Many notable apps that we use every day are developed using these frameworks. These include Discord, Microsoft Office, Sound Cloud Pulse, and Airbnb.

Advantages of cross-platform app development

Cross-platform app development comes with the following host of advantages:

1. Code reusability

The key benefit of cross-platform development is the ability to create a single codebase that can be used for multiple app platforms. This significantly saves time and effort as the development team can work on both platforms simultaneously. For example, when coding an application for iOS devices, developers can easily compile it for Android (and vice versa) in a relatively short time. The extent of code sharing between platforms depends on the integration of native modules into the application.

2. Fast development process and time-to-market

Cross-platform application development streamlines the development process by utilizing a single codebase. This eliminates the need for separate Android and iOS projects. Operationally, this approach speeds up development as the production, design, and engineering teams collaborate on a single project. The merged effort allows businesses to bring their app to market faster, across multiple platforms, and seize opportunities more efficiently.

3. Reduced development costs

Cross-platform app development offers value for money and reduced costs compared to native development. By requiring only one development team instead of separate teams for each platform, businesses can achieve cost savings to a significant extent. With cross-platform frameworks, developers can reuse large portions of code and assets across both platforms. This code reuse shortens the development process, resulting in reduced overall mobile app development costs.

4. UI/UX consistency across platforms

Native app development often requires separate and specialized teams due to the variations in UI and navigation design across different operating systems and platforms. In contrast, cross-platform development frameworks inherently handle these differences. Cross-platform apps offer a more consistent look and feel for users across multiple platforms, ensuring a cohesive user experience regardless of the operating system or device.

This is especially helpful for apps where their users use them on multiple devices. It enables organizations to display a consistent brand identity across a wide range of platforms without much additional effort. For example, when the development team changes the visual style of an app, that change is immediately visible across the platforms.

5. Broad market reach

Cross-platform development offers businesses the advantage of reaching a broader market by deploying apps on multiple platforms. The cost-effectiveness and efficiency of cross-platform development allow businesses to target a larger customer base or user audience effectively. This is particularly beneficial for businesses that are in the testing phase, as it enables them to deploy the minimum viable product across multiple platforms and gather feedback from a diverse range of users.

Disadvantages of cross-platform app development

The following are the challenges of cross-platform app development:

1. Performance considerations

Generally speaking, developers have long recognized that native apps perform slightly better and faster than cross-platform apps. Because cross-platform applications require an additional abstraction layer and rendering process, they are typically slower than native applications. Additionally, when it comes to CPU and GPU-intensive applications, there’s a wider performance difference, with native performing way better. However, it’s worth noting that there have been advancements in cross-platform frameworks and optimization techniques that have been reducing the performance gaps between the two.

2. Limitations in functionality adaptation

Cross-platform applications need to adapt their design and functionality to suit specific platforms, operating systems, and devices. This adaptation process can be demanding for developers, requiring significant effort to handle individual differences across various devices and platforms. Complex features, in particular, may pose challenges in ensuring consistent functionality across different platforms. These difficulties in adapting code and ensuring consistent functionality might affect the performance and implementation process.

3. Longer wait for updates and new features

Cross-platform apps may experience delays or require additional time and effort to support the latest updates or new features introduced by operating systems. Native applications receive updates to their software development kits (SDKs) faster than cross-platform frameworks. This means the latter can face potential delays in incorporating new functionalities or taking advantage of the latest platform enhancements.

Native vs cross-platform: Which is the right approach for you?

The decision to develop a native or cross-platform application is crucial and depends on several factors. Both options have their own benefits and considerations, and careful evaluation is necessary to determine the best approach for your business. Factors to consider include your budget, development timeline, performance requirements, and security considerations. By considering these areas, you can make an informed decision on which development method to use for your application. Let’s understand these factors in detail:

• Target audience: Conduct thorough research on your target users and their mobile platform preferences. If your target audience predominantly uses a specific platform, developing a native app for that platform instead of a cross-platform app is a better decision. This allows you to provide your users with a more optimized and seamless user experience while potentially saving costs associated with developing for multiple platforms.
• Development budget: Does your budget allow you to develop separate native apps for both platforms? If yes, native is the way to go. If not, cross-platform development will be more cost-effective, allowing you to code reuse and reducing the need for separate development teams.
• Development timeline: When targeting multiple platforms, cross-platform development can be a faster way to bring your app to market.  On the other hand, native development may take longer due to the need to build separate codebases for each platform.
• App Complexity and Performance: Assess the complexity and performance requirements of your app. If your app requires intensive processing or relies on specific hardware capabilities, native development is more suitable.
• UI/UX Requirements: Consider your app’s UI/UX requirements, such as the impact of maintaining a uniform design or adhering to platform guidelines on user experience and app functionality. Cross-platform development offers a consistent UI/UX across platforms, ensuring a uniform look and feel of the app. Native development allows for platform-specific design and interactions, tailoring the app to each platform’s guidelines and user expectations.
• Third-party integrations: Consider the need for third-party integrations. Some integrations may be better supported in one development approach than the other, so assess the compatibility and availability of necessary integrations. You can determine this earlier when documenting your app requirements.
• Maintenance and updates: Consider the long-term maintenance and update requirements. Native apps may require separate updates for each platform, while cross-platform apps allow for simultaneous updates across platforms. Maintenance and updates will also directly impact the development timeline and costs after the app’s launch.

Conclusion

Native vs cross-platform app development — which one is better? Well, now you must have understood both development approaches can be great in their own way. What really matters is your app and business requirements. Here’s a quick recap.

Choose native app development when:

• You need to leverage platform-specific features and performance optimizations.
• The app requires extensive UI customization and adherence to platform design guidelines.
• You have a dedicated budget and resources for separate development efforts.
• Security is a top priority, especially when dealing with sensitive user data.
• You anticipate future scalability and flexibility for platform-specific updates and advancements.

Choose cross-platform app development when:

• Time-to-market is crucial, and you want to reach multiple platforms simultaneously.
• Code reusability and cost efficiency are essential, especially for simpler applications.
• UI/UX consistency across platforms is a priority.
• You have a limited budget or resources for development and maintenance.
• Regular updates and feature parity across platforms are manageable without sacrificing performance.

If you’re still uncertain about choosing between native vs cross-platform mobile app development, or if you need a clearer understanding of your app requirements to make the best decision, feel free to contact us.

The post Native vs. Cross-Platform Development: What’s the Right Choice for Your App appeared first on Techuz Blog.

That’s one of the most frequently asked questions from our clients. Understanding the app’s development timeline is indeed crucial as it influences various business decisions, including budget planning, resource allocation, meeting investor requirements, and defining the app positioning strategy.

So in this article, we condense our 10 years of mobile app development mobile app development experience to provide you with all the details you need to know about the app development timeline. In this post, we’ll explore:

• The average time it takes to develop an app, detailing the different stages and tasks involved.
• The factors that impact your app development timeline.
• Practical tips to speed up your app development process while ensuring the highest quality standards.
• Sounds like exactly what you’re looking for? Great, let’s dive in.

How long does it take to develop an app?

Typically, an app with its core features can be developed within 12-13 weeks, which is approximately 3 months. This version of the app is called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and it will include the must-have functionalities without any optional or secondary features.

To better understand this, take the example of the ride-hailing app Uber. An app like Uber can be developed in approximately 3 months with its core features, including registration, booking and payment processing, real-time tracking, in-app communication, and matching algorithms.

Considering this, here’s the breakdown of the app development timeline based on different development stages and tasks.

How long does it take to plan an app?

App planning duration: 1-2 weeks

The planning stage is the foundation for the entire app development process, making it a critical and pivotal phase. During this stage, crucial decisions are made to set the direction of the project, manage business and user expectations, and increase the overall success of the app. Anywhere between 1 to 2 weeks are dedicated to creating a comprehensive plan for the app. The planning stage encompasses three major tasks: requirement analysis, selecting the technology stack, and creating low-fidelity wireframes.

Requirement analysis

In this task, the app requirements are thoroughly analyzed and documented based on the app idea. Various aspects, including user needs, functionality, industry requirements, and business goals, are taken into consideration to define the app’s requirements. This involves researching and documenting both functional requirements, such as app features and non-functional requirements, such as performance, security, scalability, and legal compliance.

(Example of app requirement document)

Selecting the technology stack and platform(s)

Here, the ideal technology stack, such as programming languages, frameworks, and integrations, as well as mobile platforms are determined based on the app requirements, budget, and overall business plan.

Creating low-fidelity wireframes

Low-fidelity wireframes are created to communicate and visualize the app’s layout, structure, and functionality between the team member and the client. Creating low-fidelity wireframes is a great way to collaborate and enable feedback and improvements for the app at the early stage.

(Example of low-fidelity wireframes)

How long does it take to design an app?

App design duration: 3-4 weeks

The design phase is where the designers transform the app requirements into visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces. This can take 3-4 weeks. Three key aspects of app design that require time and attention include:

• Branding and Visual Identity: Here your app’s visual design is aligned with the overall brand. Things such as the app’s logo, color palette, typography, and visual style, are determined and designed.
• User Experience (UX) Design: UX design aims to create a positive and intuitive user experience by optimizing how users interact with the app. Designers take user interviews, analyze user behavior, and conduct user research to understand user needs and preferences. They create information architecture, user flows and navigation structures that guide users through the app seamlessly. Interactive elements like buttons, menus, and forms are designed and proven UX design patterns are implemented to ensure ease of use and efficient task completion.
• User Interface (UI) Design: UI design focuses on the visual aspects of the app, including colors, typography, icons, buttons, and overall layout. Here, factors like brand identity, user preferences, and industry best practices are considered to create an aesthetically pleasing and consistent interface.

3. How long does it take to develop an app?

App development duration: 6-7 weeks

The development stage is where your app’s logic and design are transformed into a fully functional mobile application. It can take anywhere between 6-7 weeks to complete the development. The major time spend in this phase include: frontend development, backend development, and performance optimization.

• Frontend development: This is where your app’s user interface is transformed from design to a functional frontend. Frontend development includes implementing components, interactions, and navigation of the app.

• Backend development: Here the server-side components are developed that power your mobile app. This includes developing the server-side logic, setting up databases, creating APIs for communication between the frontend and backend, and integrating libraries and SDKs that provide additional functionality to the app.
• Performance optimization: It’s also necessary to spend time analyzing the app performance and optimizing it for a seamless experience. This can include reviewing code efficiency, memory usage, network requests, and loading time. Performance optimization ensures that the app runs smoothly, responds quickly, and provides a seamless user experience.

4. How long does it take to test the app?

App testing duration: 1-2 weeks

Once the app is developed and functional, it is thoroughly tested to ensure that it meets various quality standards of functionality, usability, and performance. A systematic testing process is done to identify and resolve any issues before the app is released. This can take around 1-2 weeks. Depending on the need of the app, some of the common testing that an app goes through includes:

• Functional testing: Functional testing ensures that the app’s features and functionalities work as needed.
• Usability testing: Usability testing evaluates how good the app’s user experience and usability is.
• Performance testing: Performance testing ensures that the app performs well under various conditions, such as different network speeds, device capabilities, and user loads.
• Compatibility testing: Compatibility testing ensures that the app looks and works well on different devices, operating systems, and screen sizes.
• Security testing: Security testing is performed to find any kind of security vulnerabilities in the app.
• User acceptance testing: User acceptance testing or UAT involves end-users testing the app in a real-world environment.

What factors affect the app development timeline?

The app development timeline can vary a lot from one app to another because of a bunch of different factors that come into play. To figure out exactly how long it will take to develop your app, you’ll need to carefully consider these factors. These factors include the technical and design complexity of the app, the choice of technologies and platforms, and how well the development process is managed and communicated. Let’s understand these in detail.

Technical complexity

The complexity of an app refers to the level of difficulty and effort required to develop it based on its requirements, scope, and technical challenges. Put it simply, how tough and time-consuming it’s to bring your app to life. That’s why an app development company will typically assess your requirements before providing a cost and timeline quote. Apps can be classified into three categories based on complexity: low-complexity apps, medium-complexity apps, and high-complexity apps.

Low-complexity apps

These are simple apps with minimal features and straightforward functionalities. They have simple user interfaces, limited integration, basic data management, and rarely require advanced technologies or complex algorithms.

An example of this is Petlink. It is a marketplace that connects pet owners with pet products and service providers. We developed this cross-platform app using React Native with core features such as registration, profile setup, shop listings, service listings, payment management, reviews & ratings, and availability/calendar management.

(Example of a low-complexity app – Petlink, a pet products and services marketplace)

Medium-complexity apps

These apps have a moderate level of intricacy and a wider range of features and functionalities. They involve integrations with APIs and SDKs, more complex data management, sophisticated user interfaces, security measures, performance optimization, and considerations for device compatibility.

Consider the example of an app named Engolfer, a super app for golf enthusiasts. The app connects multiple users such as golf players, coaches, and golf facilities to book training sessions, schedule matches, and manage grounds. The app also works as a social media community for golf enthusiasts. Apart from the basic app functionalities, we implement some complex ones such as golf court booking system, match/practice scheduling, and facility management. The app also required advanced integrations for real-time chat, notifications, and multiple payment gateways.

(Example of a medium-complexity app – Engolfer, a super app for golf enthusiasts.)

High-complexity apps

These are the most intricate and challenging apps to develop. They require advanced features, complex business logic, extensive data management, and integration with multiple external systems. Such apps often involve the implementation of cutting-edge technologies and sophisticated algorithms. They may have advanced security requirements, complex user interfaces, and high performance demands.

An example of a high-complexity app is Tutorac, an online learning marketplace. Tutroac connects tutors, education institutions, and students for various kinds of learning needs such as online live training, personalized tutoring, and on-demand video courses. This is a highly-complex app with unique features and functionalities for different parties. Some of the advanced features of this app include creating and delivering live training from the app, class management, video course streaming, tutor job marketplace, and course promotion. It also includes some complex integrations such as BigBlueButton, Brightcove, Chime, and a number of payment gateway integrations.

(Example of a high-complexity app – Tutorac, an online learning marketplace.)

2. Development approach: Native or Cross-platform

When it comes to native development, the choice of the platform will directly impact your app development timeline. Are you targeting iOS, Android, or both? Each platform has its own set of requirements, programming languages, tools, technologies, and design guidelines. It’s essential to consider these factors as they can affect the time and effort required for development.

If you choose to go cross-platform development using technologies such as Flutter or React Native, you can build an app for multiple platforms with a single codebase. Thus, saving you a lot of time.

However, it’s important to note that both approaches come with their own advantages and trade-offs. For instance, native development takes separate efforts for both platforms but provides better platform-specific features and experience. On the other hand, cross-platform makes development faster with code reusability but may require additional workarounds for platform-specific features.

3. Design requirements

The UI/UX design requirements massively impact the app development timeline. Just like technical complexity, the complexity of your UI, such as the number of screens, visual elements, and animations can impact the duration. Similarly, implementing UX design processes such as user research, user interviews, usability testing, and iterating to improve the user experience can prolong the process.

4. App development team

Your app development team is crucial in translating your requirements into a fully-functional app. So the number of members in your team and their skills will largely impact the app development timeline.

You must have sufficient team members to effectively handle the development workload. At the same time, the team shouldn’t be even too large to make the coordination and collaboration slow. You need to find the right balance to ensure the project goes at the right pace. Further, the skills and knowledge of your team members also influence the development timeline. Does your team possess expertise in the necessary programming languages, frameworks, tools, and technologies? Also, consider if they have relevant experience and knowledge in building your specific type of app.

5. Development methodology

Like any other software development, your app must be developed with the proper methodology that suits the app requirements. When the right development method is selected, the timeline can be reduced significantly and vice versa.

For instance, the waterfall methodology is suitable when you have well-defined requirements, minimal expected changes, and a clear understanding of the final product. On the other hand, Agile methodology is recommended when requirements are subject to change, frequent feedback is essential, and rapid delivery of working features is desired. So understanding the app requirements and selecting the development accordingly will ensure your app is developed in the optimal time frame.

6. Project management and communication

Efficient project management can streamline the development process, minimize delays, and ensure the project stays on track. Conversely, the absence of project management or an inefficient approach can lead to challenges and setbacks.

Throughout various stages of app development, effective project management enables proper allocation of resources, assignment of tasks, and efficient time management. It also facilitates communication and collaboration among team members, resulting in a more streamlined and predictable app development timeline.

7. Client involvement and feedback

Client involvement and feedback also play a crucial role in app development and can significantly impact the timeline. Clear communication and collaboration between the development team and clients are key factors in ensuring a smooth and timely process.

During the development process, client involvement is important for clarifying project scope and requirements. Timely approvals and feedback from clients help to keep the project on track and avoid unnecessary delays. Additionally, change requests from clients can influence the timeline, as they may require adjustments to the development plan.

Tips to speed up the app development process

1. Define requirements clearly: Define and document the app requirements as precisely as possible. This ensures clear communication between you and the team as well as avoids scope creep that can cause unnecessary delays to your development timeline.
2. Prioritize features: Rather than adding all possible features in the app, identify and prioritize the main features that provide maximum value to the users. This minimum viable product (MVP ) approach helps in launching an initial version of the app faster with core functionality, gathering user feedback, and adding features based on your user needs.
3. Utilize wireframing and prototyping: Creating wireframes and prototypes early on helps you visualize app interfaces, interactions, and user flows. This helps you make quick iterations and validate designs early on without incurring much delay.
4. Use frameworks, libraries, components: Use frameworks, libraries, third-party frameworks, and pre-built components whenever possible. This saves you significant time by utilizing ready-made tools and functions rather than building them from scratch.
5. Implement automation testing: Implementing automated testing will help you detect app bugs and issues early during development. This can be a great way to save time and at the same time improve app quality.
6. Optimize performance early on: Optimize code, minimize unnecessary operations, and consider performance implications early on during the development phase itself. This will save you much time and avoid any kind of rework at a later stage.
7. Maintain a lean team: More team members don’t always mean a faster timeline. In fact, sometimes it can be counter productive. So keep your team lean, and avoid unnecessary roles and members that slow downs collaboration and decision-making.
8. Outsource app development: Outsourcing is one of the best ways to get the experts to work on your app and reduce the time to market. Hiring an app development company with the right talent, experience, and process is the fastest and most efficient way to develop your app.

Wrapping up

Hope that answers your question about how much time it takes to develop an app. You can expect to develop a fully functional app with core its core features in 12-13 weeks. You can also consider the discussed factors to understand how several things can impact the timeline. Further, by following the best practices, you can always optimize the process to get your app developed in the desired timeframe. However, if are looking to get a precise timeline quote for your app along with the costs, feel free to contact us. We’re here to help you bring your app idea to life.

The post How Long Does it Take to Develop an App? appeared first on Techuz Blog.

What are UX Design Patterns?

UX design patterns are the approaches applied to address common design problems. These patterns have successfully worked in solving usability problems and creating a pleasing user experience.  An example of such a pattern is the pull-to-refresh gesture on touch devices; you just pull down anywhere on the screen, and the content on the screen gets refreshed.

This pattern improves usability through familiarity and ease. The gesture is a standard way to refresh content, so it meets the user’s expectations. It is also an easier way of retrieving new content without the need to find and touch the refresh button. Thus, using such UX design patterns in your design makes the tasks easier and the interaction pleasant.

(First introduced in 2008 on a mobile app named Tweetie, pull-to-refresh has become a standard function to refresh the content on the screen. Image source: material.io )

Why UX Design Patterns are Important?

UX design patterns are important from two perspectives. The first one is the very essence of UX design — to create a better user experience. And the second one is from the designer’s perspective — to reduce efforts through reusability. Let’s understand both perspectives.

Users have already established mental models on how to use an app or website based on prior experience. In fact, they are so habituated to certain patterns that their actions are instinctive. And so when they use a new app they expect a similar interface. If you built your app without considering this, the users are more likely to get frustrated and even end up having a bad experience. Technically speaking, UX patterns reduce cognitive strain by creating familiar interfaces that users can interact with intuitively.

While for designers UX designs patterns work as a tried and tested approach to addressing a design problem.  This significantly reduces time and effort on a design. Imagine a designer constantly coming up with new ideas and reinventing the designs for every project. That would be a lot to do. And that would be never-ending. So with design patterns, designers don’t have to invent something new every time and instead just pull out these patterns from their toolbox.

However, using the UX patterns doesn’t mean they are cookie cutters to designing every interface. You still have to think and research to come up with the best designs. These patterns just work as structural and behavioural features that you can adopt and customize where needed. We’ll look into how to use UX design patterns to improve your design in a while.

What are Common UX Design Patterns?

There are numerous design patterns that can be categorized based on purpose and use cases. The most commonly used ones fall into these 4 groups: Input and output, navigation, content and information structuring and social sharing. Let’s take a look at them in more detail.

1. Input and output

(Calendar picker, a popular input design pattern for selecting dates. Source: Airbnb)

Users need to enter the information in several places on the interface. It can be for signing up, choosing a date for booking, entering contact and other personal details, credit card numbers, etc. The input and output patterns are aimed at making the data input easy and at the same time providing them feedback about the entered information. Examples of input and output patterns are as follows:

• Password strength meter: This helps users to create a strong password to prevent malicious password cracking.
• Calendar picker: The calendar picker allows users to choose the date to enter, sort or track data. The calendar graphics within the interface make it easy to choose the date or date range and make quick decisions.
• Good defaults: Good defaults prefills certain user data that are likely to match. It is useful when the system can make the appropriate guesses of the input fields. For example, input fields country or location.
• Captcha: Captcha helps reduce spamming by differentiating human users from automated bots.
• Preview information and updates: Previewing information helps users double-check that the inputs are correct and accurate as they need. It helps them safely explore the interface resulting in better interaction and experience.
• Wizard: Wizard breaks down one big task into small sub-tasks and helps users complete it step by step and one at a time.  It is highly useful when the user has to input complex and large amounts of data and follow specific steps in sequence.

2. Navigation

(Navigation tabs and breadcrumb — patterns that make navigation easy. Source: Adidas.com)

To perform tasks and get the information, the user has to locate features and browse through the product. Navigation patterns are aimed at making this easy by reducing friction and increasing learnability. They help users understand where they are now and how to reach to the point they want. Common examples of navigational UX patterns include:

• Navigation and module tabs: Tabs divide a large amount of data into separated sections, making them more accessible and easy to navigate. It is the most common navigation pattern that you’ll find across all digital products.
• Pull-to-refresh gesture: Pull-to-refresh gesture on certain devices help users load new content with a simple pull-down gesture. It’s the standard pattern to refresh the content in social media, chat, email news and content apps.
• Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs works as a visual aid helping users know their location in the site’s hierarchy. This makes it easier for them to go back and forth and thus simplifies the navigation.
• Progressive disclosure: To help users focus and easily navigate, you need to minimize the clutter and cognitive load. Progressive disclosure helps you do that by presenting only the required data and displaying other details upon request.

3. Content and information structure

(Slack’s FAQs page with a search bar and different categories with icons to help users easily understand and access the content. )

Content and information structure is similar to the navigation patterns. A clear content structure makes it easy for users to find and access the information. These UX patterns help you arrange the information in a logical order that improves readability and accessibility. Examples of content UX patterns include:

• Carousel: Carousals enable you to display multiple pieces of content in the same place on your page. This is highly useful when you have to showcase a set of items or explain a process.
• Tagging: Tagging helps to label, organize and categorize items using keywords. You can use it in your product when you want to associate a piece of content with multiple topics or when the content falls into multiple categories.
• Thumbnail: Thumbnails provide an overview and preview of different kinds of content: images, videos or text on the page. You can use this pattern when a large number of images and videos are presented to the users, they have to browse the collection and decide which one to choose.
• FAQs: Frequently asked questions or FAQs section is a place where users get answers to common questions. This provides them with a quick solution for their problems or a better understanding of your product/services which results in a good experience.
• Dashboard: Dashboard gives an overview of important data, functions and control in an easily understandable way.  It helps users monitor critical information at a glance so that they can make a quick decision. A good dashboard has multiple information but doesn’t confuse the users and every element is presented as per the hierarchy of their importance.
• Product page: Product pages in an e-commerce app/website shows details of the product to help users make a purchase decision. A good product page must have the necessary elements like high-quality product images and videos, and social proof like reviews, ratings and badges that reduces friction and induce trusts such as easy return and secure payments.

4. Social

(Reactions that allow users to express how they feel about the content. Source: Discord.)

Social features and components have become an essential part of products for they bring higher engagement and growth. Most successful games and apps in the market have features that help users communicate, share, compete and collaborate with other people online. Here are some of the common social UX patterns:

• Share: Users want to share particular content or interaction on their social media. Features like quick share buttons and auto-share make it easy for them to post updates. 
• Reactions: Reactions help users express sentiments about something in a simple way. It is useful to understand user’s likings and preferences.
• Chat: Personal and group chat helps users to interact and be a part of the community.  
• Invites: Invites allow users to share their enjoyable experiences with others and bring them to your product.  It also provides a way to connect with their friends and have a better experience on the platform.
• Activity feeds: Activity feeds give users an overview of what’s happening and expose them to the content of their interest. This helps them explore new things resulting in higher engagement.
• Collectable achievements: Achievements display the user’s status and reputation in the community. Adding collectable achievements such as badges, awards, points, acknowledgement etc. throughout the user journey increases engagement.

What are dark patterns in UX?

Dark patterns in UX take advantage of users’ biases and intuitive behaviours and lead them to do something that they didn’t intend to do. A popular example of this is ‘forced continuity’, where a user is provided with a free trial of the product and is automatically moved to a paid plan as soon as the trial ends.

Consider dark patterns as the evil twin of UX patterns. These patterns are not focused on improving the experience but rather benefitting the product/website owner by increasing sales, influencing users’ behaviour, or getting their personal information.

While dark patterns are used widely in the industry, and even by huge brands, whether they are unethical or just clever is still questionable. For example, is the limited stock notification on the product page added just to create FOMO or help genuinely interested buyers make a quick decision before the stock is out?

How To Apply UX Design Patterns to Your Design?

1. Identify the problem

The first and foremost thing is to identify the issue you’re trying to solve. Patterns are solutions to problems, and if there’s no problem, applying patterns doesn’t make any sense. There are a couple of research methods you can utilize to discover the problem.

• Conduct surveys.  Surveys can be used as a feedback tool to understand users’ experiences. You may want to ask users questions such as what they liked and disliked the most, how easy was the product/website to use and what features users think should be added.
• Perform usability testing. Usability testing helps you understand how the users interact with the interface. You can perform testing with your existing product, prototypes or even with your competitor’s product. The collected data will help with finding the friction and crucial insights to improve your product.
• Use analytics. Analytics can help you get vital insights about your existing product — what’s working well and what needs to improve. Consider the important metrics such as sign-up rate, bounce rate, cart abandonment rate, etc. to detect the problems for optimizing the design.

2. Analyze the available solutions

Once you have detected the issue with your design, it’s time to look at different approaches to solve it. Search and analyze similar products in the market: How the successful ones have solved the problem? What patterns have they used? Which ones are more liked by users?

Chances are that you may come across more than one pattern as the solution. For example, to display content on your app layout options like cards layout, carousal, split screen, etc. Make a list of all solutions suitable for your design.

3. Apply the patterns and test

Once you have the list of patterns, select the ones that most appropriately address your problem. If more than one patterns are suitable, then you may want to try A/B testing. Essentially, testing will help you understand which pattern works best for you. Perform usability tests and collect analytics data of the new patterns and optimize your designs.

Where To Find UX Design Patterns?

The best way to find the UX patterns is to observe and analyze the popular and successful products. However, there are also some amazing libraries that curate these patterns. Some of these useful libraries are as follows:

• UI Patterns: A comprehensive archive of patterns for almost all design problems — forms, content, menu, shopping, persuasive patterns and more.
• UI Scraps: UI scraps is a blog with a collection of all kinds of good and bad UX design patterns.
• Inspired UI: Pattern library focused on mobile design with patterns for more than 30 categories such as splash screens, sidebars, maps, dashboard, activities feeds and more.
• GoodUI: Huge library of UI patterns for landing pages, content, product, listings, checkout, pricing, cart, signup and more based on experimentation and testing.

The post UX Design Patterns: Solutions For Common Usability Problems appeared first on Techuz Blog.

Carefully look at these astonishing stats:

• As of 2021, there are over 4.8 million apps in both app stores.
• An average user has 80 apps on the phone but uses only 9 apps daily.
• Only 29% of the apps on the phone make it beyond 90 days.

Well, what does this data mean?

It clearly shows that only a few in the overcrowded app market are able to hook users. These are the apps that users like, recommend to others, and even spend money on. Moreover, they are also featured in the app stores. These are the apps that we consider successful. And in this article, we have explained 10 key elements necessary for creating such apps.

What Makes a Good App?

Common elements that make a good app include the following:

1. Market and Audience Research
2. Flawless Design
3. Performance
4. Right Development Technology
5. Rigorous Testing
6. Security
7. App Marketing Strategy
8. Right Monetization Strategy
9. Excellent User Support
10. Continual Improvements and Updates

1. Market and Audience Research

Research is a crucial aspect of any successful app. It provides you the insights to create an app based on real data rather than assumptions. And this is quite essential for the app’s success.

According to CB Insights, 35% of startups fail because there was no market need for their product. Good research can save you from that by helping you understand who’ll use your app — the audience and what problem will it solve — market need. Also, the decisions for the later stages of design, development, and marketing largely depend on the research.

As a part of the research, you must evaluate your competitors, use analytics to get vital metrics and trends, collect user demographics, and conduct surveys for qualitative and quantitative data. In case your app idea is unique and doesn’t have enough market data, you can go a step further by building a minimum viable product to gather the data. There are many minimum viable product examples that can help you test your hypothesis and collect insights without actually building an app.

2. Flawless Design

Design can make or break your app. After all, it’s the way your app looks, feels, and functions. Get it right and you’ll get higher engagement, retention, and brand reputation. So we recommend investing ample time during the design phase, particularly in UX. Here’re some of the quick tips that you should consider.

Create a great first-time experience

Hook the users from the start with pleasing onboarding to help them understand how to use the app and the value it provides. Also, avoid any friction that can bounce the users — such as unnecessary sign-in walls.  Sometimes slow loading time can affect the first-time experience; you can strategically use preloaders for that.

Humanize the designs

Successful apps make users feel like they’re interacting not with the software but with a human. You can humanize your designs using personalization, expressive illustrations and visuals, functional animations, micro-interactions, and meaningful UX copies.

Minimize cognitive load

 If your designs require more cognitive load, users are more likely to have a bad experience and abandon the app. So try to minimize the load by keeping the design simple, familiar screens, easy navigation, consistent design, and chunking the huge tasks into bite-sized.

3. Performance and Stability

Users expect a quick, smooth and snappy performance while using the app. Delay in load time or any lags and crashes can ruin their experience. And they won’t mind leaving the app or even uninstalling it. In fact, research by Google reports that 70% of smartphone users will switch to another app if it’s too slow. And even a minor delay from 1 second to 3 seconds increases the bounce probability by 32%. So the bottom line is, your app must maintain a high performance.

To do that, you need quality development and follow the best practices. Here’re some of the things to consider.

• Follow best coding practices
• Optimizing, resizing, and caching images
• Work on improving the app startup time
• Minimize the memory consumption
• Optimize the app for various devices (especially low-end devices)
• Utilize pre-loading/pre-fetching data where suitable

4. Right Development Technology

We know that the technology we choose impacts the features, functionalities, and in general how the app works. But there’s more to it — development cost and time to market. The right technology will help you fulfil your objectives — be it providing the native experience, developing a quick MVP to gather feedback, or launching apps for different platforms with just one codebase. Based on your needs and objectives, you may choose to use native or cross-platform technologies.

Native development

Platform-specific native technologies such as Kotlin (Android) and Swift (iOS) give the best functionalities, features, UX, and performance. There’s high customization, full access to the phone’s resources, and the potential of what you can do is pretty limitless. However, it comes with high development costs, time to market, and requires separate teams for each platform.

Cross-platform development

Cross-platform technologies are a cost-effective alternative to native. Although there are some limitations, they are capable of providing native-like functionalities, experience, and performance to a great extent. In fact, in many cases, its benefits such as cost-effectiveness, faster development, and a single codebase weigh more than its limitations. If you are a startup, with a limited budget, this could be the right option for you. Moreover, technologies like React Native and Flutter are reducing the gap between what native and cross-platform apps can do.

5. Rigorous Testing

Crashes are among the key reasons for negative reviews and uninstalls.  As per a report, 96% of the users would write a bad review, while 44% would immediately delete the app for that.  That’s a significantly huge number. Any app that wants to be successful cannot afford such damage. This makes it essential to remove any faults app with rigorous testing before it’s live.

“Freezing, crashing and slow responsiveness were the primary bugbears…96% (of the users) said that they would write a bad review on an under-par app, while 44% said that they would delete the app immediately.”

Your app has to perform well on various standards. This includes different functional and non-functional parameters such as usability, performance, stability, security, etc. And you have to maintain it across myriad devices, screen resolution, and usage scenarios.

While you may do your best during design and development, errors are bound to happen. Or at least there’s always room for improvement. And it’s through the testing you can further refine your app.

It’s better to consider testing early and frequently at each stage of development. So by the time the final app is ready, it’s already gone through multiple testing. Also due to a large number of mobile devices, ensure to test the app across different configurations: devices, screen size, and network.

6. Security

Since the majority of the activities — financial transactions, shopping, booking, chatting, and storing private data — are done on mobile devices and apps, security can not be treated as a good-to-have feature. It’s an indispensable part of your app.

An unprotected app with poor security is vulnerable to compromising critical user data such as personal information, payment data, medical records, etc. So as an app developer, it’s your responsibility to safeguard users’ data as well as your app’s reputation.

There are several mobile app security practices that ensure your app is secure. Even iOS and Android provide platform-specific security guidelines. Here are some of the basic mobile security requirements that an app must follow.

• Ensure proper encryption for data storing and sharing
• For confidential user data, store it locally on the device with sandboxing
• Use HTTPS and SSL protocols for transferring data between app and servers
• Keep libraries, SDKs, and other dependencies up to date.
• Always audit the third-party libraries before you use
• Perform a rigorous penetration test
• Employ proper session management
• Adhere to security compliance such as PCI DDS for payments and HIPPA for medical apps

7. App Marketing Strategy

No matter how great your app is, if it can’t reach your target audience it is certainly destined to doom. You need a strategy to raise awareness, reach the target audience, and get them to install the app. As per a survey, marketing is the number one challenge that app developers face in building the app. In fact, marketing was considered 2x times more difficult than design and development. If you are one of those who is facing a hard time marketing your app, here’re the popular app marketing tactics.

Create a landing page

Your app’s landing page is the place for your users to learn more about your app and at the same time persuade them to download it. You can also use it to signup visitors for launch notifications and gather insights even before the app is made.

Employ content marketing

Content marketing provides significantly high ROI at less cost compared to many other digital marketing channels. It can help you increase your brand awareness, build trust and authority, increase organic traffic, aid SEO and ASO, and get high-quality leads (who are more likely to download your app). You may strategically use different types of content such as blogs, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc. for your content marketing.

Work on app store optimization (ASO)

 ASO is the number one driver for app discoverability. About 70% of mobile users discover new apps from app store searches, and 65% of the downloads are made after a search. Without a doubt, ASO is vital to your app’s success. So understand store ranking factors and optimize your store presence accordingly. Some of the common ranking factors in both iOS and Android app stores are app name, title, app description, app URL, reviews and ratings, and the number of downloads.

Invest in paid user acquisition

Paid user acquisition is targeting your audience to install your app via paid ad campaigns. This includes social media ads, PPC campaigns, and in-app advertising. Paid user acquisition can be the main driver of app installs when targeted to the right audience and through the right medium. However, understand that these campaigns are huge investments and you need to optimize them over time for profitability.

8. Right Monetization Strategy

A great app not only works well and attracts users but also leverages them to earn profit. There are various monetization strategies that you can use for different types of apps. The popular ones are in-app advertisements, in-app purchases(IAP), subscriptions, and selling APIs. While there are many paid apps in the app stores, the majority follow a freemium monetization model. And in fact, freemium apps are among the top grocers.

With the freemium model, you offer the app for free and then upsell premium features or in-app consumables through IAPs or subscriptions. This works great because 1.) free offering reduces the acquisition fiction, and 2.) free apps attract mass, which is great to earn ad revenue.

Whatever monetization model your choose, make sure to consider your audience, app type, other apps in the categories, app offerings, cost structures, and local pricing factors to maximize your revenue.

9. Excellent User Support

User support plays a crucial role throughout the user journey, but it is especially important during the retention and advocacy phase (after the app is installed or purchased).

Promptly answering queries and solving user problems shows that you care which results in happy and loyal users. This brings along benefits such as higher engagement, retention, referrals, positive reviews, and lifetime value (LTV) — all that’s necessary for the app’s success. So ensure you’re providing superb user support.

Here are some of the things that you need to consider.

• Respond to store reviews — especially when your app is recently released. And always reply and resolve negative reviews.
• Provide a good knowledge base such as FAQs and articles so that they can solve issues quickly on their own.
• Provide both internal and external contact channels such as in-app feedback and email.
• Promptly address payment or purchase-related issues.
• Keep the interaction human while communicating.

10. Continual Improvements and Updates

A mobile application is never finished; it requires continual improvements. Successful apps understand this very well, and so they frequently release updates with bug fixes, new features, and enhancements for better experience and performance.

The update frequency of the top 100 grossing apps is 14 days. While new apps trying to make an impact tend to release updates every 7 days. That pretty clearly shows that great apps continually work on providing improvements. You don’t have to release an update every week but ensure to quickly resolve any major issue or upgrade with the highly demanded features. Also, it’s great to prioritize the update based on real data such as user feedback, KPIs, and analytics reposts.

Wrapping Up

A good app is a combination of both user and business-centric elements. For users, it creates value, provides a delightful experience, and great performance. While for businesses, it encourages user retention and generates revenue. If the above-discussed criteria are met while creating your app, then there’s a high of success. 

The post What Makes a Good App? 10 Key Elements to Develop a Successful App appeared first on Techuz Blog.

FREE apps make big bucks.

No matter how counterintuitive that statement sounds, you can’t deny that FREE apps generate huge revenue. The ‘free’ label doesn’t stop them from raking in moolah.

A recent report by Sensortower shows mobile users spend $111 billion on mobile apps in 2020. Call it the effect of global lockdown, but that’s an all-time high making the app business a hundred-billion-dollar market. Any guesses which apps were the top grosser?

Of course, they were the free ones.

To name a few — TikTok, YouTube, Tinder,  and Tencent Video were the non-game apps while PUBG Mobile, Arena of Valor, Pokemon, and Coin Master were the top mobile games.

By now, you might have an epiphany. If not then let me tell you — all these apps are free to download but they use smart monetizing strategies to earn money. And that’s what we’re going to discuss today: How do free apps make money?

In this article, we’ll go through:

• The free app business model
• How do apps make money — popular app monetizing strategies
• Selecting the right monetization strategy for your app
• Creating an app that makes money

Understanding the Free App Business Model

Providing a commodity for free to earn a profit is not a new business model. We’ve witnessed it in the past. Give a free razor, sell disposable blades; give a free cell phone, sell the calling and data plan;  install a free coffee machine, sell expensive coffee and refills.

But virtual products like mobile apps make the free business model more viable than the physical ones. Producing material products for millions of users and offering them for free can be quite expensive. But creating a digital product and providing it for free on large scale is relatively feasible. Entrepreneurs know this and this has been adopted for mobile apps. Give apps for free then upsell and monetize the offering. That’s the idea behind it.

Benefits of the Free App Model

One of the prime benefits of this model is that it reduces friction while user acquisition. A marketer may know that user acquisition is a herculean and expensive task. Asking users to cough up money while making them install the app might not be the ideal strategy. But offering it for free removes some barriers and hesitation.

Another powerful advantage of free apps comes due to their mass adoption.  Free apps have a far larger user base than paid apps and this is an important metric that investors consider. Recognizing that a huge user base is a potential for monetization and better return on investment. This large user base of free apps can help in acquiring funds.

In a nutshell, the free app model is the strategy where one offers free to download apps and later upsells premium services or monetizing them using different strategies. Now let’s discuss these monetization strategies and models.

How Do Free Apps Make Money — Popular App Monetization Strategies

1. In-App Advertisements
2. Freemium
3. In-App Purchase
4. Subscription
5. App Sponsorships and Partnerships
6. Crowdfunding
7. Sell APIs
8. Consumer Products & Merchandise Sales

1. In-App Advertisements 

Ads are everywhere. Users are bombarded with commercials across all media channels. On average, people are exposed to 5000-10,000 ads each day in America. While the global spending on mobile advertising was reported over a colossal $224 billion in 2020. No wonder, why advertisements are a great way for apps to make money.

App owners are the ad publisher who monetizes the app by allowing advertisers to place ads. You display the ads in your app; you get paid for it. It’s that simple. But how do you do it?

Well, it’s done through a mobile ad network — a marketplace where you can sell the ad space to the advertisers. It connects you with the advertisers who can then place their ads in your app. Some of the top ad networks in the market are AdColony, Unity Ads, ironSource, Apple Search Ads, Admob, and Airpush.

Calculating Ads Payout

The payout is calculated based on the different models of ad campaigns. The most popular ones are cost per click (CPC), cost per view (CPV), and cost per install (CPI).

• CPC deals the clicks on displayed ads and payout is calculated on the cost per miles basics. Cost per miles refers to payouts for every thousand (miles in Latin) clicks on the ads.
• CPV is calculated on the 30 seconds of the video ad viewed by the user or interaction with the ad whichever comes first. In the case of shorter video ads, the full duration of the ad or interaction whichever comes first is considered.
• With the CPI, you get paid when the users take an action to the advertisement — like installing the advertised app.

Apart from these models, the payout is also calculated based on the different ad formats. Here are the 6 formats that you must consider.

1. Banner Ads. These ads are usually placed at the top or bottom of the screen with text and graphic elements without obstructing the app’s usability. These ads are relatively simple and have less CPM payout. As per a report, the highest eCPM with banner ads was found to be $0.60.
2. Interstitial Ads. These are the full-screen ads displayed at specific times or events such as after completing a task or between the game levels. However, since these full-screen ads are placed between the apps, they may interrupt the user. But they are also reported to reward high payouts with over $11 eCPM just like other full-screen ads.
3. Native Ads. The concept of native ads is to blend in with the app’s experience. These ads are getting more and more popular due to it’s less interruptive nature and in fact, even perform better in terms of views and interaction. A great example of native ads is Instagram’s in-feed ads.
4. Video Ads. Video ads are typically 10-30 second long videos placed in between different events and natural pauses. And just like interstitial ads, they have the same good payouts.
5. Rewarded Video Ads. These are subsets of video ads that incentivize the user for finishing a video ad. Unity Ads describes it as the “hottest revenue generator” as it has the highest eCPM of over $17. These ads also aid in improving the retention rate and engagement with the apps.
6. Playable ads. Now, this is a relatively new type of ad that allows users to interact with the ads.

While advertisements are an effective and primary revenue stream for free apps, it also comes with challenges. The main challenge is to maintain the right balance of app content and ads. You must ensure the ads are not too intrusive affecting the user experience and at the same time enabling you to earn enough revenue.

2. Freemium

The freemium model is focused on upselling the premium functionalities to the free users. In this model, users are offered the app with basic functionalities, while the full set of features, premium functionalities, and enhanced experience can be unlocked by upgrading to a paid version.

The key to making the freemium model work is providing great value to the users with the free app.

Right from the first session, your app must start building trust and creating value. When users recognize the great service, utility, and fulfilling experience, they eventually are convinced to spend money on premium features. You can’t expect an unhappy user to make a purchase. So regardless of free or paid users, your app should provide something great.

One fine example of the freemium model is Spotify. It provides flawless music streaming with an extensive archive of songs and a superb user experience —all these with its free version. However, users can get even better functionalities and experiences by upgrading to a premium subscription. That’s also a good example of the right balance of free and paid offerings. With this model, Spotify has managed to achieve a staggering conversion of 42%.

3. In-App Purchases (IAP)

In-app purchases (IAP) are the additional features, functionalities, and virtual items that users can buy in the app. This typically gives users access to special content and items like virtual currencies or a feature. This is strategy is a subset of the freemium model and is used by free games like Candy Crush and PUBG Mobile, and apps like VSCO.

Three types of IAPs used to generate revenue — consumable, non-consumable, and subscriptions.

Consumable IAPs are one-time consumable items — virtual currencies, power-ups, extended gameplay, or an additional feature. These purchases are popular with mobile games.

Non-consumable IAPs are typically permanent features that users buy in the apps — such as the option to remove ads or a premium photo filter.

Subscriptions give users access to services or additional features at a recurring charge for a certain period of time. These can be either renewable or non-renewable and are popular with streaming and news apps.

In-app purchases are one of the primary drivers of revenue for free apps and year by year it’s on the rise. One of the reasons for this is reported to be the rapidly growing purchasing power of the two tech-savvy generations — Millennials and Gen Z.

But even in-app purchases come with their own challenges. Implementing an IAP requires extra work on the backend so that transactions run smoothly. Another thing is when your users pay you for something you must ensure they are getting the best experience; that’s not only in-app experience but even the app-like customer support. And most importantly, you’ll have to give away a huge chunk of the purchase — 30% as commission to Google Play and App Store.

4. Subscription

Subscription is the standard monetization strategy for many service-based apps. The way it works is simple. Your free app provides limited features or experience, and to unlock full access the user has to subscribe to a plan. This is another subset of the freemium model.

Subscription is highly used in streaming apps like Spotify and YouTube, news & media apps like New York Times, productivity apps like Headspace, and even some brain games providing frequent new content.

The subscription model yields a win-win situation for both businesses as well as users. From the business perspective, subscription-based apps tend to earn higher as well as stable revenue. Stats show subscription-based apps earn 2-3 times higher revenue compared to just ad revenue and even paid apps. Also, it faired nearly 50% more than in-app purchase revenue.

With a reliable and stable revenue stream, it becomes a lot easier to put your efforts into upgrading your app and spending a budget on marketing.

The subscription also allows you to target multiple user groups with several subscription plans setting the price and features as per their needs. At the same time, it is more convenient for the users to purchase the offerings.

Even Apple and Google favour the in-app subscription model by providing incentives for implementing it. While for the first year, the stores charge 30% commission, the commission decreases to 15% from the second year and all successive years till the user is subscribed.

This model is ideal for content-based apps like news and streaming apps where the user gets new content for a recurring subscription.

It is also suitable for service-based apps that provide value on recurring basics or that users would use for the long term.

However, the recurring revenue demands to provide recurring value. So make sure your users get it. Also, it needs excellent customer support.

5. App Sponsorships and Partnerships

Brands are always on the hunt for a strong presence and results, and in-app sponsorships have come up as an ideal mobile marketing strategy. While for free apps, it’s another great way to earn money.

In-app sponsorship and partnership take advertising to the next level. It provides advertisers with a more integrated presence by connecting to the right audience with the purchase intent. It also helps the advertisers associate their brand with the positive app experience improving their brand awareness and sales.

However, to attract such sponsors, your app must have a huge or niche userbase that exposes brands to the ideal audience and drive results. Weather Channel App displaying Home Depot sponsorship is a great example. Home Depot, a home improvement company, is targeting people to weatherproof their houses through the Weather Channel App.

Apart from generating revenue, partnerships with other products and apps can improve the user experience and app offerings.

In 2018, Headspace and Nike+ partnered together to provide athletes with a perfect mind and body training. Headspace’s guided meditation while running with Nike’s activity tracker helped users improve their training sessions.  This also resulted in higher user engagement.

(Headspace partnered with Nike+ to incorporate mindfulness into workouts helping athletes make the most of their training.  Image source – HeadSpace )

So in-app sponsorship and partnership are a great way not only to earn revenue but also to expand your offering and provide a unique user experience.

6. Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is pretty mainstream these days. If you have a great idea, there’s a crowd to back you. Thanks to crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter, Patreon, Crowd Supply, Fundable, Indiegogo, and Chuffed. (And, of course, thanks to individuals making small contributions on a large scale.)

Crowd-funding works differently than other ways of making money for apps. This strategy can help you get the funds you need for app development and marketing.

In past, however, non-tangible products like apps faired poorly in crowdfunding campaigns. Over the years, this has changed. Some mobile games have been able to reach the goal of $100,000, while even non-gaming apps ranging from education, social, dating, productivity, etc have seen even better responses. Fluent Forever, a language learning application has raised over $580,000 on Kickstarter.

(Fluent Forever, a language learning app, has surpassed its goal of $250,000 and raised over $580,000 on Kickstarter.)

If you are looking for crowdfunding for your app, you need to reach and connect to a large crowd to back you. And for that, you must work on building your brand and a strong promotional campaign describing your app and your vision. However, funds through crowdfunding are just the beginning to compensate for the lack of initial capital. You must adapt to other viable monetizing strategies to earn money from your app.

7. Sell API

This is a whole different model for making money with your app. Instead of monetizing the app, this deals with selling the app API as a product.

Popular examples of apps providing APIs are Google Maps for navigation, Skyscanner for flights and hotels, MusiXmatch for lyrics and album database, and Vimeo for video.

Even WhatsApp, a free app with no ads or charges makes money by offering API to businesses. If you remember they used to sell the app for $1 in past, but Facebook later quit that model in 2016.  Now it sells WhatsApp Business API to mid and large businesses as a customer communications solution. Uber, Booking.com, Singapore Airlines, and Wish are some of its famous customers. So, if your app has something unique to offer, you can sell the API to other apps and products.

8. Consumer Products & Merchandise

Physical purchases & merchandise are an alternate revenue model to earn money outside the app. Selling merchandise like toys, t-shirts, collectables, or other consumer products associated with the app can add a new stream of revenue.

Angry Birds is a great example of this monetization model. Rovio’s insanely popular casual game was reported to earn 45% of revenue from merchandise and other consumer products in 2012. In fact, from the plush bird toys alone it earned $1 million in revenue each month.

(Angry Birds games reported to generate £129 million in revenue in 2012 out of which 45% came from sales of consumer products and merchandise. Image source – Angry Birds: Heroes and Hatchlings Gift Set)

However, that huge amount of revenue was the result of its immense popularity and its success as a brand. So apps looking to earn merchandise must consider their brand connection with the users.

Another way to earn through selling merchandise is to sell products complementing or associating with your app. For instance, a fitness app can sell equipment for home workouts. However, this way of making money through apps has limits and is only ideal as an add-on revenue stream along with other monetization strategies.

Selecting The Right Monetization Model For Apps

There are several factors you must consider while selecting the ideal monetization model for the app — such as business goals, app category, offerings, audience, and even pricing.

You may want users to get the best experience — so minimizing ads and upselling premium may work for you. Or your app delivers frequent new content making it ideal for a subscription model. Or maybe your target audience prefers free rewards through ads rather than purchasing — which makes rewarded ads the right strategy for you.

Just keep in mind that app monetization models are quite flexible. You don’t have to stick to one and ignore the other. It’s best to mix the models as per your offerings and audience — creating a good balance of revenue generation and creating value.

Creating Mobile App That Makes Money

So that was all about how mobile apps make money. But before generating revenue from the app, you have to develop one. Let’s say you already have a great app idea. It solves users’ problems and creates value. That’s a good start. But, not enough to drive revenue from it.

Your idea must be properly executed to attract users and convince them to pay. You need to create a functional app. And to do that your app must have three things: great user experience, impeccable code, and accurate app packaging.

Well-Thought UX

Your app must create positive experiences for users. And it all starts with a well-thought user experience design. UX design ensures that the app is designed keeping the users’ needs first. This translates into a pleasant user experience and happy users.

Impeccable Code

The app must be flawless — impeccable code, properly executed functionality, perfect integrations, performance, and stability. It must be built using the app standard best practices outlined by each operating system. And before the app goes live it must go through rigorous testing and continually improve as per the user feedback.

Accurate App Packaging

As per a report, more than 50% of the users discover the apps within the mobile app stores. And 65% of the iOS app downloads come from App Store searches. This makes your app packaging — the way you present it in the store — a crucial factor for its success. You must work on —

• Catchy name for your app
• Write a clear and  informative description
• Create attractive app screen-shots and demo videos
• Optimize for app stores (ASO)

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do free apps make money?

Free apps can generate revenue through advertising, in-app purchases, freemium model, subscription model, or by offering premium features for a fee.

2. What is the most common way for free apps to make money?

Advertising is the most common way for free apps to make money.

3. How does advertising work in free apps?

Advertisers pay app developers to display their ads within the app, and the revenue is split between the app developer and the advertising network.

4. What is the freemium model?

The freemium model allows users to download the app for free but charges for premium features or additional content.

5. What is the subscription model?

The subscription model charges users a recurring fee, usually monthly or annually, for access to premium content or features.

6. How do in-app purchases work?

In-app purchases allow users to buy virtual items or additional features within the app.

7. Can users still enjoy the app without making in-app purchases?

Yes, users can still use and enjoy the app without making in-app purchases, but certain features or content may be restricted.

The post How Do Free Apps Make Money: Monetization Strategies of Top-Earning Apps appeared first on Techuz Blog.

The global pandemic cases have crossed a million. Daily life has been affected, businesses have been disrupted — from local coffee shops and restaurants to the hospitality industry, retail to travel and even the technology sector.

COVID 19 is a black swan event. There is no doubt in it. It has derailed the plans, delayed launches, halted hiring and operations and put a hiatus on business.

But fortunately, if your business is software dependent, you can still keep it afloat by outsourcing the development.

In fact, if you have been brushing outsourcing under the rugs, this is the best time to rethink, adjust and implement outsourcing strategy for your business.

So here’s a guide on how to outsource — rent a coder or a team of developers to ensure smooth project development without any interruption.  In this article, we’ll discuss the step by step process for effective software outsourcing and its key benefits.

How to Rent a Coder or Development Team – The Process

1. Do Your Homework 

Do your homework before you initiate the hiring process. Prepare the budget, project requirements, your business goals and expected outcomes from the project. The best way to do this is to create an app requirement document.  It is a document specifying the necessary information about the project which makes it easy for both you and the developers to understand the project and goals. Consider these things to include in the document:

• Synopsis of the project
• Project requirements, features and deliverables
• Target audience and competitors
• Non-functional and technical requirements
• Expected project deadline

Apart from defining the budget and deliverables, prepare a set of questionnaires for the pre-screening process. This will make the hiring process quick and you’ll be able to easily shortlist the ones that meet your requirements.

2. Make a List of Candidates

Most people find their ideal outsourcing partners using one of the four ways — referrals from the personal network, B2B directory listings, online job marketplaces or a simple search on the internet.  

Personal references are the most common and trusted ways of finding vendors. However, these days B2B directories such as Clutch.co and The Manifest and marketplaces like Upwork, Freelancer and TopTal have become a norm to find the best resources.

3. Analyzing the Candidates

Once you have a list of ideal candidates, analyze them to hire the best one for your project. Here are some of the things you must consider while analyzing.

• Check the coder’s or company’s background — their professional profiles, websites, years of experience, etc.
• Check their technical expertise — proficiency with relevant tools and technologies.
• Go through their portfolio — the projects they have delivered in the past, the total number of projects, industry and niche expertise and technology used in those projects. 
• If you are looking to hire a company, check for the number of resources available and ask for individual developer’s resumes and profiles.

• Check the reviews of the candidates on different platforms on the internet — what their clients have to say about their services. For example, platforms like Clutch.co performs independent interviews with companies’ clients for genuine and authentic reviews. These reviews can help you better understand the quality of service these companies provide. 

(Techuz’s profile on independent B2B review platform Clutch)

• Test their capabilities with a practical test or a demo task. 

4. Select the Ideal Coder or Company

Once you have analyzed the candidates based on the above criteria, you’ll be able to select the ideal one for your project. Get a quote, discuss the payment options, set the milestones and sign an NDA. 

5. Define the Communication and Project Management Process

Lastly, define the communication and project management procedure. When you are outsourcing a project, communication and management is one of the prime factors for its success. The good part is there are numerous communication and management tools that enable flawless remote communication and management. 

Consider using the following tools for managing your project remotely:

• Video conferencing: Zoom Meeting, Skype
• Google Suite: Storage, sharing, emailing, file management and other necessary functionality
• Communication: Slack, Skype
• Design Collaboration: InVision
• Project management: Trello, Basecamp, Asana

6. Provide Regular Feedback

Stay in touch with the team or the project manager. It essential to evaluate the work and give your directions after the completion of each milestone. Decide the time and frequency of calls for feedback to ensure you have are regularly staying in touch with the team and project development runs smooth.

And Lastly

7. Enjoy the Benefits of Outsourcing

Here are the 3 key benefits of outsourcing your development work:

Cost Efficiency

Outsourcing your app development is the best way to keep business costs down. In fact, a report by Deloitte reveals that cost efficiency is the major reason why organizations consider outsourcing.

It significantly reduces the overhead costs associated with hiring, managing and controlling the in-house team. Outsourcing to countries in Asia and western Europe helps you to cut down the cost with the lower wage rates. And further, you get a number of payment models that suits your business and project needs.

Skilled Talent and Better Efficiency 

Outsourcing not only helps in cost-cutting but also achieving better results that might not be possible with in-house teams. 

When you choose to rent a coder you have a large pool of talented resources. These resources are skilled with years of experience and technology expertise that might be difficult to find while hiring in-house.

Giants like Alibaba and Skype also outsourced their development to get the benefit of appropriate and skilled talent for their product.

Flexibility & Optimization 

Unlike in-house teams, scaling up and down the outsourced team is quite easy. As the work increases or to make the development faster, you can anytime hire more resources. Similarly scaling down the team can help to free up the unused resources and save costs. Further, if you outsource to a development company resources optimization becomes even easier.

Looking to outsource your project — need a dedicated team of developers or a top-rated app development company? You are at the right place.

Just drop us a line and we’ll get back to you.

The post How to Rent a Coder or a Team to Keep Up App Development During COVID Pandemic appeared first on Techuz Blog.

Furthermore, you need to create an effective app development flow to prevent pitfalls in the process. To that end, you have to look at helpful strategies and apply them to your workflow. 

Below, we discuss seven strategies that can aid you in improving the effectiveness of your app development. 

1. Align your app with your business objectives

Before you begin your app development process, you have to consider the following questions:

• Who are you creating an app for?
• What are the features you want to include in your app?
• What will make your app different from your competitors’?
• What do you aim to achieve with your app?
• Which platform is the most appropriate? 

These are important questions you need to answer before you go to the drawing board. The right app development software can make the building part easy for you but only when you have the answers to the above questions are you able to align your application development project with your business objectives. They also become your guidelines as you design and build your app so that you can concentrate. And by aiming your attention only at the goal, you can work faster on your app.

2. Consider rapid development

Rapid application development focuses mostly on being adaptive but you can still integrate this with your planning. This means that you can layout the things you have to do for your app but also leave room for adaptability. 

When you take the rapid development approach, you can focus on creating an app that provides an excellent experience to users. This way, you can persuade your audience to keep on using your application. 

What’s more, by adapting rapid development, you can be flexible in solving problems that arise during the process; you would not need to overhaul the entire foundation that you have laid out. Additionally, you can roll out updates faster at a later date to enhance your app’s functionalities and user experience.

3. Pay attention to user experience

User experience (UX) is defined by the Nielsen Norman Group as something that comprises every aspect of a user’s interaction with a brand, including its products and services. They also mentioned that the best user experience is possible only when you can meet the requirements of your intended users. 

And as mentioned in the previous section, refined user experience is the key to keeping members of your target audience engaged. Without it, you may have a high number of app installs but a low number of active users. Case in point, Statista published a report that as of June 2019, the global app abandonment rate is at 25%. This means that individuals stopped using apps after using them only once. 

However, in the second half of 2018, Statista recorded that 43% of global app users were still interacting with apps a month after they downloaded them. Meanwhile, 29% of mobile app users remained engaged for three months, which means the churn rate is at 71%.

You can hope for a high retention rate for your app when you are working on delivering the best user experience possible. You can do this by providing more interactive elements and by paying attention to how your apps can uplift users’ emotions or resolve issues they may be having.

4. Shift focus from app downloads to engagement

User engagement is as important as user experience. The key to keeping users engaged is to know what they need and by meeting those necessities. You can begin addressing this during the design phase so that you can add features and tools that are in demand among end-users. When potential users test your app, you can see which parts of your app they like to use most so you can enhance those sections. Of course, you can also find out which sections they do not use often or do not care about at all. You can begin determining the ROI of data that you gain from this once you generate new reports regarding user engagement after you have deployed new features. 

There are also other analytics that can help you such as crash reporting, device model or type, mobile OS, and more that you can access with Business Intelligence (BI) tools or something similar. As long as you have knowledge of the way users are interacting with your app and of other relevant things, you can improve your features to increase engagement. This way, you can prevent issues from blowing up to the point that they have a huge negative impact on your app rating and on your organization’s reputation.

5. Integrate with relevant third-party solutions

When users do something on the web app, they expect to find the results of that action on the mobile app and vice versa. You can achieve this by integrating back-end systems as well as relevant third-party platforms. An API-first methodology can help, as it offers adaptability. This also gives users the ability to streamline the flow of information between your app and other apps that are crucial to them. 

Apart from making the information flow seamless for your users, you can also unload a huge problem off your application developers’ shoulders: information stockpiling and frameworks of record recovery. 

6. Boost security with cloud technologies.

According to Breach Level Index, there have been more than 14 billion data records that have either been lost or stolen since 2013. Among those, 4% were secure breaches, which means the data that was accessed illegally is useless. 

Breach Level Index reports that more than 14 billion user data were lost or stolen from 2013 to present.

While users are concerned about their privacy and data security, they are not exactly interested in the particulars. That is why the burden rests on the shoulders of app developers to make sure that customers’ records do not fall into the wrong hands. 

In this regard, leveraging the cloud in your app development can help you surmount plenty of security challenges. You can resolve these issues with strong authentication solutions and other mechanisms such as encryption and SSL via cloud services. Once you have ensured that, you can be confident that your users’ data is safeguarded. 

7. Set policies for monitoring and governance

Problems may occur with your app no matter how much you have made certain that bugs have been eradicated. That is why it is imperative that you put in place policies for app monitoring and governance. You can configure these even if you are using an app development software for beginners. By doing so, you can resolve issues as soon as they arise and before they wreak havoc with your application.

Apart from that, you may also want to consider outlining policies for scaling and migration. There may come a time when your current system or infrastructure would be enough. When that day rolls in, with scaling and migration guidelines, you would be able to complete the required IT development process with little to no problem. 

Implementing app development strategies

There are numerous strategies that exist that can help transform your app development. Those written above are only a few but they can already have a huge impact on your app development workflow. The changes may not be apparent at first, but as you continue implementing them, you may find that your app development team’s performance has become better.

The post 7 Strategies to Improve Effectiveness of Your App Development appeared first on Techuz Blog.

Sounds familiar?

Well, that’s how we feel while playing a game.

At some point in life, we all have played games — virtual or real. And the experience is delightful — motivating us to play more, score points, complete the challenges and achieve feats. Reports show that there are 3.2 billion gamers worldwide making video games an enormous giant in the world economy. Some reports have also forecasted that it is expected to grow to $300 Billion in 2025. And looking at these trends — there seems no sign of slowing down.

But it’s not just the game industry that’s proliferating, a theory stemmed from gaming is showing a promising trajectory. And this theory is known by the name “gamification”.

What is Gamification?

Gamification is the process of incorporating game elements into non-gaming activities to trigger certain user behaviors. The game elements may include a range of gaming mechanics and dynamics such as badges, levels, leaderboards, points and XPs that motivates the user to take actions to achieve them.

At its heart, the prime goal of gamification is to drive more engagement and inspire the user to participate more often in a process, activity or content.

Though the concept of gamification is here for a while now, in recent times, its use has been proliferated across all domains and industries. According to a report, the gamification market in 2016 was estimated at $4.91 billion which is expected to grow to nearly 12 billion in 2021. In fact, many web and mobile applications we use on a daily basis underpin gamification principles to engage the audience and make their applications and portals more interactive.

Gamification market is expected to grow to nearly 12 billion in 2021. 

(Source – Statista)

Here, check these examples of gamification. Probably you might have come across them.

(Google Doodle – Here’s an amazing example of gamification by Google. On the 44th anniversary of Hip Hop, Google introduced an interactive gamified doodle that lets the user drop the beats! As the user completes different tasks on the turntable, they unlock achievements. This doodle was a massive success with a large number of impressions and engagement all over the world.)

(Myntra Insider Program – Online fashion e-commerce company Myntra came up with a gamified loyalty program named “Myntra Insider”. The program aimed to acquire new users and improve engagement, rewards the members for purchases and provides different badges and levels for exclusive perks and privileges. )

Alright, you know what gamification is — and you also know that it can turn dull things more compelling, so now let’s understand how gamification work.

The Why and How of Gamification

The why and how of gamification can be summarized in three words: Brain, motivation and dopamine.

How? I’ll explain.

Whenever we are excited or experience pleasure, a neurotransmitter called dopamine is activated in our brain. To put it simply — dopamine is a chemical that makes you feel good. And all the games are designed to release this chemical in our brain.

You defeat an opponent, dopamine is activated. Unlock a new level, dopamine is released. You see your name on the leaderboard — again, dopamine.

So whatever process or activity that is gamified by applying the game elements have the same effects as a game does. You earn points, receive rewards, overcome challenges, unlock new levels or see your name on the leaderboard — your brain releases dopamine that makes you feel good and motivates you to chase after more rewards.

(Gamification and our brain – How gamification works)

Gamification in Education

Without a doubt, gamification is a smart strategy to influence and motivate people whether they are customers, employees, patients or (of course) students. In fact, triggering the basic human desires with gamification to engage the learner, motivated and enhance the overall learning experience has rejuvenated the learning process.

Consider this scenario: Kids hate reading or doing their homework. Staying awake late at night to study might not sound something exciting to them.

But when it comes to playing games — they are ready to sacrifice their sleep just to boost the XPs and unlocking new levels. They experience a sense of accomplishment when they progress in the game. So when gaming elements are combined with education, it facilitates both fun and learning at the same time.

This eventually results in learner spending more time on learning willfully as they engage themselves in collecting rewards and completing the game challenges. Let’s understand the gamification elements and how they are applied to education and learning.

Elements of Gamification & How to Use them in Education

The rewards, badges, leaderboards or any similar elements that motivate the user or satisfy the desire are game elements. These elements can be divided into two categories — game mechanics and game dynamics.

Game Mechanics

Game mechanics are used to gamifying any process or content. They drive and encourage user behavior through rewards, points, feedbacks and other kinds of incentives. The game mechanics are the foundation for gamification of a non-gamified entity.

List of Game Mechanics:

• Score
• Ranks, Levels
• Badges, Trophies
• Team, Individual Tasks
• Unlocks
• Visualized dashboard or progress bar
• Virtual Currency
• Avatars, Individual Profile
• Leaderboards

Game Dynamics

Game mechanics can drive the user motivation for a while; however, when things get repetitive — the user gets bored with the game. That’s when game dynamics comes in. These game dynamics combines the user’s behavior with the game mechanics and evolves them over time to avoid making the game monotonous.

List of Game Dynamics

• Achievements
• Progress
• Collaboration
• Surprise
• Collection
• Competition

How to Use These Game Elements in Learning

Score, Points and XPs

Collecting scores, points or XPs make the learner feel rewarded and these are among the prime motivator. The scores and points collected unlocks new levels for the user and can also be used to unlock more content on the platform.

How to use it?

The grading system can be based on these rewards where the learner is rewarded for every effort made. There’s no punishment for underperformance but just rewards for the efforts. This way of cumulative rather than reductive grading proves to be efficient as each evaluation and tests feel rewarding and not discouraging.

Even the students are motivated to demonstrate their competence by progressing and scoring more just like one does in games.

For instance, based on the lesson, students are given a quiz to evaluate their understanding. When they give the right answers, a small reward such as XP is provided for the efforts.

A great example of this reward based grading is incorporated by professor Lee Sheldon of Indiana University. Instead of assigning grades to his students, he gives “experience points” at the end of the course. Each student starts with zero and earns experience points for tests and projects. Sheldon says that this system of grading motivated by game theory makes the learning fun activity rather than boring education.

Levels and Challenges

Levels are the common mechanics in the games. You complete the challenges, progress to a certain threshold and a new level is automatically unlocked. A high number of unlocked levels in the game also determines the expertise as it requires the user to spend more time, complete challenges, tasks and milestones.

How to use it?

Levels can be a great way to define the learner’s journey. Starting from the basics of the subject with simple tasks and gradually increasing the level of difficulty as the student progress in the module. This gradual increase in difficulty and complexity while progressing to new levels gives the user a sense of development and they improve their competence.

DuoLingo is one such language learning platform that uses levels. As the learner progresses and masters each level of the language, his XP increases and he unlocks new levels. The app provides 25 levels for each language and the user can achieve it by accumulating the necessary language skills.

(DuoLingo – Language learning platform)

Yousicisian, an interactive music learning application to learn guitar, piano, bass, ukulele and even singing provides the user with missions and levels. The user starts with level 0, i.e. a complete beginner and progresses based on his mastery on chords and melodies. By the time the user reaches level 15, he is able to play the instrument virtuously.

(Yousician – A platform to learn music instrument)

Badges and Trophies

Badges and trophies in gamification work the same way as in the real world. Just like the soldiers are awarded badges for their bravery or different colors and tags of credit cards represent the credit limits, these badges and trophies are a symbol of status in gamification. And users can exhibit these badges on their profile to show off their feats.

How to use it?

Badges and trophies can be awarded to the students for their achievements and feats. On completion of different challenges, assignments or tasks, the student can be awarded a badge and trophy that is visible on their profile. One of our clients, Getlitt, has incorporated the same badge system.

Getlitt is an online book reading platform with a motto to develop reading habit among children. Kids earn badges as they complete reading the books and perform related tasks such as quizzes or vocabulary and grammar mastery. Kids even earn trophies as they finish the number of books in the challenge.

Another great instance of this is Khan Academy where students can earn badges on completing the courses. They have an entire page where students can watch the videos and answer the questions or solve the problems and win badges for the course. Even Codeacademy an online platform to learn coding languages provides a badge on completion of each course. However, one thing that you must keep in mind while incorporating badges is that the badges awarded should be something meaningful on the platform or community.

(Khan Academy- Free online courses and lessons)

Leaderboards and Competition

Competition is one of the motivations that push us to move forward and perform better. Leaderboards are one such game mechanism that inspires the users to perform to see their name at the top of the list. Most of the addictive games whether it be the all-time classic Pacman or Candy Crush Saga — all have leaderboards.

How to use it?

Learners with the best performance whether it be earning XPs, badges or trophies can be incentivized by featuring their name on the leaderboard. The learner puts extra efforts in the learning activity just to see the name on the top position or maintaining it.

Getlitt has also incorporated the leaderboards of the students based on the knowledge points (XPs) earned. The leaderboards are categories at micro levels such as friends and class and macro levels such as school, city, state and national level. Play.Typeracer, a gamified platform for increasing the typing speed also uses leaderboards to motivate the users. The platform provides the list of the latest high score, individual’s best score and a list of players with an all-time high score.

(GetLitt- Online book reading app for kids)

Some of the Popular Gamified Education Platform

Byju’s

Byju is one of the leading Edtech startups offering a vast range of online materials for K12 and competitive exams such as CAT, IAS, GRE, JEE, NEET and GMAT. The company has a huge user base of 33 million users including 2.2 million annual paid users and 10+ million downloads on Play Store. As of 2019, Byju’s has secured funding of $785 million making it the most valuable EdTech startup in the world with a valuation of $5 billion.

The platform has incorporated game design and gamification elements with rich interactive videos to create learning more engaging and fun.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is another educational platform providing personalized learning to the students. They are a non-profit organization providing a range of courses for varied subjects starting from math, science, grammar, economics to music and world history, and is available in more than 36 languages. This gamified learning platform uses reward-based grading system where students are given XPs for completing the course modules. It also provides immediate feedback that helps the students to improve. Khan Academy has received a notable amount of donations from top-tier companies, organizations and philanthropists including Google, Comcast, Oracle, Bank of America, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and more.

DuoLingo

Duolingo is simple and effective language learning platform where with a massive database of languages courses including — Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Duch, Irish Swedish, Ukrainian, Esperanto, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Welsh, Turkish and English.

With a user base of 300 million learners, Duolingo is the world’s largest language learning platform. The entire platform is gamified where the learner progresses through different levels on completing quizzes and challenges while getting instant feedbacks for improvements. Each lesson of the courses in Duolingo consists of a range of activities to make language learning a delightful experience. The pedagogy of this gamified platform is so effective that multiple studies show 34 hours spent on learning on Duolingo is equivalent to a full semester of language education in a University.

Yousician

Yousician is a music learning app that has revolutionized music education. The user can choose to learn — guitar, ukulele, piano, bass and even learn singing. Here’s how it works:

This gamified music learning app is divided into different modes — mission, songs, daily goals and challenges. The learner gets daily exercise where he can practice the instrument and receive feedback in real time. As the user improves his proficiency and skills, he is able to unlock new levels and content in the learning journey. It also provides weekly challenges where the learner can compete with their friends and other app users worldwide.

Currently, Yousician has 10 million+ download on Play Store with over 257k positive reviews and is widely used by beginners and advanced musicians, music teacher as well as professional musicians.

Knudge.me

Knudge.me is another learning platform made for those looking to improve their English and Math. The app comes with small snackable lessons or as they describe “Bite-sized lessons” on English vocabulary, grammar, idioms, phrasal verbs, math tips and tricks and more.

The platform comes with almost a dozen of games such as — Space Pursuit (a game to improve writing skills), Jelly Fizz (to improve speaking skills), Word Race (to improve reading speed), Panda’s Trail (to improve grammar) and more fun games.

Knudge.me has been editor’s choice app on play store with 3+ million downloads and more than 43k positive (4.8/5) rating.

Wrapping Up

Now you know what is gamification, how it works and how this theory is bringing a paradigm shift in the age-old learning methods. Leveraging the game mechanics and dynamics into dull learning process motivates the learner intrinsically as well as extrinsically — resulting in better learning outcomes and experience.

Hope this article has given you good insights on gamification. And if you are looking forward to implementing it, we can help you out.

Techuz has deep expertise in developing EdTech and e-learning solutions and has delivered successful gamified learning platform.

Our team of designers and developers are proficient in web application development and developing learning platforms that ensure your content and courses deliver the best results to the learners.

Looking forward to developing your own gamified learning portal? Feel free to contact us!

The post What is Gamification? A Detailed Guide to Gamification in Education & Gamified Learning Apps appeared first on Techuz Blog.

But all these changes and the introduction of new methods are aimed at one thing — to enhance the development process and provide better products to the end user.

CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery/Deployment) are such methods that are gaining momentum among developers using DevOps. In this article, we’ll discuss what exactly is CI/CD and how it can help you to develop better products.

What is CI/CD?

Understanding the Terms

Continuous Integration (CI) refers to committing (integrating) the code of individual developers — several times a day into a repository and run an automated test. What this does is, it helps to detect the issues and resolve them at a very early stage.

Continuous Delivery (CD) starts when the CI ends. Once the code is committed by the developers, they are uploaded on the staging server. Here, the application is checked to ensure that it’ll work well on the production server.

Continuous Deployment is a different concept than Continuous Delivery. CD here refers to the deployment of the built directly to the server after the code is committed and passes the test. Adopting Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment enables producing new working software at a faster rate.

Continuous Integration

Traditionally, the developers used to work on isolated features of the application, submit the code and integrate it at the end of the cycle. This lead to spending several hours on tweaking the code and resolving issues to get it working. This task was quite daunting and cost the developers more time, efforts that resulted in deadline pressures. In the development world, this issue is known by the slang integration hell.

That’s when Continuous Integration comes it. It is a practice where developers integrate their code into the main branch of the repository several times a day. The code is then validated by creating a built and running automated tests. This continuous integration of small chunks of the codes — typically several times a day results in a seamless and easy integration that saves time and effort.

Benefits of Continuous Integration

• Automated tests detect bugs at an early stage so that you can ship a clean final product to the customers.
• Continuous Integration makes the release way easier and helps to avoid the integration hell.
• Automated tests can run a number of tests at a time that reduces the overall cost of testing.
• Even the quality analysts can focus on improving the quality of application cohesively rather spending time on testing and finding bugs.

What You Need to Practice

• Maintain a common code repository where the developers can commit code — such as GitHub and Gitlab.
• Automate the build.
• Configure the automated testing on the built package.
• Developers must commit the new code as often as possible typically several times a day.

Continuous Delivery

Continuous Delivery is an extension of Continuous Integration. It is a practice that enables the developer to release the software on the production server with confidence.

Once the code is integrated, build and passes the automated tests, the built is pushed to the mock server. This enables the developer to check the application on the production-like environment and confidently upload it on the actual production environment — ensuring that the software will work well when it reaches to the customer.

To ensure that the software will work well when it reaches the customer, developers must employ the right automation testing tool to maintain a high quality of code throughout the continuous delivery pipeline.  Functionize’s picks of automation testing tools are designed to automate the testing process to achieve faster release cycles without compromising on software quality. The automation of the testing process enhances the reliability and stability of the software in real-world applications.

The main goal of continuous delivery is to make the application deployment seamless, reduce risk and ensure the application will work great in the production environment. With CD, the application is always ready to deploy and there is no last-minute anxiety or urgency. Even the team can be confident about their codebase and can concentrate on their daily development tasks.

Benefits of Continuous Delivery

• Continuous Delivery makes the application deployment painlessly easier and the team no longer have to spend time on the release.  
• It also reduces the risk of deploying the application with bugs as they are detected early on the production-like mock environment.
• Research has shown that CD making the releases easy and efficient reduces the burnout and ultimately makes the team happier.
• Releases can be made quicker and more often resulting in faster customer feedback and improving the product.

What You Need to Practice

• Your continuous integration must work well and the automated tests must cover enough codebase.
• Once the deployment is triggered, it must be fully automated without any need for human intervention.
• Incorporation of blue-green deployment or feature flags so that the incomplete features do not create downtime and affect the users.

Continuous Deployment

While Continuous Delivery makes the codebase ready for the deployment, Continuous Deployment releases it directly to the production server.

Continuous deployment is a practice for application deployment wherein any code commit passing the automated testing is automatically released to the production server and made available to the users. This process of deployment is fully automated without any manual intervention — and the build components that don’t pass the production pipeline are prevented from deploying on the server.

This kind of automatic deployment works great to ship the new components and features of the application and bug fixes quickly to the customers. Users’ feedback is quick as customers stay in the loop with every update and even the team experiences peace of mind as there is no pressure of release date. Thus, ultimately developers can focus more on developing the application and see their work go live.

Benefits of Continous Deployment

• Deliver the new changes to the customers as soon as they are developed.
• You get an early ROI for the new feature as it is available to the users quickly soon after its development.
• Since small chunks of changes are released, it gets easier to fix the bugs.
• There is an incremental improvement in quality in a shorter period of time instead of quarterly or yearly improvements. 

What You Need to Practice

• Incorporation of feature flags is an integral part of the process.
• The changes are released as soon as the code is committed, built and tested. So the quality of the new releases will be highly dependent on the testing.

What is CI/CD Pipeline?

Now you know that CI/CD is the strategies to ship well-tested applications frequently to the customers — and making the development process fast and efficient. However, the success of this discipline relies on a reliable CI/CD pipeline.

A CI/CD pipeline is the structure that automates the steps of the application delivery process.  Since the process is automated, it removes the chances of committing any manual error and provides a quick product iteration. From a high-level view, the CI/CD pipeline includes steps such as — code commit, build, automated testing and deployment on staging and production server.  

(An example of CI/CD Pipeline)

1. Commit

The pipeline starts with a common code repository where multiple developers working on the application commits their code several times a day. Some of the popular and widely used code repositories are  GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab, Beanstalk and SourceForge.

2. Build

Now, the changes are built using a built management system. The source code is combined to build a runnable component of the product. 

3. Automate Testing

In this step, automated tests are run to check the codes. Automated testing plays an important role in the entire CI/CD pipeline and the success of delivering bug-free application depends on it. The code goes through varied tests depending on the complexity and needs of the project. We’ll discuss the type of tests in a few moments. Popular tools for automated testing are Telerik Test Studio, Selenium, Robotium, SoapUI and TestDrive.

4. Deploy

 Once the built passes through the automated tests, they’re ready to be deployed. The deployment can be either on the staging server, where the application is reviewed and additionally tested in the mock environment that is similar to the production environment. Or can be directly deployed onto the production server and made available to the users. Jenkins, Atlassian Bamboo, AWS CodeDeploy and CICircle are the majorly used tools.

(Deployment on the production-like staging server)

(Direct deployment on the  production server)

The entire CI/CD pipeline is automated based on the needs of the project and organization. You can either adopt Continuous Delivery where the changes are uploaded on the mock server and then onto the production server or the highest level of automation — Continuous Deployment, where the changes are reflected in the production server automatically once the code is committed and passes the test. 

Types of Automated Testings

Unequivocally, the key to successful continuous integration and continuous deployment/delivery is automated testing. And without it, there can be no successful CI/CD pipeline. These automated testing are divided into different types that serve their own purpose. The following are some of the tests included in automated testing, though it is not necessary to include every test at once.

• Unit Testing – Unit testing is done to test individual classes or functions.
• Integration Testing – Integration tests make sure that the multiple modules of the applications work well with each other.
• System Testing – System testing tests the entire system in an environment that replicates the real production environment.
• UI Testing – UI testing is performed to make sure the application works great as per the user’s perspective.

Wrapping Up

To wrap up, the ability to deliver the application, new features, components and bug fixes — quickly and efficiently is a necessity to stay ahead in the competition. And CI/CD is one such method that you can employ to meet the demands of modern software, web and mobile development. Once you put it in place and practice the right CI/CD principles, it can reap benefits for both your team as well as the end users.

The post What is CI/CD? An Introduction to Continuous Integration, Continuous Deployment and CI/CD Pipeline appeared first on Techuz Blog.

Or as a client, you may recall some sweet-sounding terms – “Agile’, “Lean’, “Dynamic System Development Model’ (alright, this one’s not so sweet) or ‘Spiral’, because the web development company you hired practices it or at least claims to practice it.

We all know that these SDLC methodologies are here for a while now and play a significant role in the success of your software or web application. They aim to provide the best quality product that meets or even transcends the client’s requirements.

But the fact is, apart from the ones that frequently make headlines, there is a huge list of SDLC models that you ought to know.

So in this blog, we have made a list of all those SDLC methodologies empowering you with the knowledge to apply them in your project. Here, take a look at the top SDLC methodologies with their pros and cons.

Top SDLC Methodologies

1. Waterfall Model

• Pros 1.0.1
• Cons 1.0.2

2. Rational Unified Process

• Pros 2.0.1
• Cons 2.0.2

3. Joint Application Development

• Pros 3.0.1
• Cons 3.0.2

4. Spiral Model

• Pros 4.0.1
• Cons 4.0.2

5. Prototype Methodology

• Pros 5.0.1
• Cons 5.0.2

6. Agile Software Development Methodology

• Pros 6.0.1
• Cons 6.0.2

7. Scrum Development Methodology

• Pros 7.0.1
• Cons 7.0.2

8. Extreme Programming Methodology

• Pros 8.0.1
• Cons 8.0.2

9. Feature Driven Development

• Pros 9.0.1
• Cons 9.0.2

10. Rapid Application Development

• Pros 10.0.1
• Cons 10.0.2

11. Dynamic System Development Model Methodology

• Pros 11.0.1
• Cons 11.0.2

12. Lean

• Pros 12.0.1
• Cons 12.0.2

Waterfall

Waterfall Model is among the traditional SDLC methodologies. In fact, it is the oldest, most rigid and even easiest to understand. The idea here is quite simple: develop one phase of the project completely and move on to the next. Develop the new phase and advance to the next one. In this way, the project progresses and moves forward in a linear flow.

And as per the traditional waterfall model, any changes or modifications can’t be performed once a phase of the project is developed completely. This SDLC methodology is best fitted for small projects where deliverables can be defined clearly.

Pros

1. Waterfall model is easy to understand due to its simple linear structure

2. It helps to define the goals and deliverables at the early stage of the project

3. Project management is simple and effective as there are no unnecessary changes

4. This model works effectively with smaller projects where the requirements are clearly

5. Each stage are clearly defined and understood

Cons

1. Definitely not a great choice complex and long-term project

2. Impossible to make changes at the later stage

3. This SDLC model doesn’t work for maintenance type project

4. Successful execution of the project depends on precise requirements

5. No working model of the software until the end of the life cycle

Rational Unified Process

Introduced by Rational Software, a subsidiary of IBM, Rational Unified Process  is one of the iterative SDLC methodologies

IBM  defines RUP – “The Rational Unified Process® is a Software Engineering Process. It provides a disciplined approach to assigning tasks and responsibilities within a development organization. Its goal is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users, within a predictable schedule and budget.”

RUP divides the development process into four different phases namely Inception, Elaboration, Construction and Transition. Each of these phases goes through nine different stages shown in the figure above.

By doing so it lays organized guidelines and structured templates to follow during the development process. Further, providing a specified plan at every phase helps in utilizing the available resources in an efficient and judiciously way.

Pros

1. This SDLC methodology puts emphasis on maintaining precise documentation

2. It reuses the components, thus saves the development time significantly

3. Ample amount of resources and literature is dispensed by its creators

4. The adaptive nature makes it easier to deal with changing customer needs and project requirements

Cons

1. For projects with new technology, the components can’t be reused and hence time spends on development can’t be saved

2. It is a relatively complex methodology which requires expert developers

3. Despite the unfathomable resources available, RUP  is reasonably complicated model to understand

Joint Application Development

Joint Application Development was introduced in the early 70s as a software development methodology. However, due to its attribute to give more importance to business issues and solving them by involving the end user, instead of merely focusing on the technical aspects made it viable for any kind of projects.

This methodology works on a simple philosophy – involving the client and end-user in the development process results in a project that is more aligned and suitable to their needs.

Joint Application Development Model brings the developers, clients and other stakeholders together through a series of meetings and called JAD sessions. These collaborative workshops help to define the requirements more clearly and from different viewpoints of business, end-user as well as developers.

Pros

1. Identifies and lowers the risks through the collaboration of different parties

2. Requirements are well defined and clearly understood

3. Maintains continuous and proper communication between clients and developers

4. The open discussion with key members and customers also helps to diagnose any kind of errors at the initial stage. This results in quality and speedy development.

Cons

1. This method is significantly time-consuming

2. Discussions and opinions among team members can also work as a distraction towards goal

3. Considerable investment in planning and requirements can increase the total cost

Spiral Model

Spiral Model is considered to be one of the best Software Development Life Cycle methodologies for a large and complex project. It is an amalgamation of the two methodologies Waterfall Model and Prototyping Model.

If you look at its diagram, you can see that the spiral has different loops known as phases.

Each phase passes through four different quadrants (stages) and keeps on repeating until the final product is developed.

Each quadrant represents different tasks such as determination of requirement, analysing risks, engineering and planning. Thus, each phase of the project passes through. The success of this model largely depends on the risk-analysis, so a high level of risk-analysing expertise is required.

Pros

1. The spiral model is known for its flexibility as changes can be made on the later stage of the project

2. It is one the Software Development Life Cycle Methodologies that helps in mitigating the risk by analyzing and solving it beforehand

3. Clients are connected with the development team and project as they share the requirements and feedbacks of each phase

4. It is suitable for long-term and complex projects

Cons

1. Requires high risk-analysing expertise

2. The project takes a significantly long time to develop, increasing the overall expense of the project

3. It is complex to understand and implement

4. Since the number of iteration are unknown, the time required to complete the project remains a mystery

Prototype Methodology

Prototyping model is one of the most used Software Development Life Cycle Methodologies. As per the name suggests, prototypes are created to visualize the functionality and components of the software.

In this methodology, a working prototype of the web application is created before initiating the actual development. These prototypes are sent to the customer for feedback and then necessary changes are made. This cycle of prototyping and updating as per customer’s feedback is repeated till the accurate prototype is achieved for the development.

Pros

1. During the entire cycle, the clients stay in the loop. Thus, transparency during the development is maintained

2. Prototyping Methodology is quite adaptive as any updates or new requirements are accommodated

3. It mitigates or eliminates  the risks before the actual product is developed

4. One can expect quality results with this SDLC process as any flaws can be identified and refined before the development initiates

Cons

1. It can be comparatively costly as more time and resources are required for prototyping

2. Revisions and updates affect the project workflow and duration

Agile Software Development Methodology

Agile is among the modern breeds of Software Development Life Cycle Methodologies introduced to developing the utmost quality software. It was created in 2001 by 17 technologists with four main principles at its core:

#1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

#2. Working software over comprehensive documentation

#3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

#4. Responding to change over following a plan

Agile encourages building the project progressively rather than holistically. It follows the time-bound and iterative approach that builds software incrementally by updating and delivering small chunks instead of trying to deliver all at once. This incremental development is time-bound and the time period can be between a week to a month.

Pros

1. Highly adaptable to changes according to client and situation

2. Clients and customers are in direct communication providing transparency in the development process

3. Agile methodology mitigates the risks by updating the software with each iteration

Cons

1. No adequate documentation as the methodology deals with the functionality of the software

2. At times, it can go off track due to less focus on planning

Scrum Development Methodology

Scrum is another popular Agile SDLC framework widely used by the dev team. Usually people consider it as a methodology; however, Scrum is a framework that that uses Agile methodology for the project development.  

The project is developed in series iterations and sprints which are time-bound between a week to a month. And its progress is gauged on daily basis.

(In Scrum, the term “sprint” is used for one development cycle generally known as iteration.)

Each sprint initiates with a meeting that plans the list of tasks to execute. i.e deliverables. Then the team starts working on the plan starting from ideation, coding, testing, integration and so on until the product is developed. And at the end of each day, a Scrum Meeting is held between the client, team and Scrum Master updating about the progress of daily tasks.

Pros

1. Time and money are judicially and effectively utilized

2. Projects are managed effectively by dividing it into sprints

3. Daily scrum meetings help clients to stay updated about the progress and the team stays focused

4. As a part of the Agile methodology, it is quite flexible to changes

5. Scrum works extremely well with small teams

Cons

1. Using scrum with a large team can be a daunting task

2. Highly experienced and dedicated team members are quintessential

3. Daily meetings and updates can sometimes  get daunting 

Extreme Programming Methodology

Extreme Programming Methodology accentuates on adaptability and customer satisfaction. The idea here is to adapt to the ever-changing requirements of the project during the life cycle rather than defining the requirements initially and resisting change at the later stage.

This SDLC Methodology has gained significant favours from varied software and web development companies, as it provides high customer satisfaction and enables the developers to execute the required modifications, making the product impeccable.

Apart from adaptability, the main goal of XP methodology is to lower the cost incurred during the changes, which are generally quite high in case of traditional methodologies.  Even this methodology lives by a set of values and principles:

#1. Simplicity

#2. Streamlined Communication

#3. Feedback

#4. Respect

#5. Courage

Pros

1. Feedback from the client and flexibility to adapt the changes

2. Its core principles not only focuses on the client but also on employee satisfaction

3. The customer is constantly involved during the project and thus, can witness the progress

4.  Focuses on reducing the cost of the project

Cons

1. Many experts consider it to be a code-centric methodology and less of design-centric

2. Requires a highly disciplined team and frequent client feedback

3. Frequent meetings are essential as there is less documentation of the requirements during the initial stage. This arises the need of team member to be present together and may not be effective remote teams

Feature Driven Development

The agile process we discussed previously – Scrum and Extreme Programming work great with small teams of skilled people. However, when it comes to implementing with a large team, they are not an ideal choice.

The reason being – large teams face challenges such as effective communication, frequent meetings and updates, identifying and gauging the skills of the members and more.

Here, the Feature Driven Development or FDD comes into the picture as an SDLC methodology following Agile Manifesto that also works great with large teams.

As the name suggests, “Features” play an important role in Feature Driven Development. The project is divided into chunks as per its features and functionalities. And then planning, design, development and testing are in accordance with these features. Moreover, it also follows the iterative and incremental process.

Pros

1. Feature Driven Development makes it easier to develop a large project effectively

2. It also offers the client to gauge the progress easily

3. FDD is built on industry standards and follows the best practices for Software Development

4. Can employ different-teams simultaneously working on different features on the same project

Cons

1. It is built for larger projects and team. So, using this methodology for smaller projects is not suitable

2. The success is dependent on the leading developers; any kind of their inefficiency can lead to failure

3. Lack of proper written documents about the project and development

Rapid Application Development

Rapid Application Development is an SDLC methodology to accelerate the development with rapid prototyping of the product.

It is an iterative model that focuses more on functional software and prototyping and less on planning.

There are four main phases of RAD namely, requirement planning, user design, construction and cutover. The first two being the most important as they go through several iterations until the product is fully refined as per the user requirements.

Pros

1. Tasks become easy and achievable by modularizing the project

2. The functional model of the  product can be reviewed at an early stage

3. The user remains in the loop while the development and provides feedback

Cons

1. Requires highly skilled designers and developers with forte in the application area

2. Highly dependent on a strong team.

3. It would work best only with the systems and projects that can be divided into small chunks

4. RAD is highly expensive and is not recommended for small budget projects

Dynamic System Development Model Methodology

RAD methodology was quite swift but being unstructured it created chaos in development. This fueled the inception of a new Agile Methodology known as Dynamic Systems Development Model or feasible to say DSDM.

Developed by a group of project managers in 1994, DSDM is an iterative methodology that focuses on continuous user involvement along with developing it on budget and within the allotted time constraint.

It provides a framework for software development that passes through 4 phases. They are:

#1. Feasibility and business study

#2. Functional model / prototype iteration

#3. Design and build iteration

#4. Implementation

Pros

1. Adheres to budget and time of the project

2. Clients and end-users stay updated with the development

3. It is quite flexible to the changes

Cons

1. Just like RAD, it requires high technical as well as business expertise

2. It is of no use without proper user involvement

3. This methodology is uncommon making it hard to understand and implement

 Lean

Lean shares quite a few similarities with Agile. In fact, lean is considered to be the model under the umbrella of Agile principles; although, it was coined way before the Agile Manifesto was introduced.

It is based on seven principles and values namely, eliminate waste, amplify learning, decide as late as possible, deliver as fast as possible, empower the team, build integrity in and see the whole.

At its core, the main aim of this SDLC methodology is to elevating the customer value and eliminating the wastage, i.e. the unproductive activities. This makes is a great choice for the projects with a tight budget.

Pros

1. Saves time and money by eliminating wastage

2. Earlier product delivery to its value of “Deliver as fast as possible”

3. Lean can work great when the resources and time is scare

Cons

1. Requires proficient team that as the process is highly team-dependent

2. Decisions are to be made quickly during the process

3. There are chances that the team may get distracted due multi-tasking and varied responsibilities in small teams

Wrapping up

Now you know a dozen SDLC Methodologies. Each has a different use case, peculiar traits, forte and of course weakness. Some focusing on the process while other have end-user at their core. Some are conventional and rigid while some have evolved over time to serve as per the changing requirements. Choosing the right methodology according to the project needs and the product will definitely elevate the success rate of your project. Or if you are still unsure which SDLC methodology will work for you, feel free to contact us.

The post Top 12 SDLC Methodologies with Pros and Cons appeared first on Techuz Blog.