How UX changed the way I look at my app

Ok, so this blog post is really more of a story as opposed to all my previous posts, that explain how to solve a particular programming problem. Ok so now let's start my story, so it starts off by me meeting this awesome researcher at a meetup and ends with my discovery of UX. Ok so let me start my story, so here goes...

In the beginning

So it all started in the 4th quarter of 2014 when I was looking for ways to promote my PTA (Post Traumatic Amnesia) app. So I came across this site called Meetup where I found the health tech meetup and I thought it would be a good way to try and promote my PTA app (which I will be releasing as an open-source project soon). At the meetup I met someone, a very interesting girl who was a researcher with her research topic being health, fitness and dieting. So we had a chat about what both of us wanted out of the meetup and how we both perceived the notion of building apps. This girl was Mandy Schippers, who is a "behavioural scientist" (the first time, I ever met one), who runs this website called strategic dieting. Anyway the meetup ended, Mandy and I managed to keep in touch and one day, she suggested that why don't we build a dieting app, where she can provide all the content based on her research expertise in the field and I can do the coding. Well, she has published a few papers in her field and in the few conversations that we had, I had no doubt in my mind that she was smart, so I had very little reason to say no to her suggestion on building the app.  

App inception

We decided to build both an HTML5/iOS version of the app and a web version for it and we did not start working on the app till late 2014.  After a few initial meetings, one of the first things that we wanted to accomplish was to build a GUI prototype of the app that we can test with end-users. So by Dec 2014, we had a working GUI prototype with a limited amount of real data which was hard-coded into the app. The purpose here was just to get some feedback from users, however this did not quite go as we had hoped and till end of Jan 2015, we did not manage to get any end-user feedback. So at this point, we decided that why don't we just release the app, try to market it and then get some users and get feedback from them so we shifted our focus on getting the app ready for release. So the app was coming together as we had planned, but it really felt like a hobby that both Mandy and I are pursuing, but we just kept going along with it. I guess because we simply did not know an better? I honestly do not have any solid explanation for it. About a month ago, I decided to go to this meetup called "programming an iOS app with Swift(can't remember the exact name)" at General Assembly in Sydney. Just to know anything minor that I may have missed during my Swift learning stage, now at the meetup they were talking about this whole app building process and one of the things they mentioned was UX. I was like "ahh, UX is probably just one of those things, that you do when you have the time". Anyway I managed to meet a girl there, who was a UX expert, we will just call her "the UX girl" for now. She stressed the importance of UX and I was like sure it is important and maybe Mandy and I will do all that once the app is released and we have some spare time. I managed to get her contact details anyway, just in case I wanted our app to be "UX'd" (clearly at this point, I did not take UX very seriously).

The app starts to feel like a real product

So a few weeks ago, I sent the UX girl an email asking if she has any UX tips at all based on the GUI prototype that Mandy and I had built. Now 2 things happened over the last weekend, I met a friend of mine who is a graphic designer and she gave me some really good feedback on what constitutes good app design and the UX girl replied to my email giving some UX suggestions. Now reading those UX suggestions was a big moment for both Mandy and I! Why? Well what felt like a hobby app, started to sound a lot more like a real product. It no longer felt like it is just a hobby app that Mandy and I were building, but a lot more like a product with which we intend to create an impact and affect the lives of our users. Creating an impact was our intention, but it did not feel quite like it, until we read those UX suggestions. The UX girl is Tertia Pentz and I can go on and on about what UX is or I can just point you to her website or her UX work for the LockNGo app. So all I will say is that, UX does play an important role in the entire app building process and I am just lucky to have met Tertia, who made me see the benefits of UX by her work.

Conclusion

Well the story is not over yet, so I will write more once the story develops further.




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