If you’ve ever been introduced to someone at a function with the brief description “This is so-and-so, they work in computers.” then you’ve probably had the follow up question “Oh really, so can you fix my printer? Why doesn’t it work?” To which we can only shrug helplessly. Printers follow their own secret, nebulous agenda, and nobody can make them obey rules that they don’t wish to follow. However, you’ve probably also had that statement. You know the one.
“I’ve got a great app idea.”
Sometimes, it’s someone’s cousin, insisting that they’re sitting on the next Facebook if only they could find someone to code it, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea.
At Shape, telling us that you have an app idea makes us sit up and take notice. We’re a tech consultancy, and we provide everything from guidance to full custom SaaS development. So if you have an app idea, we want to hear it. While Facebook seems to be doing pretty well for themselves, and probably doesn’t need a replacement, your business’s app just might be the next big thing.
However, app development can get pricey. You might need investors to fund your business’s app. But here we enter something of a catch-22: how do you attract investors with the funds to build the app if you can’t show them the app?
You need an MVP.
An MVP, or Minimum Viable Product is the smallest version of your app needed to show investors what it can do, and what it could be. It doesn’t have everything it will have eventually, but it has enough to prove your idea is viable for your business. And it does it within budget too.
An MVP isn’t “half an app”. It has to work, and it has to work well if you want to wow your investors with it. It needs the core functionality. If the defining feature of your app is location-based, like geofencing, or GPS, then location services need to work. It’s no good having a beautiful landing page and a friends list if the heart of the app is non-functional.
Apps solve problems. If we don’t understand the problem, we can’t deliver you a solution. That’s why when you talk to us, we’ll make sure we fully understand what you need out of this app, from the non-negotiables to the nice-to-haves. That way, we can work on delivering the best possible version of the MVP.
We can refine these requirements into user stores. You might have seen these before. They usually start with “As a user, I need to be able to…”. These stories guide development, by giving us a destination that we can start working towards. They also help us work towards our next step in the process, initial designs and prototyping.
Using tools like Figma, we can work on the user interface of your app. Having a solid user interface and user experience is key to the success of any project, and we can deliver this while also incorporating any branding you need, letting you resolve any issues, and iterate on your design, all before writing any code.
Once we’ve got the designs locked down, it’s time to bring your idea to life. We can start working on delivering your MVP, shaping it into a working product. We develop, test and refine that corefunctionality so that the product you show investors isn’t just a pretty landing page, it’s solid.
The result is an MVP you can confidently demo to investors and stakeholders to secure the funding that you need to take your app all the way.
So, next time you’ve got a great app idea, tell us. We want to hear all about it.
