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Create a definition - add an image/sketch/photo to help remember or visualize what the term means

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Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that helps you learn to code and build apps using Swift, the same powerful language used to create world-class apps for the App Store. Engaging lessons and walkthroughs demonstrate the core concepts of coding and building apps as you write real Swift code in an interactive environment.

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Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary app for iPad and Mac that helps you learn and explore coding in Swift, the same powerful language used to create world-class apps for the App Store.

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Creating a code in order to perform a specific task or action. Usually it is better if it is fast and efficient.

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Sequencer is a list of values that you can step through one at a time.

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The ability to work for a specific purpose

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Loops are an easy way to efficiently repeat tasks as many times as you need to.

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Variables are like containers

Something you can add and edit the data for

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_SuPFgjq9jfwpCogE1D73sIsIoCDgU7K/view?usp=sharing

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If statements are logical building blocks used in programming so basically if statements are if something is true then do something otherwise do something else.

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https://codewithchris.com/how-to-make-iphone-apps-with-no-programming-experience/

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by Chris Ching

If you're curious about the app making process but not sure where to start, this is the guide for you!

Here I'll give you a comprehensive step by step guide from idea to execution. To make things easier, feel free to jump around based on your goals:

If that sounds good to you, let's get started!
How to make an app for beginners in 10 steps

1. Generate an app idea

2. Do competitive market research

3. Write out the features for your app

4. Make design mockups of your app

5. Create your app's graphic design

6. Put together an app marketing plan

7. Build the app with one of these options

8. Submit your app to the App Store

9. Market your app for maximum exposure

10. Improve your app with user feedback

11. Bonus: App making resources

If you already have an app idea, then you're set. Go to the next step!

However if you're still working on having a great idea for an app, I've got a handful of really good techniques to help you come up with your next hit app idea.

First keep in mind that there is rarely a completely new idea that is born from nothing.

There are over 4 million apps in the Google Play and Apple App Store combined according to Statista.com:

Most ideas are variations and combinations of old existing ideas. If you keep this in mind, it opens up your mind to think more creatively. Alright, on to the first technique:

Technique #1: The Remix Technique

One way to come up with a great app idea is to put a twist on an existing idea or try to combine elements from various apps that you like.

This happens all the time and produces great results!

For example, Words with Friends, a popular mobile game from Zynga is basically Scrabble but online with social and multiplayer features that makes it easy to play a long game in short pockets of free time.

This is none more apparent than with the multitude of dating apps out there. Every month there seems to be a brand new dating app coming out that targets a different audience or with a set of features (usually not new) that aren't in "other" dating apps.

Here's how you can do it for yourself:

Think of a few apps that you use very often. Is there a way that you could take the most useful features and meld them together to form a new type of app?

Got your app idea juices flowing? Skip to the next step!

Technique #2: Scratch your own itch

I love this technique because often times, the simplest ideas produce the greatest results. These simple ideas rarely come out of a brainstorm for app ideas.

Instead they're born from a problem that you face yourself in life. Chances are that if you have this problem and you're trying to find a solution for it, other people are as well.

If the problem can be solved with an app, that's a really good reason to create one!

Write down any of these ideas even if you know an app already exists to solve this problem because as you'll see in the next step, there may be an opportunity to make a better app than what currently exists.

Technique #3: Improve an existing app

Have you used an app and thought, "It would be so much better if this could do X"? If so, that's the creative spark of a really good potential app idea!

There's always room for improvement so if you thought that an app was sorely lacking a useful feature, chances are that you weren't the only one to think that.

If the original app author isn't constantly updating and improving the app, then there's an opportunity for you to create an even better app.

One way to figure out whether or not you're right about this is to check the reviews and ratings for the original app.

Are people complaining about the same thing? Are they complaining about something different? Is the app author listening to the feedback?

As you're going to see, listening to user feedback and improving your app based on that feedback is probably the singular driving force to the success of an app.

An absent app author is sentencing his or her app to a slow death of user attrition.

The next step is to validate your idea to make sure that it has a chance to thrive in the app store.

Now we need to figure out if the problem that your app solves is being solved by other apps.

**NOTE** If your reasons to make an app is to get some good ol' experience with the process (and not duke it out with the other guys) you can skip to the next step 🙂

Don't be disheartened if you see other apps in the App Store that already tackle the same problem that your app does. Remember what I said earlier, there are no new ideas and there is always room for improvements.

Actually, this can be a good thing because that tells you that your idea is viable and there is a real need for it. That's why there is competition!

The key is to uncover HOW WELL the need is being met by these other existing apps.

Potentially, these apps may be out of date or the app author may have stopped updating them.

Or maybe none of them meet the mark of what the audience REALLY NEEDS and WANTS.

Scroll through the ratings and reviews of any competing apps you find. Take note of the following:

You might want to create a matrix or spreadsheet to keep track of your results. This research that you're doing right now is going to create the starting point for the features to include in your own app and which ones to focus on first.

Here's what you're looking for:

App Name

This is mainly just for identification purposes to keep track of the various apps you'll scope out. Some people do put keywords as part of the app name as well. As you go through the list of the competing apps, see if you notice any specific words that keep coming up in the title of the app and consider using such a keyword for your app title.

Feature Set

Write down all of the features for each competing app. Make note of:

1. What the core features that all the competing apps have

2. What are the features unique to each of the competing apps

3. What features might be completely missing from any of the existing apps

Later on when we look at the reviews, you'll also try to see if users mention specific features that they love or hate.

Price/monetization

Is it a one time fee for the app? Is it free but monetized in some other way? The reason it's important to take note of this is two fold:

1. How do the users like the way it's monetized? For example, some people hate ads and would rather pay for an app than to deal with ad banners inside the app.

2. You can potentially monetize your app differently. For example, if the app is good but too expensive, you can find other ways to monetize your app.

App publisher

Who published the app? Is it an individual or a company? (Or is it a one-man company?)

The point is to see who you're up against. Large companies have big budgets for marketing teams and often have a team of people just working on a single app. It would be hard to compete head on. I'm not saying don't compete but we might have to have a unique angle with our app rather than trying to battle it out feature for feature.

If it's an individual's name then it's typically a single person and that gives us a little bit of reassurance if you're planning to go about this alone.

Sometimes if the app publisher is a company name, it could just be the company that the individual has registered. Visit the company website listed to try to figure out if it's a single person or a big company.

You'll often get your answer by visiting the contact or about page. If there's an entire team on the about page or if there's an address for an office building on the contact page, it's probably a sizable company.

Last updated

You want to figure out how well this app is being maintained. If the app author hasn't updated in a long time, then there's an opportunity for you to take the market share. However if the author is frequently updating the app then you'll want to make a note of this because this app will be competing with you actively.

Ratings and Reviews

How are users rating this app? If the app is rated badly, try to figure out why. Is it a lack of features? Is the app broken? This insight will help you avoid those pitfalls.

On the flip side, if the app is rated highly, download it and try it out for yourself, paying special attention to the feature set and user experience. You'll want to sift through the user reviews to see why users like this app so much. This will guide you in how you design, plan and prioritize the features for your own app.

Whether the app is rated poorly or highly, there's something to learn here. Sift through every single review and figure out what people are saying and why they're saying it. This is invaluable user feedback that you didn't have to pay for (in terms of dollars or blood and sweat) to find out!

Downloads

The number of downloads for an app isn't written on the App Store app listing but there are tools out there to "spy" on apps and get this information as an estimate. For example, SensorTower is one such tool that let's you see the estimated number of the number of downloads of an app for free.

For example, here's Netflix's stats:

Validate your idea

Now on the flip side if not much competition exists for your app idea, it could be that it's such a new and novel idea that no one has ever thought of it before or it could be that the idea isn't viable.

Start by deconstructing your idea a little bit so that you can succinctly convey the idea, audience and purpose of the app in 30 seconds to someone. Then practice delivering that elevator pitch to yourself in the mirror so that you're comfortable saying it.

It would be sad for someone to dismiss a great app idea because they can't understand it or the messaging is muddled.

When you've got a clear description of your app idea and you've practiced your explanation, try pitching it to your close family and friends. These people won't hesitate to tell you the truth. Ask them to play devil's advocate and try to poke holes in your app idea.

That may uncover something you hadn't thought about or it might force you address something you brushed aside in your excitement.

If you're getting good vibes about your app idea from this step so far, let's move on!

The more people you pitch your idea to, the better. Strangers, friends of friends, people on the internet etc. Don't be afraid to communicate your idea. Just remember this insight from Shark Tank Investor Chris Sacca - "Ideas are cheap, execution is everything." If you've gotten this far, you definitely take a pragmatic approach to your goals which is a good thing 🙂

This part is a lot of fun because you get to dream! Take your app idea and imagine what a perfect version of your app would be.

The vision will undoubtedly evolve and change based on actual user feedback and testing but for now, the sky's the limit. Get it all down on paper and realize your idea and breathe some life into it.

If you want, you can also think about how you will monetize the app. I do recommend that this shouldn't be the main focus of your app idea though. In the beginning stages of an app, user adoption is always more important.

When I was doing software consulting, this process was called business requirements gathering and it was the most important phase of the project because it helps clarify what clients wanted.

During this phase we sat down with the stakeholders and ironed out every single detail and documented the heck out of it. If there were any confusions down the line, we would be able to refer back to this document and review what was initially understood.

Now you don't have to be super rigorous and detailed for your own app idea but it's still a good idea to identify the overall goal and strategy to your app idea as much as possible now. Once you get into execution, any changes you want to make could potentially mean lots of wasted work and effort.

You don't have to decide on how many screens the app will have or what is on each screen; that's for the next step. But what you want to iron out is what the user will be able to accomplish in the app.

For example, if your app idea is a social networking app, then you might start writing:

Users will be able to create an account.

They can create a new account using an email and password or they can login with Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Users will be able to set a username, profile photo and short bio.

For the profile photo, the user should be able to select an existing photo from their photo library or take a new one with the camera from inside the app

Decide on the core features for an MVP

MVP was a concept that i first heard from The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. It stands for " minimum viable product " and the idea is that it's better to launch a small (but still useful) version of your product first so that you can get it into the hands of actual users.

That will help you get real world feedback from real users which can guide and correct your understanding of what people actually want.

Based on that feedback, you release an update to your app with more features and again, get it into the hands of users for feedback.

You repeat this cycle over and over and eventually arrive at a product that perfectly fits what the market wants.

Contrast this with spending a ton of money and time to build something and then finally launch it... only to find out that people didn't want it. Never build in a vacuum.

So take a look at all of the features you wrote down and think about what a simplified version 1 would look like. Make sure that the app can still be useful to your audience and solves the overall problem but it doesn't (and shouldn't) have all the bells and whistles for phase 1. More than likely, the bells and whistles you thought of might turn out to be not what your users needed in the first place.

Any feature that doesn't directly contribute to serving the overall purpose of the app can be considered for phase 2. All of the essential features that are left will be your minimum viable product!

Now you're ready to start thinking about how to design an app that is intuitive and easy to use. What will the user see and how will they interact with your app to use its features?

Usually I just start with a pencil and notebook or piece of paper because everything is in flux and there's a lot of rough sketching as your develop your ideas.

Main screens

Can you separate the functionality of your app into distinct sections or screens? These directions will be somewhat general since I don't actually know what your app idea is but I find the best way to do this is to imagine yourself using your app.

How many different sections make sense for displaying the information that you need to see?

For example, for a stock portfolio app, there might be a screen for the watchlist of stocks, another screen for the stocks in your portfolio, a screen that displays detailed information for a specific stock and another screen for managing the settings for the app.
Once you have a fair idea of the screens you'll need, move onto the next step. You're not going to get it 100% right at this point and it's completely normal to make changes during this design process as you move along!

Main navigation

Now that you have the main sections of your app, think about the main mechanism for navigating around inside of your app.

Is it going to have a tab bar at the bottom? Or maybe it's going to use a slide in side menu to navigate to the various sections of the app?

I would recommend taking a look at some of your favourite apps and paying attention to how you navigate around the app.

The best type of navigation is one that feels natural and intuitive. If you had to think about how to get find something, then that's a problem.

There's a great book on information architecture and usability (which is what you're doing right now) called Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

What is Usability?

Usability is a term that describes how easy it is to use a product/service for its intended purpose.

It's part of a wider topic called User Experience (UX for short) that studies how a user feels towards a product as he or she is using it.

As product designers (yes, apps are considered products!), we can inspire delight, awe and satisfaction from the user by how we choose to design our app.

For example, we can make our app intuitive to use so the user can get value out of the app without having to struggle and we can hide small unexpected animations to delight the user.

In this step of the app development process, we're focused on maximizing usability and making the app as easy to use as possible. This comes down to deciding what to display on each screen and how to arrange the user interface elements on the screen.

There's so much that goes into designing an app that is optimized for usability. For example, imagine holding your phone in one hand and trying to tap on a button near the top of the screen... your thumb doesn't reach that far up!

So this is an example of the things you need to keep in mind when you're designing your user interface.

My advice? Spend a few hours reading about usability basics and then go for it. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines is a great place to start.

It's not going to be perfect with the first try. Once you get your app into the hands of real users, you'll get a ton of legitimate and practical feedback.

At this point, all you can do is try to follow UX best practices.

Onboarding Sequence

It's a little bit early but keep in mind that you might want or need a little welcome tutorial on how to use your app.

So if your app is especially complex, you can rely a little bit on an onboarding sequence to educate the user.

Design Tools

Now in terms of putting pencil to paper, there are a variety of tools that you can use instead of pencil and paper (there's nothing wrong with that by the way; i love doing this process in a comfy chair with a notebook and pen).

However, if you'd like to create your mock up digitally then you can take advantage of the following digital tools:
Sketch
Sketch is the industry standard for mobile app design and prototyping. Vector based design means that your artwork can scale to any size without compromising quality. This is very important, especially with the various screen sizes of devices these days. The only downside is that Sketch is only for Mac.
Figma
I consider Figma as a close equivalent to Sketch with some benefits. Figma is browser based which means that it can be used on PCs or Macs. Figma offers great collaboration features for teams. Figma is free to use and you only have to pay if you want to use the aforementioned collaboration features. Check out my video above to get started on using this tool!
InVision Studio
InVision Studio is a newer tool compared to the Sketch and Figma but some of the prototypes that I've seen come out of this tool have been very convincing. For PC and Mac.
Framer X
Framer X is another prototyping tool that looks really easy to use.
My recommendation:
I would recommend that you check out Figma first simply because it's free to use and is very powerful for the price. 😝 Sketch is going to have the most support in terms of templates, plugins, tutorials and all that. However Figma is considered an equivalent so most third party products support both Sketch and Figma.

Now it's time to bring your app to life visually by designing exactly how your app will look like.

It's sort of like those pre-construction condo brochures showing concept art of how the condo will look when it's built.

You're creating a graphic design that:

Represents the look of the final product

Can be used in presentations to sell potential investors or partners

Developers can use to integrate the graphic assets into the project

The user interface and user experience (UI/UX) of the app will be hugely impacted by the work that you do in this step.

That's why I recommend that you get some help from a professional graphic designer who has proven work designing app UIs if it's very important that to you to have a slick, professional looking app.

However, as with everything, there are always options.

Here are some ways to make an app design:

1. Hire a professional designer to create an app design for you. You can use sites like Upwork and Toptal to find a freelancer. However, what I like to do is look through Dribbble, Behance and Pinterest for UI and app designs that appeal to me. When I find a design that I really like, I'll check out the designer's profile and see if they do any freelance design work.

2. Look for a partner who is a designer that has experience designing mobile apps. If you know someone in the tech industry, ask them if they know any designers who might want to do some work on the side. You can also attend local meetups to meet designers or people who might know someone.

3. Use a pre-done app design templates. Some sites sell app designs which you can purchase and then customize or pay someone to customize it for you. It'll be a lot cheaper than hiring a designer to create a custom app design for you, but keep in mind that your app might look like another existing app that used the same template you bought. Check out these resources: Material Design Kit,

4. Learn to make your own app design. If you enjoy design, you might want to roll up your sleeves and learn how to design an app yourself! However, be warned that it might take you some time before you can create something decent! I highly recommend Design+Code for learning how to design your own apps.

Once you have your app design done, you can proceed to building your app. Personally though, I like to create an app marketing plan first.

There are almost 2 million apps in the iOS App Store. In order to make sure that your app gets seen, you need to have a plan to market it to the right audience.

These days, a lot of the marketing work happens before the app is launched! For example, building a pre-launch email list is standard practice these days as well as leveraging paid marketing to promote your app.

Here are a list of app marketing strategies you can follow pre-launch and post-launch to make sure that you put your best foot forward!

Things you can do before your app is published:

1. Build a landing page for your app and build a pre-launch email list: It's important that you have a landing page for your app at the very least so that people have somewhere to visit to learn more about your app. Make sure you add a call to action for people to sign up to a pre-launch email list to get notified when the app launches. To start collecting emails for free, sign up for an email service with a generous free-tier like Mailchimp. In terms of building a landing page, you don't need to know how to code. There are tons of drag-and-drop landing page builders such as Leadpages or Unbounce. In fact, Mailchimp also has one for free.

2. Include a media kit for your app: This one is often overlooked. A media kit is simply a package that contains some key information about your app and all of the logos for your app. It makes life easier for journalists who want to write about your app and who wouldn't want more press? Simply create one and add a link to it from your app landing page.

3. Document your journey: I love this one because it's so organic. Publicly document your journey while you're getting your app built! Whether you're a developer yourself or not. People are interested in following along and hearing what it's like to make an app! You're building an audience for free by simply sharing your stories, lessons learned and progress. When your app launches, you'll have an audience that will support it right off the bat.

4. Make sure you're familiar with App Store Optimization (ASO): If you're unfamiliar with this term, it refers to optimizing your keywords, titles and description of your App Store listing. I get all my ASO education from Steve Young.

Things you do after your app has launched:

1. Do a press release for your app: These are relatively cheap to do and can get the attention of some online news and magazine outlets. Here's a great guide to how to write a press release for your app.

2. Consider paid marketing: If you have a bit of marketing budget, doing some paid marketing can really give your app a boost. Unfortunately, there are so many different types of paid marketing that you can do that it can be overwhelming. I'll talk about the most effective paid strategies later in this article.

3. Email your pre-launch email list: Once you've launched, don't forget to let everyone know! Email your subscribers and update your audience!

4. Hustle and get the word out: Whatever niche your app is in, find relevant forums, Facebook groups/pages, sub-reddits etc to promote your app! Don't just join and start promoting; if you do that, you'll probably get banned. Instead, join in the discussion and mention your app where it's relevant and can help people. Here's something even better: share your app development journey in these relevant groups and you'll gain a hungry audience waiting for your app to launch!

Follow this app launch timeline for when to do app store optimization, when to pitch your app to Apple for a feature and when to issue your press release.

This is the step where you actually bring to life your app from the design and requirements document that you created in earlier steps. By the way, this is the stage that I get excited about! You're about to create something tangible 🙂

Just like the previous steps, you have a couple of options to make your app. If you're also curious how much each of these options might cost, check it out here:

1. Learn to code and build it yourself: This is most time consuming option but you'll gain a valuable and in-demand skill to build your own apps or get a job as a developer. If this option appeals to you, check out our free resources to start learning iOS development and how to get started.

2. Hire a freelancer: If you're more interested in the business side of things then investing the time to learn how to code might not be a wise move. Instead, invest funds into hiring someone to build your app for you. Check out sites like Freelancer.com or Upwork.com.

3. Hire an app development company: The difference is that an app development company will provide consulting and project management services whereas a freelancer will look to you to provide direction. However, hiring a company will cost a lot more than working with freelancers.

4. Partner with a programmer: Another option is finding a programmer to partner with. The problem is that it's really tough to find a willing partner unless you have a proven successful track record of launching businesses (because so many people are looking for technical partners).

5. Use an app builder: If you're looking for how to create an app without coding, this is for you. There are services out there where you can get an app built by selecting a template and making cosmetic choices to change it. Typically these platforms charge you a monthly fee to keep your app running. Check out this guide for a list of app builders.

6. Buy an app template and customize it (or pay someone to): With this option, you're buying pre-packaged code that contains the core functionality that you'll need (if you can find a template close to your app idea). These templates are usually a one time fee and then you can either hire a freelancer to customize it or learn some programming and customize it yourself (Use my guide on how to code an app for beginners!).

Once your app is built, the work isn't done! It's time to test the app for bugs and errors. In software development a "bug" is something that's causing the app to not work as expected.

You want to solve as many critical bugs before launch as possible because the first impression for a user is very important. If your app crashes or doesn't function then there's a high chance that the user will uninstall your app right away.

Here's the exciting part! You're finally ready to launch your iPhone app into the App Store so that millions of people can download your creation!

There's one more hurdle to overcome and that's Apple's App Certification Team.

Here's how it works:

1. Make sure your app qualifies: Review it against these App Store guidelines. Fix up anything you need to first.

2. Fill in your app meta data: App Store Connect is a website where you can create your app listing and fill in all the important details such as title, description, keywords and more. You'll also set your screenshots and any preview videos that you want to add.

3. Upload your app from Xcode: to App Store Connect. From Xcode, you package up your project and ship the code to App Store Connect under the app listing that you just created.

4. Go back to App Store Connect and submit your app to review: Now that you've got your app meta data and code in a neat and tidy package, it's time to add any notes for the reviewer and submit it to the App Certification Team.

5. Wait anxiously for a reply: That's right.. you have to wait for someone to manually review the app that you've submitted! They'll be checking your app against the App Store guidelines (good thing you checked this in step 1!) and that your app doesn't crash or provide a negative user experience.

6. Get approved! Within about 2-3 days, you'll get an approval or rejection. If you get a rejection, don't worry about it. It happens to all of us. You just have to fix whatever they didn't like and resubmit it! If you get an approval, then it's time celebrate!

When you get to this step, check out our guide on how to submit your app to the App Store!

In addition to executing on your marketing plan, here are some high-impact app marketing strategies you can use.

1. Get featured by Apple in the App Store: If you pull this off, you'll win big time. Although there's no guaranteed way to do this, there are things within your control to maximize your chances!

2. Run a paid-to-free campaign: If your app is a paid one, going free for a short period and getting the word out there during that period can generate mountains of downloads. Here's a case study of how one of these campaigns generated 100K downloads!

3. Step up your ASO (app store optimization) game: ASO doesn't end when your app launches! You can still affect the discovery of your app within the App Store by tweaking your app meta data. Use this 5x app store optimization strategy for the best tips on how to do that.

4. Influencer marketing: This is surprisingly a great strategy for apps! Find influencers who have audiences that fit your apps target demographic and ask them if they can do a shoutout or mention of your app. They'll quote your some prices and you can go from there. Here's a great video guide on how to decide on the right influencer to market your app with.

The key to a successful app is continual improvement!

Once your app is in the hands of real users, you'll start getting some feedback.

Some good and some bad.

Take the criticism positively and be thankful that someone is willing to tell you how to improve because if someone is speaking up, there's most likely more users that feel the same but aren't willing to speak up.

Show your users that you're not abandoning your app after the launch.

Show them that you're constantly improving the app and releasing bug fixes, new features and app updates.

Over time, you'll beat out the other mobile apps in your niche that aren't doing this!

Use SKStoreReviewController to maximum your collection of user ratings and feedback.

SKStoreReviewController is a tool from Apple that you can add to your app. It helps you gather feedback by prompting the user to submit an App Store rating and feedback for your app. Installing it is really straight-forward so there's no reason not to do this!

If you made it all the way here, give yourself a pat on the back. I hope I've answered your questions about how to make your own app!

Are you pumped up to learn iOS development? I'm right here with you!

Here are my best resources for people who want to learn how to develop iOS apps:

If this guide helped you, let me know by leaving a quick comment down below. Lastly, please share it with anyone you know who wants to build an app! Thanks!

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How To Make An App in 2021 From Start to Finish (10 Steps)

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by Chris Ching If you're curious about the app making process but not sure where to start, this is the guide for you! Here I'll give you a comprehensive step by step guide from idea to execution. To make things easier, feel free to jump around based on your goals: If that sounds good to you, let's get started!

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https://buildfire.com/become-mobile-app-developer/

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Everyone wants to make the next great mobile application.

It can be an extremely profitable way to make some money if you know what you're doing.

If you've got a great idea and decided to consult with a developer, you may have been surprised to hear how costly it is to outsource development.

So that's when the thought hit you, "I can just do learn to do this myself."

I can relate.

It's the reason why I studied code and learned to build apps.

But where do you start?

Depending on your current situation and intentions, there are a few different routes you can go.

I'll make sure to cover all of these scenarios throughout this complete beginner guide to mobile app development.

We'll even cover topics like how to estimate development costs.

While building an app may sound intimidating, it's really just like anything else. If you practice and put the time in, it will get much easier.

Plus, it helps to have some guidance from an expert in the field (that's where I come in).

Here's everything you need to know.

So...why do you want to become a mobile app developer?

OK. So you're probably aware of how popular mobile apps are.

But just how many apps are there?

Let's take a look at some information from Statista.

Don't be intimidated by the number of apps available across different platforms.

Sure, you'll have some competition, but the majority of these likely won't be in your industry.

Plus, lots of apps out there are complete duds.

You won't have to worry about competing against those either.

With that said, it's important that you have a clear goal before you become a developer.

Here are a few common scenarios:

You want to build your own startup company

You're trying to be a freelancer or run a mobile app development shop

You are a business owner that doesn't have the funds to outsource app development

Chances are, you fall somewhere within these three examples.

Let's say you have the next big idea.

You want to take that concept and build an app to become the next or .

If you fall into this category, I sincerely admire your ambition.

This won't be an easy route, but if you're successful, it could potentially be the most profitable.

In this case, you'll need to learn how to do everything from scratch.

You'll also want to consider how you plan to make money from your app.

Relying on paid downloads might not be your best option.

In fact, the majority of mobile applications are available for free.

So before you dive in head first, make sure you think about your strategy for generating a profit.

For those of you that want to be a freelance app builder or start your own app store, this isn't something you need to worry about.

You'll make money by charging clients to build apps for them.

If you've got the marketing skills as well, you can double as a consultant and charge more for your services.

In this case, it's probably not the worst idea for you to know some different strategies to make money.

Or you can just stick to familiarizing yourself with the best tools for mobile app designers.

Let's talk about the business owners who want to build an app as an extension of their current brand, business, or website.

What's your budget?

The majority businesses plan to budget between $250,000 and $500,000 over the next 12 to 18 months.

Does this sound too high to you?

It's not.

Your location is relevant to how much it's going to cost to develop your app.

If you're located in North America, expect to pay roughly $150 per hour if you're planning to hire someone to build your iOS mobile app.

So unless you're planning to take a trip to Indonesia, it won't be inexpensive.

, an app will take about 7-9 months to build and cost you about $270,000.

That's an unrealistic number for some businesses.

Your company may not even be able to secure a $200,000 line of credit, never mind pay over $250,000 for an app.

So what's the solution?

Follow my guide, and I'll show you the most cost effective ways to develop your own app if you don't have the funds to pay someone else to do it.

Option #1: Just learn how to code everything

If you want to become a mobile app developer, learning to code is your first option.

It's not required for everyone, but for some of you, this will be the best route.

I'm speaking to those of you who want to build the next Instagram or Snapchat.

Here's the good news, you don't need to go back to school to learn code.

There are some great resources online that teach you how to code for free.

I'll show you my favorite ones.

Team Treehouse offers a free trial for a week to new users.

So you can learn to code from your own computer, anywhere with a Wi-Fi connection.

Here's how their system works.

They have thousands of videos to teach users the basics of coding.

After you watch the videos, you'll take quizzes to test your knowledge.

Then, Team Treehouse gives you the tools needed to practice coding with interactive challenges.

The platform is super clean and really easy to use, especially for beginners.

Code Academy is another one of my favorites.

Their platform also has interactive tools that will teach you the coding basics for your mobile application.

Let's take a step back for a minute.

Before you commit the time and teach yourself how to code, you should learn the basics of developing a min imum viable product (MVP).

Are you familiar with the lean startup methodology?

It's a solution for shortening the cycles of product development.

Why should you consider this?

In short, it can save you money in the big picture.

Here's a scenario.

A company has a great idea for a product, or in your case, a mobile application.

You could spend months or potentially years perfecting the app and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop it.

Then your big moment comes - it's finally launch day.

All your hard work is about to pay off, right?

Not necessarily.

The consumer market could reject the idea, and your startup fails.

So, rather than asking yourself, "Can I build this app?" ask, "Should I build this app?"

Here's a visual representation of this cycle.

You'll constantly conduct research and get customer feedback throughout the process.

That way you can make the necessary changes along the way to minimize any inefficiency before a large-scale release.

Using the learn startup methodology will also let you know early on if you should continue developing your app or just cut your losses and avoid major failure.

If you can do these three things continuously, it's worth it to learn how to code for your startup company.

Option #2: Use app builders

App builders are perfect for existing business owners who want to use a mobile application to enhance their company.

You may not have the budget to pay over $200,000 for someone else to build it for you.

Learning how to code probably isn't an option either due to the time constraints of running a company.

App builders are also ideal for entrepreneurs and freelancers who want to make some money building apps for other businesses.

Both of these scenarios require zero coding skills if you find the right app builder.

So where do you start?

Look for existing templates and examples of generic applications.

I know I'm biased (obviously) but has tons of great templates to fit your business.

Regardless of your business type or industry, you'll be able to find a template to get you started.

You could always design a template from scratch, but personally, I think it's much easier to work off of an existing design.

So what space is your company in?

The options go on and on.

For those of you who want to build apps for other businesses, app building tools like this give you the option to work with multiple templates all on the same platform.

It's easy.

So you won't need to learn how to code, you'll just have to get good at navigating through the website and figure out what works best for your clients.

Then you can just white label the app to make money by selling it to the businesses you're working with.

Let's take this one step further.

What if your clients want customized features that aren't in the generic templates?

Not a problem.

Take advantage of BuildFire's pro services team.

Reach out directly to our experts.

We'll spend one on one time with you to figure out exactly what you're looking for.

Once everything is decided on, we build the app for you.

Then you can just resell it to your clients make a profit without having to do the bulk of the work.

This is ideal for people who have a large list of clients.

If you have to do all of the work yourself, it's nearly impossible to scale.

So here's your solution.

Use the BuildFire white labeling service.

We build the apps, and you can sell it branded as your own.

That way you can spend the majority of your time and effort to get new customers.

You might make fewer margins, but this system is much more scalable.

Over time, this model is sustainable and will generate long-term profitability.

Option #3: Use app builders and some coding (using BF SDK)

The third choice for becoming a mobile app developer involves a combination of our last two options.

You can use an app building service and use some coding.

I'm referring to the BuildFire software development kit.

Instead of having our team build the app for you, this kit can teach you how to build it yourself.

Once you learn how to add custom features for your clients, you'll be able to generate more profit.

Now, this will take more time and effort compared to our last option, but it all depends on your personal preference.

You may not be able to work with as many clients, but you'll have higher margins on each project.

Using app builders and coding like the BuildFire SDK will also give you the opportunity to build plugins.

What's a plugin?

It's an added extension to an existing application.

They add more functionality to the user experience and can help generate more profits.

Here's an example.

Let's say you have an ecommerce business and want to develop a mobile app for your company.

You can use the Shopify plugin to add features to your store.

You'll have different options while navigating the SDK.

You can add:

3rd party developer plugins

Plugins created by BuildFire

Customized plugins built on your own

If you're going to take the time to learn some code through an app builder, you should consider including a plugin with your designs.

Conclusion

Becoming a mobile app developer is much easier than it sounds.

Depending on your situation, you've got lots of options to choose from.

Learning how to build mobile apps are ideal for people who:

Want to build their own startup company

Are trying to create apps for other businesses

Own a business and can't afford to outsource development

Virtually everyone today has a smart phone in their pocket.

How do people spend time on their phone?

This graphic reinforces how important it is for you to get involved in this space.

There's a tremendous opportunity for profit in the mobile app development field.

If you're trying to launch a startup company, it's in your best interest to learn how to code everything from scratch.

That's not necessarily the easiest route, but it's the most realistic.

Fortunately, you won't have to go back to school to do this.

There are plenty of online tools like the options that we discussed earlier that can teach you how to code from your own computer.

App builders are perfect for business owners who don't have the funds to pay a developer.

Just look for a generic template based on your industry and add the features you need.

For a more customized experience, you can work with the BuildFire pro services team directly.

If you're an entrepreneur who wants to make money by selling apps to other businesses, take advantage of the white labeling services.

We'll build your app.

All you have to do is brand it yourself and sell it to your clients.

This will give you a chance to grow your client list and scale your revenue stream.

But, if you want to learn the coding process from an app builder, just download the software development kit.

You can also learn how to add plugins to generate more profits.
Which option will you choose on your path to becoming a mobile app developer?

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How to Become a Mobile App Developer (A Complete Newbie Guide) - BuildFire

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Everyone wants to make the next great mobile application. It can be an extremely profitable way to make some money if you know what you're doing. If you've got a great idea and decided to consult with a developer, you may have been surprised to hear how costly it is to outsource development.

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What is app design and what makes it good?

App design is a combination of UI and UX design to build out a usable piece of software. Modern users don't have patience for apps that are confusing to use. Ideal mobile app design is good-looking, functional, and straightforward all at the same time.

So, how do you measure good app design? A good app is measured by good UX.

Users should be able to navigate your application without needing to think. If they can instinctively figure out the design, they'll continue to use your application again and again.

In this article, we're going to look at the 9 principles of mobile app design and how you can incorporate them into your design work.

Here at UXPin, we use these principles on a regular basis. If you're looking to boost your design skills, get on to the UXPin free trial and start prototyping now.

Principle 1: Make it Easy

Prove your app's value by giving users what they want right away.

Normally, when someone downloads an app, he or she wants to use it for performing a specific task. Try to make a great first impression once they open your app. Don't interrupt them while they're using your app - or at least don't interrupt them immediately.

Let users do what they want to do. Users are there to find specific information, perform an action or consume some kind of content. If they can't do what they want easily, they might close your app and never come back.

Break down big tasks into really easy steps

Cognitive load measures the mental effort needed to complete a task. Minimize the cognitive load of using your app so that users can navigate step-by-step. They shouldn't view it as a chore that needs to be done.

Let's take a checkout process as an example: you could ask users for information all at once, but they'll find it easier to fill in information over multiple steps: their shipping address, billing information, credit card information, etc.

Tell the user exactly what they need to do

Your design should make it clear what the user needs to do. If you suspect that an integral part of your layout may confuse your users, use visual aids to explain what needs to be done. For instance, you can use a tooltip or a caption to provide instructions.

Don't hide important information

If you want the user to use your application effectively, turn their attention to the most important elements of your app. You can do so by increasing the font size, adding whitespace, and making sure that the element's color contrasts well with the background color.

Navigation elements should always be visible and they should facilitate the completion of high-value tasks.

People get used to the design patterns they encounter every day. For instance, they will expect to be able to swipe through pictures. Make sure you adhere to the typical navigation methods of the Internet.

Your users' past experiences of using other apps will inform their expectations for using all applications, including yours. Incorporate these common patterns into your design to allow them to easily navigate your app.

Take inspiration from UX design trends and most common patterns used today, but don't blindly implement them without considering their fit with your application. If necessary, slightly modify these patterns to fit the overall context of your design.

Make sure to follow the commonly accepted navigational principles for the structure of your app. Sometimes users will instantly understand the purpose of a certain feature or a page. For instance, people will recognize the purpose of the "what's new" page, or "search" field. Use these universally recognized concepts to simplify your app's design.

Make sure to check out the design guidelines published by developers of iOS and Android operating systems. These documents describe proven design patterns used in excellent layouts today.

Follow the 3-click rule

Users should be able to access any part of your app in less than three clicks. Keep the hierarchy of your navigation bar simple.

Doing so will make sure it's easy for your users to keep a mental map of what's going on in your app. Also, make sure your app shows the name of the page.

Whenever there's an error, let people return to the homepage or try to redirect them to other pages that might interest them.

Save users' progress

Users today are busy and easily distracted. They might close your app to respond to an email or watch a new episode of their favorite TV show. Save their progress so that they can come back and finish their task without having to start over.

Make it accessible across multiple devices

If you have a desktop website and a smartphone app, both channels should automatically save the activities and progress of logged-in users. People should be able to use the app and the website interchangeably. For instance, online shoppers might browse products on their phones, but they'll usually place an order on a desktop computer.

Don't make up your own language

In some cases, it's better to rely on basic principles of app design. People easily understand the design frameworks they encounter every day. Your layout should fall in line with those expectations.

X in the top right-hand corner

A lot of applications feature X in the top right corner. Users instinctively know that clicking it will close the application.

Avoid dramatically changing the function of common symbols. For instance, the user expects X to close the window. Don't use X as a symbol for any other action.

Save Button

Your app should also have a Save button at the bottom of a page.

Light coloured text field for inputs

Normally, input field lines are light-colored. Ideally, they should match the color that the users associate with your brand. It is rare to see input fields with black borders.

Principle 4: Have a great, clear, and prioritized page design

Label products descriptively

Make sure the names you choose for products are descriptive and appealing. For instance, a customer might find it hard to see the difference between "standard shipping" and "regular shipping". Pick labels that showcase the differences between the two options.

You can use techniques like Card Sorting to get the feel of customers' mental models.

Your navigation should facilitate the completion of the most important and high-value tasks. Show the most important features in the primary menu and leave everything else for the secondary menu. Use Visual Weight techniques to divert users' attention to where it matters.

Changing font size, background contrast, and surrounding whitespace can help you divert users' attention to the most important features of your application.

F pattern vs. Z pattern

Most users aren't going to read text from start to finish. They are more likely to scan multiple paragraphs of text. The first few words of the opening paragraphs get the most attention. That's where you should place your most important messages to ensure that users don't miss them. This scanning behavior is described as an F pattern.

Users scan visual content in a Z-shaped pattern. Place your most important visuals in the areas where they are most likely to be seen by the users, following the Z-shape pattern on your webpages.

Principle 5: Have brand image consistency

The buttons, input fields, and other elements of your application should be based on your brand image.

If your application is based on an existing website, make sure its navigation works similarly to that of a website. Don't change the color palette or other basic functionality to avoid confusion.

Make sure your users can predict most of the time how your app will work and look.

Mobile users don't have the advantage of hovering and having a cursor to help them guess the outcome of their actions. Carefully design the elements to help users recognize their purpose.

Principle 6: Minimize input and commitment from the user

Don't ask for set-up information up front

Users see your app as a solution. Most people are focused on solving their problems. Don't bother them with questions, account registrations, or signup forms right away.

Let users use your app freely until it's absolutely critical to login, give a credit card, or whatever the action may be.

For example, Medium allows its users to enjoy a limited number of high-quality articles before asking them to create an account and subscribe.

Minimize the need for typing

Users find it hard to precisely type on their smartphones. Try to get the desired information without asking them for text input.

If you can't think of an alternative, provide input masks as a formatting guideline.

Prefill as much data as possible

Instead of asking users to write down their location, ask them to share their location and use a smart tool to fill in their address based on GPS data.

Provide optional inputs

Don't ask users for unnecessary information. If you'd like to collect the data, give users the option to fill out the form or leave it empty if they wish.

Autofill wherever possible

In some cases, you can use the phone's features to automatically fill in the fields. For instance, some apps allow their users to provide payment information by holding their credit cards in front of the camera.

Principle 7: Loading should be fast and well communicated

Users are impatient when it comes to waiting for the app to load. Make sure your app loads fast to minimize any friction.

Show something

If you're loading, make sure your user knows it's loading and not broken.

Seeing a blank loading screen might lead your users to think that your app doesn't work. People are used to seeing some sort of loading indicator - a progress bar or a loading spinner.

Load parts of the content gradually to display something as soon as possible. This way, users can start using the app right away, even if their Internet connection is unstable.

You can use simple loops or progress bars to display loading progress, but users are more likely to keep waiting if you create a simple, but entertaining loading animation.

Principle 8: Optimize your app for mobile, and diverse mobile users.

If your app is going to include a lot of text, make sure that it scales well on all types of screens. Text is much easier to read when each line contains no more than 40 characters. You should also adjust the line spacing.

If your app involves visual content like images and videos, make sure your app can be viewed in both - portrait and landscape modes.

Make sure your pages are built for mobile

When building a layout for your app, design easily clickable and properly spaced-out buttons. Users shouldn't accidentally click something they're not supposed to. For instance, put enough space between the Back and Next buttons to avoid accidental clicks.

Make sure your pages are built for different kinds of devices

Your app will be viewed on smartphones with 4-inch screens as well as 12+ inch tablets. Make sure your content properly scales to fill available space on larger screens. Make sure pages don't look crowded on small screens.

Principle 9: Do app design for humans

Font Size

A sizable portion of Internet users today have impaired vision. Use a font size of at least 16px so that your text is legible to everyone.

Color blindness

You shouldn't rely solely on colors to communicate with your users. You should also use symbols so that color-blind people can understand the message.

Deafness

Your app should be adapted for the deaf and hard of hearing, especially if it contains sound components. Video and audio content should be captioned and subtitled.

Disabilities

HTML has built-in features to communicate the meaning of the content. For instance, you can use alt attributes to describe the visual images for people who can't see.

Gender selections

Unless the core functionality of your app revolves around the user's gender, don't ask them to specify their gender. If you run a simple business like a car rental service, there's no need to know the customer's gender.

Conclusion

Designing an app from scratch is a lot of work. Thankfully, you can use UXPin and its built-in accessibility features to design an app that is accessible to everyone. You can start creating beautiful code-based designs right away by signing up for a 14-day free trial.

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App design is a combination of UI and UX design to build out a usable piece of software. Modern users don't have patience for apps that are confusing to use. Ideal mobile app design is good-looking, functional, and straightforward all at the same time. So, how do you measure good app design?

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10 Most Important Mobile UX Design Principles You Should Know

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10 Most Important Mobile UX Design Principles You Should Know

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Saudi Arabia's 1st Web & Mobile UX, Usability & Ecommerce Research, Experience Design and Testing Consultancy

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In 2016, more than 28 percent of the world's population used a smartphone. Statistics forecast the number of global smartphone users to reach 6.1 billion by 2020.

Smartphones have become a go-to source for all sorts of information because they're easily accessible anytime, anywhere. Beyond communication and information gathering, services and features such as banking, placing orders, healthcare tracking, and even home security have become part of the smartphone experience.

In order to trigger positive reactions, you have to satisfy the But designing a usable and enjoyable mobile experience is more than just good aesthetics. basic usability principles of interface design.

Learnability: How easily first-time users complete basic tasks.

Efficiency: How quickly users perform basic tasks once they've learned the design.

Memorability: The ability of users to remember how to use the system.

Errors: The amount and severity of errors users make and how easily they can correct them.

Satisfaction: How pleasant the experience of using the design was.

Here are 10 tried and tested UX design principles that are key to creating great mobile user experiences.
1. Content Prioritization
Human attention spans are really short. Like really, really short. 8 seconds to be exact. This makes it extremely important to grab your users' attention within the first few seconds of interaction with your products.

Less is more. When designing your products, keep interface elements to a minimum. Simple designs are what keep the user engaged and at ease with products.

Display only essential content and functionalities the user needs. The limited space available on a small screen makes every additional element you add overwhelming to your users. Secondary content should be available through a menu. Menu lists, either short or long, should have progressive disclosure and simple terminology so as not to confuse your users. To further reduce clutter, use icons instead of text wherever possible.

Prioritize content and remember that notifications for new content should appear without interrupting primary content!
2. Make Navigation Intuitive

"If the user can't use it, it doesn't work." - Susan Dray

Learnability of your design is key for its success. Users should intuitively be able to navigate through your app via clear pathways and be able to complete all primary tasks without requiring any explanations.

Users lack the patience to try to work through complex steps to get what they want. If it takes too much time or effort to discover how to navigate through your product, chances are you're just going to lose your users.

User journeys should be logical enough that a task is accomplished within a single app. Don't make users have to switch between pages and apps to get something done. Simplify the process and have all the information needed readily available.

When navigating through your app, the user should always know where they are without wondering how they got there, or what they are to do next.
3. Touchscreen Target Sizes
People interact with touch screens using their fingers, maybe even their toes, but that's none of our business. The important part is to make interface elements big enough to capture these actions. But how big can you make them with only a small amount of screen space?

People use their thumbs more often than any other finger while using their smartphones. Small touch targets can be frustrating because they require more accuracy and are prone to errors. Apple's iPhone Human Interface Guidelines suggest a minimum target size of 44 pixels wide x 44 pixels tall. In the Windows Phone UI Design and Interaction Guide, Microsoft suggests a touch target size of 9mm/34px with a minimum touch target size of

Not only is the size of the target important, but so is the spacing between targets. If action buttons are too close to each other, you risk the user making undesired actions leading to frustration. It is especially important to space out contradicting action buttons, such as the save and delete buttons to avoid errors.

At the end of the day, we're all human and make mistakes, even when target size and spacing are scaled properly. That's why including an undo button in your designs will relieve many people (including yourself) when mistakes are made.
4. Provide User Control
People like to feel like they're in control of their actions. So that's what you need to give them.

Allow users to make decisions to personalize their journeys. Changing settings, controlling notifications and cancelling actions provides the user with a sense of control over the system. Apps can suggest actions or provide warnings, but they shouldn't be the ones doing the decision-making.

When the user needs to know what's going on, let them know! Integrate status and other types of feedback into your interface without disrupting the user's workflow. If an app requires signup, let them demo it first or continue as a guest to sample it before making the decision to commit. This gives the user a sense of freedom and transparency.
5. Legible Text Content
The key to mobile typography is readability. If users can't read your content, there's no point in offering content in the first place. Communicating your designs in a clear, simple layout delivers your message effortlessly.

The strategy for optimal mobile typography is a balance between legibility and space conservation. Generally, anything smaller than 16 pixels (or 11 points) becomes challenging to read for any screen. Adversely, an unnecessarily large font size results in awkward breaks and hyphenation that take longer to read. Hence, tiring the reader.

Accessing the same amount of information from a desktop on smartphones requires a higher interaction cost because of screen size. Content should be accommodated for smaller screens while maintaining all the necessary information. Crowding a small space with too much content makes it difficult and straining for users to read. A good rule of thumb is to use 30-40 characters per line for mobile.

Spacing and layout are also important to improve legibility. Adding space between text aids the user in reading and creates a feeling that there isn't so much information to take in.
6. Make Interface Elements Clearly Visible
People use their phones everywhere. Indoors, outdoors, in planes, trains, buses, cars, underground, overground (you get it right?), you name it, they're on their phones.

It's important to have sufficient contrast between content and background in your designs so it's legible, in any setting, even outside in the sunlight. But getting the right amount of contrast isn't always easy. WC3's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines gives contrast ratio recommendations for images and text. The most important part in choosing your text and background is to test it out with users.
7. Hand Position Controls
Hand positions should be kept in mind when placing controls on a mobile design. Research findings on how people hold and interact with their mobile phones found that 49% of people rely on one thumb. This statistic is useful to keep in mind when designing to accommodate for the thumb's reach zone.

Common features should be placed in easily accessible regions, while actions such as delete buttons should be placed in areas harder to reach to avoid errors.

Accessibility behavioural features should be made available to users to make navigation easier. Apple offers several accessibility features like double tapping the home button which drags the entire screen to an easier reach zone.

Delivering a great mobile UX takes into consideration all different types of users. Keeping in mind right- and left-handedness is also a design feature to consider.
8. Minimize Data Input
Ever start typing on your mobile phone and find a few extra letters that have nothing to do with waht hyour're ar3e tryaing to saay? Happens to the best of us.

Typing on small devices can be annoying and unfortunately there really isn't a direct solution to it, other than autocorrect (which let's be honest, isn't always accurate). But what you can do is work around the problem by minimizing the need to enter data in your designs.

Users are always looking for shortcuts and efficient ways to get things done. Help them reduce typing required by shortening forms, removing unnecessary fields and using 'remember me' options for future use. Relieve users by providing autocomplete, recent search history and location detection to reduce data entry requirements and accelerate the experience.

Display keyboard variations depending on the required data, for example for phone numbers provide the numeric keypad for faster input. All these changes can make a big difference in task success rate and task time, and more importantly keeping the user engaged and satisfied with your product.
9. Create a Seamless Experience
When it comes to creating online journeys the ultimate goal is to create a seamless experience, across all devices. But that's easier said than done.

Seamless experiences are invisible. The user doesn't realize it, but the flow is a natural process and the user feels 'right' using it. Functional, flexible, and responsive mobile designs are what users today expect to encounter.

Focus on key user goals by reducing friction, minimizing steps and page loads to decrease interaction time. Make content accessible even without an online connection and provide alternative paths to avoid dead-ends. Make use of the mobile phone's features, like the camera to scan barcodes, GPS for identifying locations and touch ID in place of passcodes to simplify journeys. Users appreciate smooth interactions with designs and are satisfied when their needs are met effortlessly.

Synchronization across devices is a key priority for creating seamless experiences. It makes users feel that their workflow isn't interrupted and aren't burdened by having to make the effort of transferring data.

Go beyond basic usability features to create pleasant and addictive experiences. Communicate with your users to understand what they need, and deliver it.
10. Test Your Design
Test early. Test often.

The key to any successful product is to continuously test and optimize.

Usability testing is essential for the success of your products. Test different features, layouts and variations of your designs to see what works best. Build your products with a user-centered approach by testing with real users. With each round of testing, you uncover new ways to improve your design to meet your users needs.

The earlier you discover your problems, the easier and cheaper it is to fix them.
Conclusion
In order to keep up with the fast advancements in technology and shift to smartphone adoption, designing mobile experiences needs to implement usability principles. The future of smartphone technologies is peaking in development and users are unforgiving with lagging systems. Delivering extraordinary experiences for users to experience is the way forward.
Points of Note:

In 2015, more than 25 percent of the world's population used a smartphone.

It is imperative to create user-centered designs to improve interactions and enhance user satisfaction.

Design is more than just good aesthetics.

In order to elicit positive reactions, you have to satisfy the basic usability principles of interface design.

Learnability

Efficiency

Memorability

Errors

Satisfaction

To keep your users engaged, you have to keep the interface at a minimum.

Users should intuitively be able to navigate through your app via clear pathways and be able to complete all primary tasks without requiring any explanations.

Interface elements need to be big enough to capture actions on touch screens.

Users should be able to make decisions to personalize their journeys.

If users can't read your content, your design doesn't work.

Accessibility behavioural features should be made available to users to make navigation and use easier.

Minimize the need to enter data.

When it comes to creating online journeys the ultimate goal is to create a seamless experience, across all devices.

Test early. Test often.

At UXBERT Labs we specialize in UX Research, Design & Development services that deliver world-class experiences. With offices in Riyadh and Dubai, our team of UX Researchers, Designers, and Developers deliver custom designed and built software to help businesses succeed.
Looking for a UX agency in Dubai or Saudi? Email us at hello@uxbert.com and let us show you why we're an award winning company.

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10 Most Important Mobile UX Design Principles You Should Know

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In 2016, more than 28 percent of the world's population used a smartphone. Statistics forecast the number of global smartphone users to reach 6.1 billion by 2020. Smartphones have become a go-to source for all sorts of information because they're easily accessible anytime, anywhere.

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https://www.lotame.com/what-is-boolean-logic/

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November 5, 2018

Table of Contents: What is Boolean Logic? An Example of "OR" An Example of "AND" An Example of "NOT <"
What is Boolean Logic?

Boolean Logic is a form of algebra which is centered around three simple words known as Boolean Operators: "Or," "And," and "Not". At the heart of Boolean Logic is the idea that all values are either true or false. Within the Lotame platform, the use of Boolean Logic allows for the creation of more complex audience definitions, allowing for audiences to be built to a very specific set of definitions. This article explores the uses of the individual Boolean operators and how they relate to building audiences.

Boolean Logic, Illustrated
Are You Making the Most of Data?
An Example of Boolean Logic at Work In Building Audiences : OR

The Boolean operator "OR" is used to express that as long as one of two or more conditions are, met the value of a specified query is true.

For example, to build an audience which encompasses anyone who enjoys Mexican, Chinese, or French Cuisine, the following audience definition would apply:

Using the "OR" operator would ensure that anyone who has shown an affinity for at least one of these cuisines will be included in the audience created.

An Example of Boolean Logic at Work In Building Audiences : AND

As a Boolean operator, "AND" serves to indicate that ALL specified conditions must be met in order for a query to return true.

In the event that a client were building an audience and wanted to target only users who had shown an affinity for Sports Cars and Fishing and History, the following audience definition would apply:

The use of the "AND" operator means that a user must meet ALL of the specified criteria to be included in the audience; users who merely like Fishing or like only Fishing and History (etc.) will be excluded from this audience definition.

An Example of Boolean Logic at Work In Building Audiences : NOT<

The "NOT" Boolean operator is used to exclude nodes from an audience definition. As it applies to the creation of an audience definition, "NOT" will exclude all users falling under the node which has been prepended by "NOT."

For example, to create an audience of users over the age of 18 (NOT 13-17 years of age) with a demonstrated interest in movies, the following audience definition would be used:

In this instance, the "NOT" which prepends 13-17 means that no users within this age range will be included in this audience definition. It is also worth noting that the "AND" operator is used here as well. Translated into plain English, this definition would be read as "Users who are not between ages 13 and 17 who have an interest in movies.

Users of Lotame's Data Management Platform (DMP) use Boolean Logic to build audiences for targeted ads, content customization, and many other business applications. By understanding who your audience is, and grouping them into audience segments, you can personalize your messaging to increase engagement with your products & services.

Learn more about a DMP in this short video:

Want to learn more? Let's chat. We'd love to show you a demo of our platform and how it can help your marketing work harder for you, to increase engagement and conversion rates.
Get in Touch With Lotame Today

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What Is Boolean Logic? Boolean Logic Definition | Lotame

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November 5, 2018 Table of Contents: What is Boolean Logic? An Example of "OR" An Example of "AND" An Example of "NOT <" Boolean Logic is a form of algebra which is centered around three simple words known as Boolean Operators: "Or," "And," and "Not".

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We interact with technology that uses programming on a daily basis (in fact, you're doing it right now!). So it should come as no surprise that programmers are in demand. With the right coding skills, you can secure a steady job with a big-name company and an equally impressive salary. On the lowest end, entry-level programming salaries start around $60,000 and can easily climb into the $100,000+ range with the right programming languages under your belt.

With over 300 standardized coding languages, where do you start? The programming languages you learn will depend on your career goals. Here are a handful of the most popular programming languages and how they're used most often.

C

C is a general-purpose coding language, originally created for Unix systems. It's commonly used in cross-platform systems, Unix coding and game coding. It's often selected because it's more compact than C++ and runs faster. It's the second most common programming language following Java. C is the grandfather of many other coding languages including C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP and Python.

C++

C++ is an intermediate-level coding language that is object-oriented. It derives from C, however, it has add-ons and enhancements to make it a more multifaceted coding language. It's well suited to large projects, as it can be broken up into parts enabling easy collaboration. It's used by some of the world's best-known tech companies including Adobe, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft.

Objective-C

Like most of the coding languages on this list, it derives from C. It's a general purpose, high-level code that has an added message-passing function. It's known for being the coding language of choice for Apple's OS X and iOS apps until it was replaced by Swift.

Java

Java is currently the most popular and widely used language in the world. Though it was originally created for interactive TV, it's become known as the language of choice for Android devices. It's also the coding language of choice enterprise-level software. It's a good multi-purpose coding language because it can be used cross-platform (meaning it's just as easily used on smartphone apps as on desktop apps). It resembles C++ in syntax and structure making it easy to pick up if you know C languages already.

JavaScript

JavaScript was created as an add-on code to extend the functionality of web pages. It adds dynamic features such as submission forms, interactivity, animations, user-tracking, etc. It's mostly used for front-end development, or for coding solutions that customers and clients interact with. It's compatible with all browsers, making it a good general-purpose web development code, though it's also known to be difficult to debug.

interested in careers in the tech space? check out IT and tech jobs now.

Swift

Long hailed as the replacement for Objective-C when it comes to Apple programs, it's been gaining popularity in recent years, because it's easy-to-read, easy to maintain and faster than Objective-C. If you're looking to be an Apple coder or write programs for iOS, this is the language you want to learn. Though Objective-C is still used, Swift is quickly becoming the programming language of choice for coders creating programs for Apple devices.

C#

A general purpose, object-oriented code, C# (pronounced C Sharp) was created by Microsoft in 2001. Though it's named after the C family of coding languages, it has more in common with Java than other C languages. C# is mostly used for internal/enterprise solutions and is less frequent in commercial software.

PHP

PHP is an open source code, primarily used for web development (a.k.a. creating web pages.) PHP was created to streamline web page creation. It's a fairly simple programming language that can be picked up quickly. It's used by many web-based companies including Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress.

Ruby

Ruby is an object-oriented, general purpose programming language developed in the mid-90s in Japan. It's one of the simpler programming languages to learn and is often used as a stepping stone to Ruby on Rails. It was developed to be both fun to code, and to increase productivity. It's known for being easy to read, and as a result many programmers recommend learning Ruby as your first coding language. It's used by sites like Hulu, Shopify, Airbnb and many others.

Python

Another general purpose, high-level code, Python is a favourite of up and coming coders. It was designed to be fun to use (after all, it's named for Monty Python, how could it not be?) It's another highly recommended language for coding beginners to learn - and has become the top introductory coding language in American university programs. It's used mostly for web apps and information security, though it's also popular in the academic community for data analysis. It's used by tech giants like Google, Dropbox, Pinterest and Spotify.

Whether you're a newbie coder, or an experienced programmer adding a new coding language to your repertoire, learning the right programming skills is essential to carving out the career you want.

Already know how to code? If you're ready to start your career, Randstad Technologies can help you find employment with top Canadian companies. Search for developer jobs in popular fields including:

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decoding coding languages: comparing 11 popular programming languages

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We interact with technology that uses programming on a daily basis (in fact, you're doing it right now!). So it should come as no surprise that programmers are in demand. With the right coding skills, you can secure a steady job with a big-name company and an equally impressive salary.

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Data science is the fastest-growing computer programming career.

Coding bootcamps offer training for programming jobs, plus career services.

Computer programming jobs may require a bachelor's degree or higher.

Many programmer jobs offer higher-than-average job security and coding salaries.

While most other jobs are projected to grow by 5% from 2021-2031, computer and information technology jobs are projected to grow by 15%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

The BLS also projects many programming jobs to exceed other occupations' job outlooks. For example, the BLS projects data scientist jobs to grow by 36% from 2021-2031. This demand enhances job security for computer programming jobs, which also pay higher-than-average salaries. The median annual wage for computer and information technology jobs as of May 2021 was $97,430 -over $50,000 more than the median annual salary for all jobs.

Continue reading to learn about what computer programming jobs pay the best and what educational requirements you need to kick-start your tech career.

Tips on How to Land a Programming Job

Gain coding and programming skills.

Identify your career objective.

Curate your portfolio.

Get a mentor at college or in a coding bootcamp.

Network through college, a coding bootcamp, or professional organizations.

Practice interviewing.

Build your resume with internships and projects.

Earn certifications and access free online workshops.

Ask for job referrals and recommendation letters.

How Much Do Coders Make?

Tech jobs pay higher-than-average salaries. But how much do coders make? Employees who worked in computer and information made a median yearly salary of over $97,000 in May 2021.

Tech workers who hold a bachelor's degree make more than professionals who do not have a degree. Computer science professionals with bachelor's degrees make an average of $81,000, according to September 2022 Payscale data. In comparison, Payscale reports that those with an associate degree who work in information technology make an average of $66,000 as of September 2022.

Job projections vary by position, with some tech careers projected to increase at rates that far exceed the industry averages.

Best Computer Coding and Programming Jobs

Frequently Asked Questions About Computer Programming Jobs

Can a coding program get you a job?

Graduating from a coding program can get you a job in tech on a faster timeline than a college degree. Coding bootcamps let people with busy work lives train on a schedule that works for them, whether that's on weekends and during evenings or completely online.

That said, not every employer values the training from a coding program. Some may prefer candidates who hold an undergraduate degree - or even a graduate degree.

Does coding require math?

Yes, but basic math. In fact, most people already have the essential math skills to learn basic coding. To land a coding job, you need a foundation in basic arithmetic, boolean algebra, binary math, and introductory statistics. More advanced tech careers, such as data scientists and engineers, need advanced math skills.

Is coding easy or hard?

It depends on the person. Not everyone can easily learn to code. For that reason, coding bootcamps often require tech assessments and introductory courses to get all students on the same level. Generally, coding is not difficult to learn if you have the time and passion for learning. And the level of complexity depends on your career end goal.
Feature Image: PIKSEL / iStock / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images

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10 Types of Computer Coding and Programming Jobs | BestColleges

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How much do coding jobs pay? Find out what computer and programming jobs pay the best and how to get your start in tech.

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Coding is an in-demand skill used in almost every industry. Whether you envision a career as a programmer, a game developer or a data scientist, it all starts with code.

To help you envision what your trajectory might look like after you conquer HTML, CSS and everything in between, we've outlined some common career paths for motivated coders. We'll look at some popular coding specializations, the salaries you can expect to earn, and the must-have skills that will get you hired.

Which Tech Career is Right for You?

Ready to change your career and join the world's next workforce? At Thinkful, we've got your back with various tech programs to get you equipped with in-demand skills.
Take Our Quiz

Careers in Coding

Coding (or computer programming) is an invaluable skill to have in this day and age. As you probably know by now, the answer to " what does a coder do" varies widely by industry. If you learn how to code, you'll open the door to a wide choice of careers.

Some of the most popular coding-related positions available are:
Computer Programmer
Programmers create software that performs useful tasks. They have to ensure their code is bug-free and meets client expectations. Programmers usually work in large teams and are required to not only write code but read and update existing code.

Computer programmers are masters of Java, C#, C++, and Python.
Web Developer
Both front-end and back-end web development roles require coding skills.

Front-end developers are responsible for anything the user can see or interact with. This includes images, layouts, buttons, menus, content, and the entire look and feel of the site.

Back-end developers write code to implement site functionality. They're responsible for managing databases, writing server-side code, the architecture of the system, and the server configuration.

As a web developer, you're expected to know basic languages like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Knowledge of languages such as Python, C#, Java, and SQL are also useful.
Mobile App Developer
A mobile app developer is responsible for creating apps that run on smartphones and tablets.

This branch of development faces unique challenges. App developers need to provide the same user experience across multiple devices. Apps must work well on small screens without relying on a keyboard for user input.

A growing number of users prefer using mobile devices to desktop PCs. This has caused the demand for mobile developers to skyrocket in recent years.

Mobile app developers need to possess knowledge of objective C which is used traditionally to create iOS apps. Another commonly used programming language is Swift. For android devices, they must also have a working knowledge of Java.

Data Scientist

Data science is one of the most trending fields in tech.

Organizations collect huge volumes of consumer information and need data scientists to organize and analyze this data. The main responsibility of a data scientist is to look for patterns and find useful conclusions. These conclusions can be used to make informed business decisions to improve products and gain an advantage over the competition.

The two programming languages essential for data science are Python and R. The most in-demand skills include SQL, Spark, Cloud, Amazon Web Services, JavaTensorFlow, Hadoop, and SAS.

Game Developer

This is a competitive field, but a dream career for those who enjoy gaming. Game developers use coding to transform ideas, drawings, and mechanics into engaging video games. It might already sound too good to be true, but you can top it off with a comfortable salary too.

Game developers need to know programming languages such as C, C++, Java, and C#. They're also experts in frameworks like DirectX, OpenGL, Unity3D, and WebGL.

For developing mobile games, knowledge of Swift is needed for iOS and Java for Android games.

Typical Coding Career Path

One of the best aspects of the coding field is the almost unlimited growth potential. Here are some of the most common steps in a coder's career journey, from first job to leader.

Junior Developer

The primary role of a junior developer is to build quality, bug-free software that meets client expectations. You'll use your knowledge of programming languages, algorithms, and databases.

As this is an entry-level position, you'll spend a significant amount of time developing your coding skills. You may find coding certain applications a challenge, but this is your opportunity to learn the software development lifecycle.

Senior Developer

After gaining three to four years of experience, you'll now be proficient in writing complex software applications. You'll have also gained more in-depth knowledge of databases and algorithms. Now you're fully aware of the complexity of the entire software/application lifecycle.

Lead Architect

A lead architect is responsible for designing the entire software system. You'll oversee the day-to-day coding which is implemented by a team of junior developers. The technical skills gained with years of experience as a junior and senior developer help you take on the lead architect role.

Mid-Level Manager

The traditional way to move ahead in your career is to become a manager. Typical managerial roles include a product manager, developer manager, or a project manager. If you're someone with strong leadership skills and can drive a team forwards, then this is the job for you.

Senior Leader

As you go further up the career ladder, your job will involve less coding. You'll take on a role where you'll be heading a team of mid-level managers. Your job is to motivate and inspire your team towards achieving company goals.

What Do Coders Do?

Here's a list of job responsibilities that a coder typically takes on:

Write and develop in-house software programs that are fully functional and meeting company goals

Write and test code to debug existing software and resolve any inconsistencies

Develop software patches or fix bugs

Solve problems by collaborating with teams and producing unique solutions

Perform regular audits to identify any inefficiencies and resolve them immediately

Raise any concerns with the manager and report issues

Regularly write and update technical documents for internal and external reference

How Much Do Coders Make?

The coder's salary average varies greatly by role and industry. Generally, however, the coder's career path pays very well. According to PayScale.com and ZipRecruiter.com, this is the average annual salary of these various, coding-related, roles:

What Skills Do Coders Need?

There's a variety of skills that coders need in order to do their job correctly. These can be divided into hard skills and soft skills. Hard skills are those career-specific skills you need to perform the essential responsibilities of your job. Soft skills are more personality-based and determine how you work by yourself and with others.

Here are some of the skills that a coder needs to have.
Hard Skills

Programming languages (Java, Python, Ruby, etc.)

Math

Logical thinking

Writing

Soft Skills

Communication

Analytical mindset

Creativity

Attention to detail

How Do I Become a Coder?

If you're interested in becoming a coder, there are a variety of paths you can take. Regardless of how you kickstart your career, however, you'll essentially need a combination of educational training and real-world experience (or practice). These will help prepare you for the coding career path you're looking for.

Education in Coding

Despite what many people think, coding isn't difficult to learn. There are several free websites and online tutorials that can teach you. While some may find this approach useful, others can be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available. Most free resources are unstructured and out-of-date, which can make this form of learning a challenge.

Degrees

Another way to learn is to earn a bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related subject. Degrees are the traditional approach used by many students and will provide you with a solid foundation. They take up to 4 years to complete and can cost up to $140,000 in tuition fees.

Certificates

Like a degree, a certificate helps to demonstrate your skills in a particular area. Unlike a degree, however, getting a certificate can be much cheaper and less time-consuming to complete. There are many coding certificates you can take, so make sure you pick the one that best fits your budget and professional needs.

Courses or Bootcamps

If you don't have 4 years to spare before starting your career, you might want to consider a coding bootcamp. These specially designed online programs teach you everything you need to kickstart your programming career. They make great educational options for those who want to get a good grasp of coding without going into huge amounts of debt.

Coding Resources

Coding is a vast field where you can always improve your skills and knowledge. As such, we've put together a set of resources that will help you continue your journey into learning more about this exciting field.

If you're interested in learning more about coding, check these resources out.

Books

Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science

Perfect for: This book is perfect for those beginner programmers who are looking for an easy-to-understand introduction into the field. It offers not just a basic understanding, but an in-depth look into programming, covering topics like data collection and algorithm design.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Perfect for: This is one of the most popular books for many professionals in the tech field. As such, coders will also benefit from reading this book. Whether you're a web designer or a developer, knowing what gives a digital product a high level of usability.

Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship

Perfect for: Coders and aspiring coders who want to code in a clean and efficient manner. If you care about the work you do and are looking to improve how you write code, this book is definitely for you. You'll learn the difference between clean code and bad code and how to avoid the latter.

Tools

As a coder, there will be a large range of tools and applications you will need to use in your day to day responsibilities. Here are some of the most important tools you need to have in your coding arsenal:

A version control tool like GitHub

An Integrated Development Environment tool (IDE) like Microsoft Visual Studio

A hosting service provider like AWS

A text editor tool like Visual Studio Code

A project management tool like Trello

A productivity and organization tool like Notion

Terms

If you want to learn more about coding, it'll help for you to have an understand of some of the basic terms and concepts that are used in this field. Here are some important programming terms you need to know:

Database: A digitally kept collection of data accessed through a computer

Data Structure: A data storage, organization, and modification format

Version control: Tracking and managing changes made to code

Functions: Modules of code that accomplish specific tasks

Arrays: A type of data structure that consists of a collection of elements (or variables)

Loops: A programming structure that repeats an instruction into a specific result is met

Algorithm: A series of steps for solving a problem

Application Programming Interface (API): Allows to applications to interact with each other

Pursue a Career in Coding

If you had to pick one skill to boost your chances of landing a tech job, it has to be coding. In today's digital world we're surrounded by software. It's become an essential part of our everyday lives. From smartphones to washing machines, computer applications are here to stay.

Learning how to code and understand programming languages can help you stand out from the crowd. Even in non-technical roles, coding can help you communicate with programmers and relate to their problems.

Fortunately, learning how to code is easier now than ever before. If you're interested in pursuing the coder's career path, consider applying for our Software Engineering bootcamp. We'll teach you front-end development, back-end development, programming languages, and so much more of what you need to know to become a coder.

FAQs

How do I become a Coder?

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Coding is an in-demand skill used in almost every industry. Whether you envision a career as a programmer, a game developer or a data scientist, it all starts with code. To help you envision what your trajectory might look like after you conquer HTML, CSS and everything in between, we've outlined some common career paths for motivated coders.

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Just about any company you can imagine is in the software industry. If they don't build their own software, they buy it and, in some cases, provide support for it. Considering all the potential technologies, languages, and frameworks that are used by businesses today, there is a seemingly endless choice of jobs for modern software engineers, and each requires a unique skill set.

In my experience as a full-stack developer across quite a few companies, one of the most effective ways to simplify the complexity of the software engineering landscape is to separate companies into startups and Big Tech, with a small middle ground that includes companies that are a mix of both. The environments and cultures of each group are different, as are the skills that engineers are required to use.

The startup scene

Shows like "Silicon Valley" and movies like "The Social Network" dramatize life while working at a startup, and they definitely got some of it right. (Though fortunately or unfortunately it's not often as hilarious or dramatic.) There can be a mix of pure chaos, long but flexible hours, and pivots to new business models on the fly. A startup has to hit the ground running and prove it can attract enough users to make a profit. This key dynamic dictates the work environment and the skills we all need.

Full-stack development: In my experience, at all the startups I have worked at, employees wear many development hats. At one startup, I started working on middleware, databases, and deployments because we needed those first. After the company hired more people, I worked on the front-end for the rest of the project. I still helped with the other parts of the system as needed.

Cutting-edge technologies: Most of us in the business will find the newest and latest technologies at a startup. At one startup, I learned machine learning, WebGL, and graph databases for the first time. You might end up spending a lot of your free time learning these new technologies because the deadlines are still tight.

Open source: Startups love open source code because it's free. I'm more used to seeing JavaScript, Python, Java, and MySQL at startups, as opposed to Oracle Database or C#.

More flexibility and responsibility: At a startup, job requirements and parameters may be less defined. I've had designers on my team who were just as busy as I was juggling multiple projects. Sometimes, engineers just have to use their best judgment to finish a task.

Technical debt buildup: At a startup, we're required to get things done fast. Changes in design often happen on the fly, so the nice, tight structure of the codebase you started with can turn into a mess pretty quickly and need to be refactored. It takes time to write good code, and there's rarely an abundance of time at a startup.

Less testing and no QA: I have yet to write genuine unit tests at any startup I worked for. They were often mentioned as a good thing to have, but we just never seemed to get around to writing them. And you may not have QA, either. Engineers have to test their own code thoroughly, or we end up pushing hotfixes in the middle of the night.

Heavy workload: I've never been bored at a startup. There are always fires to put out and technical debt left over from late-night coding sessions.

Less infrastructure: At a startup, some things may not work quite as expected. Deployment procedures may not run smoothly, or an engineer might have to log in to Linux servers at midnight to see why the new version of code is not live.

The silos of Big Tech

Large companies have more structure. They burn the midnight oil less often, but employees most likely will have to be at your desk during business hours. There will be a clear hierarchy of authority and rank at the office, and staffers are likely to have a static job description. So how does this environment affect the skills you need for the job?

One technology: You won't need to be a full-stack developer at a large company. If you are a database developer, you will only work on databases. If you are a web developer, you won't have to deploy your code. Just write it and commit it.

Legacy code: You will find a lot of legacy code at most well-established companies. The company has been around for years and the code base will build up over time. If the old code works, there is no reason to change it - until it doesn't, and some engineer is tasked with updating Perl code or outdated ASP pages that haven't been touched in years. I have been that guy. It's not fun.

Proprietary software: Historically, Big Tech tends to trust well-established companies for their software. This has changed a little, and you will find more open-source code in enterprise codebases, but chances are you will find technologies like SQL Server, Oracle Database, and C#.

Strict requirements: In a Big Tech company, the requirements for a task are usually detailed. There will be very little winging it.

More standards: At a Big Tech company, software engineers have plenty of time to refactor their code. It may have to meet coding standards and style requirements before it can be merged. It will also have to pass peer reviews to catch any issues missed by the automated tools.

Testing and QA: Engineers at big companies often have to write unit tests, integration tests, and UI tests along with the code they write to finish a ticket. There will also be a QA department that will send a ticket back for rework if it doesn't fit the detailed requirements.

More downtime: With all the processes and procedures in enterprise development, I always think I'm going to have less free time at a big software company, but the opposite is typically true. You will have plenty of time to clean your desk and maintain inbox zero.

A well-oiled machine: While some parts of a big company's technology stack may be old, it will be dependable. When you commit code, you can forget about anything that happens afterward. It went through linting and code review. Automation will take it from there.

The new engineering department

Not every engineering department in a large company runs like an engineering department in a large company. Right now, I work at a 20-year-old company with more than 1,000 employees. Three years ago, they got tired of dealing with software vendors, so they bought the vendor and started their own engineering department.

In my experience, writing code in a new engineering department is kind of a sweet spot for a developer who doesn't want all the chaos of a startup but is not yet ready to settle down at a large company, either. Your team will start the department from scratch, just like with a startup, but the pressure will be on to create structure and procedures for how the department will run. In this scenario, engineers actually have a say in what these processes and procedures will be.

The spinoff

And then we have the spinoffs. Sometimes an established company will launch a whole new company under its umbrella. These types of companies also run like a startup, but since there's a parent company, there are some distinct differences.

In my experience as a developer at one spinoff, this is another hybrid environment. Software engineers don't see the long hours of a standard startup because they tend to follow the parent company policies. They tend to have more input on what their technology stack will look like, but there may also be tools that the parent company insists that they use because they're already bought and paid for.

What this means for software engineering jobseekers

At a startup, engineers write more code. They will require you to push it out faster, and chances are you will work on the front-end, back-end, middleware, and database. They might even do some DevOps work.

In a larger, more established company, engineers will write less code in one part of the application, but they'll still be required to comply with more standards, follow more processes and procedures, and write more tests. You should choose a path based on what type of experience you're looking for, where you are in your career, and the skills you want to put into practice.

Discussion

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The real deal on coding at a startup vs. Big Tech (from someone who's done both)

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Just about any company you can imagine is in the software industry, and considering all the potential technologies, languages, and frameworks that are used by businesses today, there is a seemingly endless choice of jobs for modern software engineers.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLbcWloJ_tI

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Designers who can code are more valuable

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Designers who can code are more valuable

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Coming from a freelance design perspective, I think a lot about what services create the most value for my clients. I'm often hired to do an array of jobs on a project, which may range from branding, info architecture and UX design, UI design, front-end code, CMS development, print design, and more.

This is in stark contrast to an in-house design position - especially at a larger agency or corporation - where there will be other specialists on your team to cover those roles, so you can focus on what you do best.

As a freelance designer, you rarely have that luxury. Most clients don't have the resources to coordinate an entire team of specialist freelancers. If they were to bother with that, they may as well hire a full-service agency. They need one or two dedicated, trustworthy people who can do it all for them. That means you have to wear many hats. You can't be only a UI designer, or just a front-end developer. That's too narrow a range to offer substantial value. You need to be T-shaped.

Let's look at a hypothetical project as an example

A small business is developing a new responsive web app. They already have a developer as part of their team, but they don't have any design capabilities in-house. They realise the importance good design plays in the success of their app, but they don't have enough ongoing design work to hire a full-time designer. So they look for an independent designer to steer the design part of their project and deliver what their developer needs to implement it accurately. This is a very common scenario in which I've been hired for a number of jobs.

This project may be broken up into phases like this:

1. Info architecture

2. UX design and wireframes + prototyping and testing

3. UI design

4. Front-end code

5. Back-end development

This client has #5 taken care of internally, but they need help with 1-4. If you, as a designer, can't supply that full range of services, they have to look for yet another freelancer or two to fill in the gaps. Chances are, that's one hurdle too many for the client. They'll pass on you and look for someone else who they can trust to see the project through from start to finish.

You just lost a design job because you don't know front-end code. In that client's eyes, you're not well-rounded enough to take a gamble on. They need more value.

Here's another example

The same client's in-house dev has strong enough front-end skills cover both phases #4 and #5. You're great at 1, 2 and 3, so you've landed the job. Congrats!

UI design goes smoothly, and you package up all your files for hand-off to their developer.

Weeks later, you start getting frustrated emails about how some of your design solutions are extremely costly in development. That slider you thought was simple is actually adding 8 hours to their dev schedule. They now have to either come back to you (and pay you more money) to revise designs for a different solution that's easier to implement. Or even worse, the developer hacks together an alternative on her own with little design consideration.

Had you known what was involved in coding that feature, all of this could have been avoided. You would have brought up the potential complication from your side when you first presented the design idea, initiating a conversation to see if they were comfortable with the development cost. Had it been a problem, it would have been caught early, and you could have provided an alternative solution on the next design iteration.

But you didn't, and you just cost your client a thousand dollars because of one poor design decision, stemming from your lack of front-end understanding.

These examples may sound pedantic, but they're not to your clients! And they are all too common.

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Designers who can code are more valuable

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Coming from a freelance design perspective, I think a lot about what services create the most value for my clients. I'm often hired to do an array of jobs on a project, which may range from branding, info architecture and UX design, UI design, front-end code, CMS development, print design, and more.

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The United States and India continue to provide the highest volume of survey responses, followed by Germany and UKI (UK and Ireland). The top ten countries account for almost 60% of all respondents. To see the top ten countries, refer to the methodology section. When we zoom into the United States (our top-responding country), we see that the states with established tech hubs have the most respondents: California, New York, Washington, and Texas.

91% of all respondents and 92% of professional developers identify as a man. The United States has the highest percentage of gender minorities (Woman, Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming). We have considerable work to do to ensure our platform is inclusive and that our survey is representative of developers everywhere.

82,286 responses

Percent who identify as Woman, Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming

Perl moves from being the highest-paid language last year to the fifth highest-paid this year. Clojure developers have the highest median salary, 14k more than second place which belongs to F#.

The percent of employed full-time respondents from India decreased by 15 percentage points compared to last year. In contrast, the number of students increased by 9 percentage points.

Even though Engineering managers, SREs, DevOps specialist roles pay the most, we see they also have, on average, over ten years of professional experience. Data scientists or machine learning specialists are the 8th most paid but, on average, have the fewest years of experience. Designers are the lowest paid even though they have over ten years of experience on average.

PHP developers are disproportionately underpaid compared to other languages with the same experience.

Only 44% of respondents consider themselves "somewhat" or "definitely" a member of the Stack Overflow community. Of these respondents, we see that gender minorities are less likely to consider themselves a member of the Stack Overflow community.

79,517 responses

Percent who consider themselves definitely or somewhat part of the Stack Overflow community out of all respondents.

81,412 responses

Percent who consider themselves definitely or somewhat part of the Stack Overflow community.

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The United States and India continue to provide the highest volume of survey responses, followed by Germany and UKI (UK and Ireland). The top ten countries account for almost 60% of all respondents. To see the top ten countries, refer to the methodology section.

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With over 1 billion monthly active users, Google Play is arguably one of the largest platforms for distributing, promoting, and selling Android apps.

For newbies and first-timers, publishing an app on Google Play can seem like an intimidating process. Like any other app store, the platform comes with its own set of rules, regulations, and procedures, and you need to understand how it works in order to avoid any future issues.

This article is a step-by-step guide on how to successfully publish your app on the Google Play Store.

Step 1: Create a Developer Account

Before you can publish any app on Google Play, you need to create a Developer Account. You can easily sign up for one using your existing Google Account.

The sign up process is fairly straightforward, and you'll need to pay a one-time registration fee of $25. After you've reviewed and accepted the Developer Distribution Agreement, you can proceed to make the payment using your credit or debit card.

To finish the sign up process, fill out all your necessary account details, including your Developer Name, which will be visible to your customers on Google Play. You can always add more details later.

Also, do remember that it can take up to 48 hours for your registration to be fully processed.

Step 2: Plan to Sell? Link Your Merchant Account

If you want to publish a paid app or plan to sell in-app purchases, you need to create a payments center profile, i.e. a merchant account. Here's how you can do that:

1. Sign in to your Play Console

2. Click on Download Reports - Financial

3. Select 'Set up a merchant account now'

4. Fill out your business information

Once you create the profile, it will be automatically linked to your developer account.

A merchant account will let you you manage your app sales and monthly payouts, as well as analyze your sales reports right in your Play Console.

Step 3: Create an App

Now that you have set up your Play Console, you can finally add your app. Here's how to do that:

1. Navigate to the 'All applications' tab in the menu

2. Click on 'Create Application'

3. Select your app's default language from the drop-down menu

4. Type in a title for your app

5. Click on "Create"

The title of your app will show on Google Play after you've published. Don't worry too much about it at this stage; you can always change the name later.

After you've created your app, you'll be taken to the store entry page. Here, you will need to fill out all the details for your app's store listing.

Step 4: Prepare Store Listing

Before you can publish your app, you need to prepare its store listing. These are all the details that will show up to customers on your app's listing on Google Play.

Note: You don't necessarily have to complete this step before moving on to the next one. You can always save a draft and revisit it later when you're ready to publish.

The information required for your store listing is divided into several categories:

Product Details

There are three fields here that you need to fill out:

Your app's title and description should be written with a great user experience in mind.

Use the right keywords, but don't overdo it. Make sure your app doesn't come across as spam-y or promotional, or it will risk getting suspended on the Play Store.

Graphic Assets

Under graphic assets, you can add screenshots, images, videos, promotional graphics, and icons that showcase your app's features and functionality.

Some parts under graphic assets are mandatory, like screenshots, a feature graphic, and a high resolution icon. Others are optional, but you can add them to make your app look more attractive to users.

There are specific requirements for each graphic asset that you upload, such as the file format and dimensions. You can read more about each requirement here.

Languages & Translations

You can also add translations of your app's information in the store listing details, along with in-language screenshots and other localized images.

There's also an option for users to view automated translations of your app's information using Google

Translate (with the exception of Armenian, Raeto-romance, Tagalog, and Zulu), in case you don't add your own translations.

Categorization

This part requires you to select the appropriate type and category your app belongs to. From the drop-down menu, you can pick either app or game for the application type.

There are various categories for each type of app available on the Play Store. Pick the one your app fits into best.

In order to rate your content, you'll need to upload an APK first. You can skip this step for later.

Contact Details

This part requires you to enter contact details to offer your customers access to support regarding your app.

You can add multiple contact channels here, like an email, website, and phone number, but providing a contact email is mandatory for publishing an app.

Privacy Policy

For apps that request access to sensitive user data or permissions, you need to enter a comprehensive privacy policy that effectively discloses how your app collects, uses, and shares that data.

You must add a URL linking to your privacy policy in your store listing and within your app. Make sure the link is active and relevant to your app.

You're now done with the store listing. Go ahead and click on 'Save Draft' to save your details. You can always skip some steps and come back to them later before you publish your app.

Step 5: Upload APK to an App Release

Now that you have prepared the ground to finally upload your app, it's time to dig out your APK file.

The Android Package Kit (or APK, for short) is the file format used by the Android operating system to distribute and install apps. Simply put, your APK file contains all the elements needed for your app to actually work on a device.

Google offers you multiple ways to upload and release your APK. Before you upload the file, however, you need to create an app release.

To create a release, select the app you created in Step 3. Then, from the menu on the left side, navigate to 'Release management' -> 'App releases.'

Here, you need to select the type of release you want to upload your first app version to. You can choose between an internal test, a closed test, an open test, and a production release.

The first three releases allow you to test out your app among a select group of users before you make it go live for everyone to access.

This is a safer option because you can analyze the test results and optimize or fix your app accordingly if you need to before rolling it out to all users.

However, if you create a production release, your uploaded app version will become accessible to everyone in the countries you choose to distribute it in.

Once you've picked an option, click on 'Create release.'

Next, follow the on-screen instructions to add your APK files, and name and describe your release.

After you're done, press Save.

Step 6: Provide an Appropriate Content Rating

If you don't assign a rating to your app, it will be listed as 'Unrated'. Apps that are 'Unrated' may get removed from Google Play.

To rate your app, you need to fill out a content rating questionnaire. You can access it when you select your app in the Play Console, and navigate to 'Store presence' - 'Content rating' on the left menu.

Make sure you enter accurate information. Misrepresentation of your app's content can lead to suspension or removal from the Play Store.

An appropriate content rating will also help you get to the right audience, which will eventually improve your engagement rates.

Step 7: Set Up Pricing & Distribution

Before you can fill out the details required in this step, you need to determine your app's monetization strategy.

Once you know how your app is going to make money, you can go ahead and set up your app as free or paid.

Remember, you can always change your app from paid to free later, but you cannot change a free app to paid.

For that, you'll need to create a new app and set its price.

You can also choose the countries you wish to distribute your app in, and opt-in to distribute to specific Android devices and programs too.

Step 8: Rollout Release to Publish Your App

You're almost done. The final step involves reviewing and rolling out your release after making sure you've taken care of everything else.

Before you review and rollout your release, make sure the store listing, content rating, and pricing and distribution sections of your app each have a green check mark next to them.

Once you're sure you've filled out those details, select your app and navigate to 'Release management' - 'App releases.' Press 'Edit release' next to your desired release, and review it.

Next, click on 'Review' to be taken to the 'Review and rollout release' screen. Here, you can see if there are any issues or warnings you might have missed out on.

Finally, select 'Confirm rollout.' This will also publish your app to all users in your target countries on Google Play.

What's Next?

If you follow all the steps above correctly, you're all set to successfully publish your app. But you can't sit back and relax just yet. Your work has only just begun.

To make the most out of your new app, you need to promote it to make sure people know about it and find it interesting enough to download.

Also, make sure you invest in maintaining your app in the long-term. Keep on improving and updating it, and analyze its performance to turn it into an even better product for your customers.

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How to Publish an App on Google Play: A Step-by-Step Guide

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With over 1 billion monthly active users, Google Play is arguably one of the largest platforms for distributing, promoting, and selling Android apps. For newbies and first-timers, publishing an app on Google Play can seem like an intimidating process.

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by Chris Ching

After working on your app for days, weeks and months ... it's finally time to set it free and publish it to the world.
You'll learn:

How to get access to App Store Connect

How to create your App Store listing

How to create your screenshots

How to submit your app via Xcode

How to submit your app to the App Store

1. Sign up for the Apple Developer Program

2. Prepare your app for submission

3. Create your App Store listing via App Store Connect

4. Make your App Store screenshots

5. Upload your app to App Store connect using Xcode

6. Submit your app for review

In order to be able to submit apps to the App Store, you need to be enrolled in the Apple Developer Program.

It costs $99/year but it will give you access to a bunch of different benefits including:

Access to submit apps to the App Stores on all Apple platforms

Ability to create Safari extensions and list them in the extensions gallery

Access to Beta versions of Apple software

Testing tools like TestFlight

App analytics and advanced app capabilities

If you're planning to build apps for the App Store, then it's worthwhile to sign up!

Keep in mind that your apps will be removed from the App Store if you don't renew your membership next year.

App Store Connect

App Store Connect is one of the websites that you'll get access to after you sign up. It's your portal to manage all things to do with the App Store.

Here's what the App Store Connect dashboard looks like:

Before you're ready to submit your app, let's double check a few things...

Make sure your app follows the App Store guidelines

Before your app is live in the Apple App Store, it needs to go through an app certification process. It sounds scary but it's essentially just a person who tests out your app and makes sure that it conforms to App Store guidelines before approve it for publish into the app store.

So before you submit your app, I would recommend that you go through this document because the reviewer will be using it to judge your app.

Test your app and fix any bugs

Aside from following the guidelines, you should make sure that you app is bug free and crash free. If the reviewer manages to crash your app reliably, s/he is not going to give you a pass.

When you're testing, don't simply test it under normal conditions. Try low network connectivity conditions, low storage conditions, test it on older devices etc.

Your mindset should be like a hacker. Actively try to break it!

You can test the app yourself or you can enlist the help of your friends and family. If you're going to use your friends and family as your beta testers, then make use of TestFlight which you'll get access to as a member of the Apple Developer Program.

TestFlight tutorial from Brian Advent

Alright! Now you're ready to create your App Store listing.

First, login to App Store Connect:

To publish an app, go to the My Apps menu and select the "+ " option to create a new app. If you are looking to submit an update to an existing app, the steps are similar but instead of adding a new app, you'll be selecting an existing app instead.

App Name and Category

Fill in the information about your app and use the "?" button if you are not sure what Apple wants. The website is pretty straight forward too.

At this point, you have to fill in all the informations about your app. The name, description, the category (to be placed in the App Store), the minimum age of the audience and a privacy policy and support URL.

If you app is based on social media and demands a log in, you have to provide a test account and password for the Apple reviewer.

App Privacy Policy

You'll also have to provide a URL to a privacy policy. If you're not sure of how to write one, simple google for "App Privacy Policy" and you'll see a lot of samples and privacy policy generators that you can use.

You're also going to have to put it on a public URL. If you have your own website, put it on there. If you're not sure how to put it on a URL, you can use a Facebook page or a website builder.

App Pricing

Decide on the pricing of your app on this screen:

App Release Options

You can decide how your app should be released after it passes the certification process.

Manually: you'll have to go in to App Store Connect and release it

Immediately: it'll be released as soon as it passes certification

On a date: it'll be published on a specific date (if it has passed certification)

App Store Screenshots

Use this link to go read more about the screenshots needed by the App Store, especially if you have multiples sizes to cover like iPad, Apple Watch, etc.

Making App Store screenshots

You have a few different ways you could create your screenshots.

Technique 1: Raw Screenshots

The fastest and easiest way is just to launch your app in the iOS simulator (for the screen size that you need), navigate to the screen you want to take a screenshot of and then hit CMD+S on your keyboard.

That's going to put a PNG image file on your desktop. You can simply upload that to App Store connect!

Technique 2: Use a mock up template

If you go this route, you'll need a couple of tools.

First you'll need some sort of graphics design software such as:

I recommend Figma because it's free. That's what you see me using in the screenshot above.

Next, you'll need the device mockups. Here are some places you can get device mockups:
Mockuphone
Free to use! Just select your device, upload your screenshot and download the mock up in portrait and landscape orientations. Then you can import that into your graphics program and add whatever text you want.

A paid tool that lets you control the camera on a 3D device mockup so that you can get the perfect angle. Then export the image and import it into your graphics program.

A paid collection of mockups in various angles and device frames. Import into your favorite graphics program to use! (Note: Even though this collection is made up of Sketch and AdobeXD files, I've been able to import the Sketch files into Figma)

Technique 3: Use a app store screenshot generator

If you don't want to bother with graphics software and mock ups, there are tools out there to make it a very smooth and easy process.

Here's one that I would recommend: DaVinci Apps

All you need to do is to select a template, upload your screenshots (that you took with the iOS simulator) and add your custom text. Then you can export all your screenshots in one go.

Shotbot is another tool that you can check out.

Upload your App Store screenshots

Simply go back to your app store listing and upload the screenshots that you've created.

First, your app needs to run properly and be clean of errors (the red warnings).

Second, you should have your Signing and Team information set up in Xcode.

Don't forget you should have your app version set to 1.0.0 if you are publishing a new app (or remember to increment the build version if you are publishing an update).

At this point if you are still having issues regarding your Apple ID or the certificates, I would recommend to check this article. As a small refresher, go to Xcode >> Preferences >> Accounts.
Publishing:
Publishing an app with Xcode 11 is really simple. Where it used to take multiple steps, certificates, profiles, etc. now Xcode is smart enough to enable or create all of those by itself.

To create the full app archive, you first need to select the Generic iOS Device from the list of simulators.

Now go to Product >> Archive and let it bundle your app. This can be a pretty lengthy process depending on the size of your app.

Once this is done, the Archive window will open and this is where you can manage all the archives generated by Xcode.

Every time you select Archive in the menu, Xcode will bundle a new archive for App Store Connect.

If you have duplicates or older ones, just delete them from this list.

Now select the archive and choose Distribute App. You'll be prompted to select the method of distribution:

Once you have selected iOS App Store, it will go over a couple of checks and validations to make sure you are not uploading a broken app.

If something happens, there is a great chance Xcode will stop you here and you'll have to go back to coding or adding missing assets like icons.

If Xcode doesn't find anything wrong with the archive, the upload process will follow. Once again the upload time will vary depending on the archive size and your internet connection.

Once completed, you will see a final window like this. Congratulations! Your app is halfway there to the iOS App Store.

Now it is time to add the build you exported from Xcode. The archive was sent via Xcode but App Store Connect needs some time to process it.

If you've already taken care of the app title, description, pricing and screenshots, there's a great chance that the build is ready to be selected.

In my case, since I was publishing an app update, I was faster and had to wait about 10 minutes. (Tip: you also get an email when your archive has been processed and is ready to use.)

You can see my version 1.0.4 is not available yet for me to select.

THIS IS IT!

Select the save button on the top right of your screen and the " Submit for Review " button should turn blue.

You'll have a couple of questions to answer about your app:

After that, your app will be on the waiting list for the Apple's certification and review team.

Your app should now have a yellow tag:

You just have to wait now.

In the past, the review process took between 1 to 2 weeks and then a couple of years ago Tim Cook said they would be working on improving the speed.

Then the review process was close to 3 or 4 days but I'm happy to say that my app update has been reviewed and accepted 13hrs later! (app updates usually take a shorter time to review than a brand new app.)

After your app is approved, you'll get an email about it.

Your app is now on the App Store! Hello World!
If you published an app, please share it with us below!
I hope you've enjoyed this tutorial and please share it with your friends and peer using the social buttons below!

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How to Submit Your App to the App Store in 2019 (Updated)

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by Chris Ching After working on your app for days, weeks and months ... it's finally time to set it free and publish it to the world.

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How to monetize your app - Developing your strategy | Adjust

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Monetization is critical to the success of your app. In this article, we outline how to monetize your app, including best practices and essential terms.

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It seems like every tech event I go to these days includes at least one conversation with someone trying to change careers and move into…

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Best Practices for Inclusive Design

Inclusive design gives more people the opportunity to enjoy your app by ensuring that everyone can use and understand it. These three best practices can help you create an inclusive app.

Design with Accessibility in Mind

Accessibility is not just about making information available to users with disabilities - it's about making information available to everyone, regardless of their capabilities or situation. Designing your app with accessibility in mind means prioritizing simplicity and perceivability and examining every design decision to ensure that it doesn't exclude users who have different abilities or interact with their devices in different ways.

Simplicity - Enabling familiar, consistent interactions that make complex tasks simple and straightforward to perform.

Perceivability - Making sure that all content can be perceived whether people are using sight, hearing, or touch.

Support Personalization

You already design your app to adapt to environmental variations - such as device orientation, screen size, resolution, color gamut, and split view - because you want people to enjoy your app in any context and on all supported devices. With minimal additional effort, you can design your app to support the accessibility features people use to personalize the ways they interact with their devices.

When you use standard controls to implement your app's UI, text and interface elements automatically adapt to several accessibility preferences, such as Bold Text, Larger Text, Invert Colors, and Increase Contrast.

Audit and Test Your App for Accessibility

An audit examines every element in your app and gives you a comprehensive list of issues to fix. Testing helps you ensure that all users can complete the most important tasks in your app, no matter how they interact with their devices.

When you test important user flows with accessibility features turned on, you gain an appreciation for the challenges of interacting with your device in different ways. You also discover places where your app fails to deliver a great user experience.

For example, a common user flow in a social media app might be "post a response to a comment." The tasks that make up this flow could include:

Read posted comments

Choose a comment for a response

Open the response view

Edit the response

Post the response

For each critical user flow in your app, turn on an accessibility feature, such as VoiceOver, Reduce Motion, or Large Text Size, and make sure that you can complete every task in the flow without difficulty. After you fix any problems you uncover, turn on a different accessibility feature and run through the user flow again.

Accessibility Inspector in Xcode helps you audit, test, and fix your app.

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Best Practices - Accessibility - Human Interface Guidelines - Apple Developer

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Inclusive design gives more people the opportunity to enjoy your app by ensuring that everyone can use and understand it. These three best practices can help you create an inclusive app. Accessibility is not just about making information available to users with disabilities - it's about making information available to everyone, regardless of their capabilities or situation.

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Learning to program is hard. It's difficult to know where to start, but it's even more challenging to know what to do after you've learned the basics. Jumping into a developer bootcamp for three months isn't enough.

The following stories from successful developers (some of them self-taught) show you what it takes to join their ranks, highlighting how the authors learned programming and landed their first job, as well as chronicling people's moves from novice professional developer to exceptional software engineer.

'How I became a developer' stories

People can become developers from almost any background, whether they started programming at an early age and majored in computer science (CS), or they taught themselves how to code later in life. These stories focus on how the authors went from being beginning coders to getting that first job.

This article by Sergei Garcia is packed with excellent resources for anyone learning to become a front-end developer. He shares the technical details of his journey, along with almost every resource that he used. Garcia also includes the story of his first job and how he kept improving his skills after he landed it. Finally, he concludes with some advice, pitfalls, and an outline reiterating all of the learning materials that helped him, in the order that they should be approached.

Nnenna Ndukwe describes a pivotal time in her life when she was out of funds to pursue a college degree and how she made the decision to leave town and learn programming. In addition to anecdotes, the story shares five strategies and tools that she used to build her programming skills. Her account shows us how important it is to struggle through the process of introspection and rediscover your passions.

"Here I was, realizing that I was returning to my original nerdy self, but approaching and engaging with technology from a different angle." - Nnenna Ndukwe

Julia Evans is an extremely influential person in the software and operations engineering community. Her blog and Twitter account are super-popular, but the one thing you should know about Evans is that she has an always-learning mindset. While this post isn't saying that you need 10 years before you can become a programmer, it is saying that you should always feel as if you're "becoming" a programmer-even after you've gotten your first job. And while the years when she could devote more time to programming were the most beneficial, the years of less frequent hobby work in grade school and college helped build an important foundation. The bulk of this goes over the most interesting programming milestones in her life.

You can also go back through Evans' blog archives and read over 30 daily reports on her time at Hacker School (now called the Recurse Center). This post's title was inspired by Peter Norvig's famous post, Teach Yourself to Program in Ten Years, which you should also read.

Sometimes the hard way is the better way. It certainly worked for Denise Nepraunig, an Austrian who now works in Germany as a Swift/SAPUI5/JavaScript developer. While most of the stories in this roundup are from US developers, this is from the EU, so it should help you understand that university system and job market.

While you might think that a "secretary" apprenticeship is far removed from software development, this one was extremely beneficial for Nepraunig, who took the opportunity to automate numerous tasks in Excel and to learn Microsoft VBA and Delphi. From there she still needed to put in years of part-time studying and university work, but being able to put herself in a position where she could learn development, even if it wasn't the primary focus of her job, was a great strategy.

Years ago, Colby Williams gave up being a YouTube gaming celebrity to learn web development. His journey wasn't easy-his story emphasizes a new problem in programming: knowing what to learn. These days, there are numerous resources on a variety of topics and ecosystems. Which language should you learn? Should you learn big data or UI development? These were the challenges Williams struggled with, but once he found helpful communities such as the Odin Project and FreeCodeCamp, he started making progress.

Here's how he made key sacrifices, found a community, hunted for a job, and finally landed one. After working at IBM and MedSpoke, he worked on web development for Amazon. You can read some of Williams' posts on his first blog, when he was learning development.

Cristina Veale was a technical recruiter before she became a developer. That may not be the most common background for developers, but it gave her an uncommon edge in the job-seeking process. She knew which skills employers were looking for, how in-demand developers were (and still are), and that she didn't need a CS degree to have a programming career.

Veale lists the free resources she used, the paid resources she considered, and the meetup groups she went to when she started learning to program. She also describes what a typical day was like and gives readers some tips that she learned along the way.

The Learn Programming subreddit is a great place to start if you're hoping to become a developer beginning at square one. The community offers a lot of encouragement and resources. This post describes a four-month journey from knowing barely any programming syntax to learning several languages and getting paid to do freelance work. It's full of tips and encouragement for beginning developers, along with a bunch of additional helpful comments from the community. There are plenty of other stories like this one on r/learnprogramming, including a short account about learning to program in one's thirties-just in case you thought it was too late ( it never is).

This story is another example of how VBA work in Excel can turn into a journey toward becoming a developer. Ngoc Vuong was lucky enough to join a company that offered a lot of autonomy and a web development class for anyone, not just IT folks. She was encouraged to become a developer after she expressed an interest to her manager-so this isn't a story of quitting one company to program at another. This post is more focused on the narrative rather than advice (other than some all-important encouragement).

The saga of Dan Luu's programming career is a lengthy but enthralling read. It tells the story of his learning some programming in the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s. He ended up going to grad school twice before he moved from hardware engineering to software engineering. Along the way, he dealt with family troubles and bad work environments. Although he has worked at companies such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft, he doesn't claim that the reader should try to mimic his path to success.

Luu begins and concludes his article with links to other "how I learned to program" stories that you should also put on your reading list. While he doesn't suggest you shouldn't try to copy these stories completely, he does believe that they can help encourage others and give them ideas about what their next steps might be in their programming careers.

This is a series of blog posts featuring the stories of Ivan Takarlikov, Ilya Konovalov, Stas Mehonoshin, Victor Shepelev, Aleksey Kurylev, and Kirill Shirinkin. Like Nepraunig's post, these stories describe developer career paths in European countries. While the countries and languages in these stories change, the themes and advice are similar. Each of these tales is worth your time.

Daniel Hunter's developer story is helpful for asking those introspective questions that need to be asked before beginning your programming journey: Why do you want to change careers? Should you do a coding bootcamp? What is your learning style? He also explains how he balanced his learning schedule with a full-time job and shares some of his resources and mistakes.

Austin Tackaberry's article is interesting because each section documents one of the months in his journey, from almost no programming knowledge to landing a job. The tale starts with a five-point plan and ends with a job.

FreeCodeCamp also has an article that compiles excerpts from the stories of seven self-taught developers and summarizes their themes while also linking to the full original stories. Some of the developers' previous jobs included landscaping, restaurant work, and plumbing.

Tania Rascia's story offers some helpful advice and resources for helping you decide the right career for you, regardless of whether it ends up being in programming. Rascia worked in the culinary industry for many years before deciding she wanted a career change. She remembered her high school hobby of modifying web pages in the notepad editor and decided to start by doing the cheapest web design jobs on Craigslist, until she finally landed an internship where she could learn programming.

Greg Karékinian, a university dropout, learned front-end and back-end programming (along with the English language) by engaging with communities, finding mentors, and gaining on-the-job experience, even if it was over his head. The journey included some bad practices and bad code, but a finished product. The moral of the story: Get used to discomfort. Karékinian felt the grip of impostor syndrome for years before finally feeling like a real programmer. Now he's moved over to the sysadmin side of the industry.

This story isn't focused on a career change or grinding to become a developer like many of the other articles in this list. Instead, it's an interesting peek into Shlomi Fish's programming hobby, which eventually became his job, and the old-school tech that was used back in the '90s and early 2000s.

The final step on the journey to become a developer is getting that first job offer. Jonathan Puc's story gives some advice for getting that offer. Having recently landed his first job as a developer, he summarizes his story and then gives advice on the key steps.

'How I became a better developer' stories

After you land that first job and gain some experience as an entry-level or junior developer, how do you keep getting better and work toward promotion? These stories are all about going from being an off-the-shelf novice to being an indispensable engineer.

Shahar Avigezer recently finished her first year as a full-stack, mobile software developer. Her advice to junior developers like her is not the usual "find a mentor and ask lots of questions." She addresses often-overlooked topics such as burnout, cross-departmental learning, and visual thinking techniques for solving problems faster.

"90% of my first challenges were integrating into an existing code base, so most of my day included reading and debugging to figure out how things work."
-Shahar Avigezer

In his own quest to become more than just a junior programmer, José Estrella-Campaña identified seven skills he thinks developers need to have before they can call themselves "software engineers." Some of the competencies are soft skills such as being able to write well, having integrity, and understanding the customer. Technical skills include knowing how to learn a new programming language, understanding system design and algorithmic complexity, and knowing some "low-level" programming languages.

David Boyne shares his 10-year journey from junior developer to software engineer to senior engineer, and finally to tech lead. The post is well-organized, with sections on each stage of his career and a handful of bullet points summarizing the key takeaways he learned in each position.

After 20-plus years of engineering, Joe Moore has some advice for junior developers. Moore shares tidbits of his past experience, but the article is written mainly as a collection of advice. This is what Moore wishes someone had told him at the beginning of his own career.

What do senior developers do that junior ones don't? Ben Orenstein answers that question in this podcast from Talking Code. He starts at the beginning: getting hired as a junior developer. Then he answers questions about the goals junior developers should have, and gets into what intermediate developers are doing that junior developers aren't.

While this isn't author Bruno Filippone's own story, he believes that this article is "our story." Having been in the industry for over 10 years and spoken with other developers about their career journeys, he decided to write an article on the typical evolution of a developer's thinking, from the early stages to the later years of excellence. For a 10-year veteran, some of these observations will feel familiar and, for a beginner, this article offers a wealth of advice and common pitfalls.

Some of the most interesting programming career stories are the ones from tech celebrities-coders who created a language or technology that's in use all over the software industry. When you get a rare chance to hear the origin stories of these venerable developers, it can be interesting and inspiring.

Ryan Dahl is one such celebrity. The neat thing is that even Dahl had a humble beginning. He dropped out of a Ph.D. program in mathematics and moved to South America for a year, where he started his programming career building a Ruby on Rails website for a snowboarding company. You should definitely read or listen to his full interview and hear how he became the creator of Node.js.

This is another resource that's not a story, but it's an ambitious question that newer developers should be thinking about. There are several great answers in this Quora thread, suggesting that you learn hardware architectures, computing and execution models, data modeling, effect modeling, recursion, type theory, and even how to write your own programming languages, parsers, interpreters, and compilers. The experts also suggest that you focus on learning a specialization front to back, and that you keep learning, since the ecosystems and technologies constantly evolve.

Everything you need is at your fingertips

There are an infinite number of paths to becoming a developer and then a senior developer. While it may be challenging to find your own way, these stories provide inspiration and, more importantly, concrete strategies for moving ahead on your developer career path.

All the resources you need to continuously teach yourself are out there. In addition to developer stories, there are plenty of articles where authors simply share their opinions on how you can become a software developer. Andrei Neagoie has a particularly good two-part series on how to learn to code and how to become a senior developer. There are also awesome, active communities such as the FreeCodeCamp forums and r/learnprogramming that are always ready to help beginner developers.

Never stop coding and never stop learning. If you have enough passion and determination, nothing will stop you from reaching your programming goals.
Let us know what inspires you to code. Share your own developer career stories in the comments.
Keep learning

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So you want to be a great developer? 30 inspiring stories | TechBeacon

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Learning to program is hard. It's difficult to know where to start, but it's even more challenging to know what to do after you've learned the basics. Jumping into a developer bootcamp for three months isn't enough.

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Answering app privacy questions

As you get ready to select your answers from the options presented in App Store Connect, keep in mind:

You need to identify all of the data you or your third-party partners collect, unless the data meets all of the criteria for optional disclosure listed below.

Your app's privacy practices should follow the App Store Review Guidelines and all applicable laws.

You're responsible for keeping your responses accurate and up to date. If your practices change, update your responses in App Store Connect. You may update your answers at any time, and you do not need to submit an app update in order to change your answers.

Account Holders, Admins, and App Managers can learn how to enter their responses in App Store Connect.

Data collection

The purpose of the label is to help your customers understand what data is collected from your app and how it is used. To complete that, you'll need to know the types of data that you and/or your third-party partners collect from your app before answering the questions in App Store Connect. Keep in mind that even if you collect the data for reasons other than analytics or advertising, it still needs to be declared. For example, if you collect data solely for the purpose of app functionality, declare the data on your label and indicate that it is only being used for that purpose.

"Collect" refers to transmitting data off the device in a way that allows you and/or your third-party partners to access it for a period longer than what is necessary to service the transmitted request in real time.

"Third-party partners" refers to analytics tools, advertising networks, third-party SDKs, or other external vendors whose code you've added to your app.

Optional disclosure

Data types that meet all of the following criteria are optional to disclose:

The data is not used for tracking purposes, meaning the data is not linked with Third-Party Data for advertising or advertising measurement purposes, or shared with a data broker. For details, see the Tracking section.

The data is not used for Third-Party Advertising, your Advertising or Marketing purposes, or for Other Purposes, as those terms are defined in the Tracking section.

Collection of the data occurs only in infrequent cases that are not part of your app's primary functionality, and which are optional for the user.

The data is provided by the user in your app's interface, it is clear to the user what data is collected, the user's name or account name is prominently displayed in the submission form alongside the other data elements being submitted, and the user affirmatively chooses to provide the data for collection each time.

Data types must meet all criteria in order to be considered optional for disclosure. If a data type collected by your app meets some, but not all, of the above criteria, it must be disclosed in App Store Connect.

Examples of data that may not need to be disclosed include data collected in optional feedback forms or customer service requests that are unrelated to the primary purpose of the app and meet the other criteria above.

For the purpose of clarity, data collected on an ongoing basis after an initial request for permission must be disclosed.

Regulated Financial Services Disclosure

Data types that are collected by an app that facilitates regulated financial services and where the data collected meets all of the following criteria are optional to disclose:

Collection of the regulated data is in accordance with a legally required privacy notice under applicable financial services or data protection laws or regulations (e.g., GDPR or GLBA).

Collection by the app of that data occurs only in cases that are not part of your app's primary functionality, and which are optional for the user.

Such notice provides that data is not shared with unaffiliated third parties to market other products and services.

Such data is not linked with third-party data for advertising purposes or shared with a data broker except for purposes of fraud detection or prevention or security purposes, or with a consumer reporting agency for credit reporting.

Data types must meet all criteria in order to be considered optional for disclosure. If a data type collected by your app meets some, but not all, of the above criteria, it must be disclosed in your privacy section.

Health Research Disclosure

Data types that are collected as part of a health research study and where the data collected meets all of the following criteria are optional to disclose:

The data is collected by an entity whose collection of the data is subject to an informed consent form (ICF) as part of a health research study that has been reviewed and approved by an institutional review board or ethics review board.

All such data collection must follow the relevant App Store Guidelines and the data may not be used for tracking purposes.

If the data type collected by your app meets some, but not all, of the above criteria, it must be disclosed in your privacy section.

Types of data

Refer to the list of data types below and compare them to the data collection practices in your app.

Contact Info

Name

Such as first or last name

Email Address

Including but not limited to a hashed email address

Phone Number

Including but not limited to a hashed phone number

Physical Address

Such as home address, physical address, or mailing address

Other User Contact Info

Any other information that can be used to contact the user outside the app

Health & Fitness

Health

Health and medical data, including but not limited to data from the Clinical Health Records API, HealthKit API, MovementDisorderAPIs, or health-related human subject research or any other user provided health or medical data

Fitness

Fitness and exercise data, including but not limited to the Motion and Fitness API

Financial Info

Payment Info

Such as form of payment, payment card number, or bank account number. If your app uses a payment service, the payment information is entered outside your app, and you as the developer never have access to the payment information, it is not collected and does not need to be disclosed.

Credit Info

Such as credit score

Other Financial Info

Such as salary, income, assets, debts, or any other financial information

Precise Location

Information that describes the location of a user or device with the same or greater resolution as a latitude and longitude with three or more decimal places

Coarse Location

Information that describes the location of a user or device with lower resolution than a latitude and longitude with three or more decimal places, such as Approximate Location Services

Sensitive Info

Sensitive Info

Such as racial or ethnic data, sexual orientation, pregnancy or childbirth information, disability, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political opinion, genetic information, or biometric data

Contacts

Such as a list of contacts in the user's phone, address book, or social graph

User Content

Emails or Text Messages

Including subject line, sender, recipients, and contents of the email or message

Photos or Videos

The user's photos or videos

Audio Data

The user's voice or sound recordings

Gameplay Content

Such as saved games, multiplayer matching or gameplay logic, or user-generated content in-game

Customer Support

Data generated by the user during a customer support request

Other User Content

Any other user-generated content

Browsing History

Browsing History

Information about content the user has viewed that is not part of the app, such as websites

Search History

Search History

Information about searches performed in the app

Identifiers

User ID

Such as screen name, handle, account ID, assigned user ID, customer number, or other user- or account-level ID that can be used to identify a particular user or account

Device ID

Such as the device's advertising identifier, or other device-level ID

Purchase History

An account's or individual's purchases or purchase tendencies

Product Interaction

Such as app launches, taps, clicks, scrolling information, music listening data, video views, saved place in a game, video, or song, or other information about how the user interacts with the app

Advertising Data

Such as information about the advertisements the user has seen

Other Usage Data

Any other data about user activity in the app

Diagnostics

Crash Data

Such as crash logs

Performance Data

Such as launch time, hang rate, or energy use

Other Diagnostic Data

Any other data collected for the purposes of measuring technical diagnostics related to the app

Other Data Types

Any other data types not mentioned

Data use

You should have a clear understanding of how each data type is used by you and your third-party partners.

For example, collecting an email address and using it to authenticate the user and personalize the user's experience within your app would include App Functionality and Product Personalization.

Definition

Third-Party Advertising

Such as displaying third-party ads in your app, or sharing data with entities who display third-party ads

Developer's Advertising or Marketing

Such as displaying first-party ads in your app, sending marketing communications directly to your users, or sharing data with entities who will display your ads

Analytics

Using data to evaluate user behavior, including to understand the effectiveness of existing product features, plan new features, or measure audience size or characteristics

Product Personalization

Customizing what the user sees, such as a list of recommended products, posts, or suggestions

App Functionality

Such as to authenticate the user, enable features, prevent fraud, implement security measures, ensure server up-time, minimize app crashes, improve scalability and performance, or perform customer support

Other Purposes

Any other purposes not listed

You'll need to identify whether each data type is linked to the user's identity (via their account, device, or other details) by you and/or your third-party partners. Data collected from an app is often linked to the user's identity, unless specific privacy protections are put in place before collection to de-identify or anonymize it, such as:

Stripping data of any direct identifiers, such as user ID or name, before collection.

Manipulating data to break the linkage and prevent re-linkage to real-world identities.

Additionally, in order for data not to be linked to a particular user's identity, you must avoid certain activities after collection:

You must not attempt to link the data back to the user's identity.

You must not tie the data to other datasets that enable it to be linked to a particular user's identity.

Note: "Personal Information" and "Personal Data", as defined under relevant privacy laws, are considered linked to the user.

Tracking

You'll need to understand whether you and/or your third-party partners use data from your app to track users and, if so, which data is used for this purpose.

"Tracking" refers to linking data collected from your app about a particular end-user or device, such as a user ID, device ID, or profile, with Third-Party Data for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, or sharing data collected from your app about a particular end-user or device with a data broker.

"Third-Party Data" refers to any data about a particular end-user or device collected from apps, websites, or offline properties not owned by you.

Examples of tracking include:

Displaying targeted advertisements in your app based on user data collected from apps and websites owned by other companies.

Sharing device location data or email lists with a data broker.

Sharing a list of emails, advertising IDs, or other IDs with a third-party advertising network that uses that information to retarget those users in other developers' apps or to find similar users.

Placing a third-party SDK in your app that combines user data from your app with user data from other developers' apps to target advertising or measure advertising efficiency, even if you don't use the SDK for these purposes. For example, using a login SDK that repurposes the data it collects from your app to enable targeted advertising in other developers' apps.

The following situations are not considered tracking:

When the data is linked solely on the end-user's device and is not sent off the device in a way that can identify the end-user or device.

When the data broker uses the data shared with them solely for fraud detection or prevention or security purposes.

When the data broker is a consumer reporting agency and the data is shared with them for purposes of (1) reporting on a consumer's creditworthiness or (2) obtaining information on a consumer's creditworthiness for the specific purpose of making a credit determination.

Learn more about tracking.

By adding the following links on your product page, you can help users easily access your app's privacy policy and manage their data in your app.

Privacy Policy (Required): The URL to your publicly accessible privacy policy.

Privacy Choices (Optional): A publicly accessible URL where users can learn more about their privacy choices for your app and how to manage them. For example, a webpage where users can access their data, request deletion, or make changes.

Additional guidance

Your app has web views.

Data collected via web traffic must be declared, unless you are enabling the user to navigate the open web.

You collect and store IP address from your users.

Declare the relevant data types based on how you use IP address, such as precise location, coarse location, device ID, or diagnostics.

You offer in-app private messaging between users that are not SMS text messages.

Declare emails or text messages on your label. Text messages refer to both SMS and non-SMS messages.

Your app includes game saves, multiplayer matching, or gameplay logic.

Declare Gameplay Content on your label.

You collect different types of data from users depending on whether the user is a child, whether they are a free or paid user, whether they opt in, where they live, or for some other reason.

Please disclose all data collected from your app, unless it meets all of the criteria outlined in the Optional Disclosure section. You may use the Privacy Choices or Privacy Policy links to provide additional detail about how your data collection practices may vary.

You use Apple frameworks or services, such as MapKit, CloudKit, or App Analytics.

If you collect data about your app from Apple frameworks or services, you should indicate what data you collect and how you use it. You are not responsible for disclosing data collected by Apple.

You use location, device identifiers, and other sensitive data, but only on device, and the data is never sent to a server.

Data that is processed only on device is not "collected" and does not need to be disclosed in your answers. If you derive anything from that data and send it off device, the resulting data should be considered separately.

You collect precise location, but immediately de-identify and coarsen it before storing.

Disclose that you collect Coarse Location, since the precise location data is immediately coarsened and precise location is not stored.

Your app includes free-form text fields or voice recordings, and users can save any type of information they want through those mediums, including names and health data.

Mark "Other User Content" to represent generic free form text fields and "Audio Data" for voice recordings. You're not responsible for disclosing all possible data that users may manually enter in the app through free-form fields or voice recordings. However, if you ask a user to input a specific data type into a text field, such as their name or email, or if you have a feature that enables users to upload a particular media type, such as photos or videos, then you'll need to disclose the specific type of data.

You collect data to service a request but do not retain it after servicing the request.

"Collect" refers to transmitting data off the device and storing it in a readable form for longer than the time it takes you and/or your third-party partners to service the request. For example, if an authentication token or IP address is sent on a server call and not retained, or if data is sent to your servers then immediately discarded after servicing the request, you do not need to disclose this in your answers in App Store Connect.

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App Privacy Details - App Store - Apple Developer

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As you get ready to select your answers from the options presented in App Store Connect, keep in mind: You need to identify all of the data you or your third-party partners collect, unless the data meets all of the criteria for optional disclosure listed below.

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Teen creates free AAC app for his sister

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Teen creates free AAC app for his sister

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texas teen creates web app to give his non-verbal sister a voice - cnn video

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Texas teen creates web app to give his non-verbal sister a voice - CNN Video

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Archer Calder spent his childhood unable to talk with his younger sister, Della, so he created an app to give her a voice. CNN's Wolf Blitzer has the story.

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If you were developing an app, which parts of your app would you hire a lawyer to take a look at, and what kind of lawyer

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Web And Mobile Apps Development, UI/UX Design | OpenGeeksLab

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The Crucial Legal Issues to Protect Your App

1. Jurisdiction

If you launch the app in an international market, you must ensure that a future product complies with local laws. Before marketing and distributing an app abroad, get a lawyer to run your case and help with all the legal work. Such cooperation enables to avoid possible confusions regarding the laws of the countries where a product will be released.

2. Incorporate a Business to Limit Your Liability

Your responsibilities depend on how you will operate your business. You can act as a sole trader, become a partner in a partnership, or form a limited liability company.

An LLC is considered a right structure to limit your liability and protect personal assets if any problems arise.

3. Confidentiality Agreement to Protect Your Business Idea

In order not to expose your business idea to possible stealing or competition, sign a confidentiality agreement before sharing it with the mobile development company and discussing the workflow.

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is considered the most familiar way to protect your product and maintain confidentiality. An NDA agreement for app development is no guarantee that your business idea security is wholly ensured, but it will significantly help in taking legal action against anyone who violates the terms of it.

You Name the Idea, We Bring It to Life!

Contact us right away to know how our pros can transform your business with custom software development services.

4. Intellectual Property Rights to Prevent Your Product from Copycats

How to secure an idea for an app? You need to ensure that all intellectual property rights of your app contents, design, and code are the property of your company, and not belong to the people who create the product. There are three ways assigning intellectual property rights and protecting your app idea-trademarks, copyrights, and patents.

Copyright may protect the app's source code, design, content. The source code may also qualify for trade secrets.

You can trademark the app name, slogan, brand name, and logo. If you market your product internationally, you can adopt global brand protection strategies that help to protect your app from any infringers in the target countries.

You can also get patent protection.

5. Contract Issues

Signing a contract is essential for a product owner and a development company. An application development agreement defines the responsibilities of both parties, rights to the technology, the deliverables, costs, workflow, timeline. Include a confidentiality clause, specify code ownership, and terms of use of open source software.

6. A Privacy Policy

As the Statista data shows, 37% of Americans take proactive measures regarding the data protection.

In case of collecting users' personal information, your responsibility is to include a privacy policy, be transparent with users about what data you may access and why it's needed. You must assure people that you protect their personal information and keep it secure.

Pay particular attention to the requirements of Children's Online Privacy Protection Act if children under 13 can use the app. Before dealing with personal data from children, post a privacy policy and obtain parental consent.

Ensure that your mobile app complies with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, other international and local data protection laws, requirements, legal guidelines, and regulations.

Carefully examine the App Store legal guidelines and article called ' Protecting the User's Privacy". Look through the Google's Privacy Policy Guidance.

7. The Right App Legals

When you prepare your app for release on the App Store or Google Play Market, you must agree to their terms and conditions. But you aren't insured against any legal risks as the app stores protect their businesses, not yours. Therefore, set your rules that users must agree and follow to download and use your mobile app. It's also vital to create the right disclaimer.

Moreover, if there are in-app ads, you need to ensure that the content complies with advertising, marketing, and promotion laws of the countries where you distribute the product.

1. Jurisdiction

If you launch the app in an international market, you must ensure that a future product complies with local laws. Before marketing and distributing an app abroad, get a lawyer to run your case and help with all the legal work. Such cooperation enables to avoid possible confusions regarding the laws of the countries where a product will be released.

2. Incorporate a Business to Limit Your Liability

Your responsibilities depend on how you will operate your business. You can act as a sole trader, become a partner in a partnership, or form a limited liability company.

An LLC is considered a right structure to limit your liability and protect personal assets if any problems arise.

3. Confidentiality Agreement to Protect Your Business Idea

In order not to expose your business idea to possible stealing or competition, sign a confidentiality agreement before sharing it with the mobile development company and discussing the workflow.

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is considered the most familiar way to protect your product and maintain confidentiality. An NDA agreement for app development is no guarantee that your business idea security is wholly ensured, but it will significantly help in taking legal action against anyone who violates the terms of it.

4. Intellectual Property Rights to Prevent Your Product from Copycats

How to secure an idea for an app? You need to ensure that all intellectual property rights of your app contents, design, and code are the property of your company, and not belong to the people who create the product. There are three ways assigning intellectual property rights and protecting your app idea-trademarks, copyrights, and patents.

Copyright may protect the app's source code, design, content. The source code may also qualify for trade secrets.

You can trademark the app name, slogan, brand name, and logo. If you market your product internationally, you can adopt global brand protection strategies that help to protect your app from any infringers in the target countries.

You can also get patent protection.

5. Contract Issues

Signing a contract is essential for a product owner and a development company. An application development agreement defines the responsibilities of both parties, rights to the technology, the deliverables, costs, workflow, timeline. Include a confidentiality clause, specify code ownership, and terms of use of open source software.

6. A Privacy Policy

As the Statista data shows, 37% of Americans take proactive measures regarding the data protection.

In case of collecting users' personal information, your responsibility is to include a privacy policy, be transparent with users about what data you may access and why it's needed. You must assure people that you protect their personal information and keep it secure.

Pay particular attention to the requirements of Children's Online Privacy Protection Act if children under 13 can use the app. Before dealing with personal data from children, post a privacy policy and obtain parental consent.

Ensure that your mobile app complies with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, other international and local data protection laws, requirements, legal guidelines, and regulations.

Carefully examine the App Store legal guidelines and article called ' Protecting the User's Privacy". Look through the Google's Privacy Policy Guidance.

7. The Right App Legals

When you prepare your app for release on the App Store or Google Play Market, you must agree to their terms and conditions. But you aren't insured against any legal risks as the app stores protect their businesses, not yours. Therefore, set your rules that users must agree and follow to download and use your mobile app. It's also vital to create the right disclaimer.

Moreover, if there are in-app ads, you need to ensure that the content complies with advertising, marketing, and promotion laws of the countries where you distribute the product.

Conclusions

As you see, a wise legal compliance strategy in the app development process will help to minimize the legal risk and protect your intellectual property rights. You can deal with most legislative issues efficiently with a trustful development company. Reliable companies meet the majority of legal requirements and take precautions to minimize your liability and help your business to achieve success.

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Top 7 Legal Issues To Consider In Mobile App Development

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If you launch the app in an international market, you must ensure that a future product complies with local laws. Before marketing and distributing an app abroad, get a lawyer to run your case and help with all the legal work.