I have a commercial background, but I’m on the MA Creative App Development course because I want to be well equipped to create my own startup venture, with a mobile app sitting at the core of the business and I want to feel confident that I can launch and grow that business into a success story. So, I’m using the course to develop the full range of skills and competencies that I need to become a developer of great mobile apps.
Skills & Competencies
I started by looking at the key skills and competencies that a great app developer needs, and through brainstorming, with some internet research, I found myself developing a model to help me to see where I need to be. This is how I see it:
The skills, group nicely into a trinity of families:
- Technical skills – so that I can create and build an excellent product
- Business acumen – so that I can identify market needs and create a business model that successfully delivers a financially viable solution.
- And artistic talent – so that I can deliver a user experience that supports the brand, creates another competitive selling point, and nurtures adoption and loyalty.
And I rank them in that order of importance for me.
Each of the skills families is an umbrella for an array of hard skills, each with its own level of relevance and priority in terms of how it impacts my own short, medium and long-term objectives.
And all of this is supported by a range of soft skills.
I conducted a subjective self-assessment of my starting point, based on my achievement to date and peer comparison, and the green triangle represents my perceived current capability as an app developer.
I intend to get my business venture off the ground on my own, initially, and gradually build my team of specialists around me, as and when necessary, and so I need to spend the next 2 years bringing my score for each of the skills families to at least a 9. The red area represents my currently perceived skills gap.
The arrows at the end of each scale, point toward infinity, representing my appreciation for endless learning opportunity, in order to exploit new technologies, rapid adaptation of developing industry trends, and satisfy ever-changing consumer demands.
My priorities for the course lie with the development of my technical skills. It’s imperative that I bring those up to speed as quickly as possible, so that I have a solid foundation for the rest of the course.
I may not have an IT background, but I do bring some solid transferrable skills. I’m very analytical and pragmatic, with a good balance of both logical and creative thinking for problem solving. However, building this model brought a realisation that I hadn’t fully appreciated the enormity of the task ahead, and just how much of it is completely new to me. I’m viewing this as a stretching, but achievable challenge that I’m fully committed to, but, at times, I’ve felt a little overwhelmed by the size of the skills gap, and there is a degree of imposter syndrome that I’m currently wrestling with. I just need to keep a calm head, eat this elephant one bite at a time, and trust in the support network and resources that the course provides, to help get me there.
The App Jam
The week 3 app jam was an end-to-end development exercise, with a theme based on the words “guide”, “opponent” and “restricted”, which were generated using VNA cards. This was an opportunity for me to draw on everything I’d learned, and assess my strengths and weaknesses within that context. I knew from the outset that the jam had come far too early in the process for me, as I lacked the necessary technical skills. Although, I hadn’t discounted the possibility at that point, I knew that building a fully working app wasn’t a realistic goal for me. So, I primarily focused on what I could learn from the process of the jam, with the aim of creating a paper prototype and then building a fully working app if I could improve my skills sufficiently in time, but this became a secondary concern for me.
As expected, I didn’t get to build the app. But I did get a good experience of the process, taking away some key lessons:
- The right tools for the job
I need experience with the best tools for the job.
- Flutter
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I tried to get some Flutter experience before starting the jam. I’m now content that Flutter is the best development strategy for me, as it allows me to develop for both Android and iOS platforms with a single code base, and it’s reported to be relatively straightforward to learn. However, it’s completely new to me and there just wasn’t enough time to get to grips with it in any real depth.
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- Dart
- Flutter uses the Dart language, and so a solid general understanding of that will also be highly beneficial for me.
- Process flow tool
- During the creative piece from week 1, I had identified a need to find a more appropriate tool than PowerPoint to draw up process flow diagrams, but I hadn’t managed to do this in time
- Wireframing tool
- and it’s a similar situation with wireframing. I did look at InVision as a possible tool, to help planning screen layouts, but learning how to use it was time that I couldn’t afford if I wanted to achieve anything else before the deadline. So I reverted to PowerPoint. It does deliver aesthetically pleasing results, but it’s time consuming and becomes fiddly when working with small detail. Maybe I should have settled for hand drawn sketches? I’ll explore this further.
- Time estimation
I based my plan for the jam on what I’d learnt from the week 1 creative piece. While the structure was, on the whole, fairly sound, my time estimations for each phase weren’t always very accurate. I compensated for slippage by adjusting and capping subsequent tasks to stay on track. Experience will help with this, but I’ll also look to adopt some Agile principles to improve my project management skills.
- Select projects that inspire me
I generated a list of theme ideas, and decided to pursue my “Quick Cook Challenge” app idea, as it was something that I thought I might use myself, and some rudimentary research identified that there might be an opportunity in the market for it. But, after working on this for a few days, I noticed myself beginning to procrastinate, which told me that I wasn’t as invested in the concept as I’d first thought, and I had to be quite disciplined to make progress with it. I might have avoided this by generating a theme that I could really get excited about, had I afforded more time for the theme generation phase, and applied a more strategic concept assessment and selection criteria.
- Subconscious thinking is valuable
Many of my better creative ideas happened while I was doing something completely unrelated, with thoughts just popping into my head from nowhere. I need to capitalise on this and build purposeful breaks into my plan at the appropriate times, to allow for this subconscious ideation to happen.
Taking all of this into account, my main objectives for the remainder of the module are:
Objectives for the rest of module 1
- Programming
Before the next Module starts, I will use Flutter to build a working prototype for the “Quick Cook Challenge” app, from the jam. I will apply the principles learned as I go through 6 Flutter and Dart tutorial courses, to create a fully working prototype. I will dedicate 18 hours per week to this, as it is essential that I can comfortably build an app of a decent standard, for the rest of the course. To further improve my capability, I will also read “Think Like a Programmer”, and engage with the Flutter community, by connecting with relevant individuals and groups on social media platforms, as well as sharing ideas with others within the study group who also have an interest in Flutter.
2. Version Control
By 26/04/19 I will be comfortable using Git and GitHub for version control, both from the command prompt, and through Android Studio, so that I am well prepared to work on collaborative projects. I will spend 2-3 hours per week taking 2 video tutorial courses.
3. Development tools
Before the next Module starts, I will select and learn how to use:
- A process flow diagramming tool to draw process flow diagrams more easily
- A wireframing tool to create medium fidelity screen plans more quickly
I will assess 2 or 3 of each type, analysing the benefits over using pencil and paper, and select the ones that I feel most comfortable with, if any. These tools could prove very useful during future app development projects.
4. Better time management
Feedback has, so far, been largely positive, and encouraging, but I’m finding myself falling behind the pace of the course, a little. I need to adopt a more structured, but flexible, approach to managing my week, to help me to achieve a good balance of technical skills and coursework. I’ll spend the next 2 weeks catching up, and then work to keep pace going forward, using this weekly plan, of 3 hour periods:
And this is how it all fits into my plan for the rest of the module.
My Journey to App Success 