How to Design the Perfect App
How do you get from a decent, or even brilliant, idea to an app that people love? How does your modest piece of software earn its place in people’s hearts and on their phones? How does your app become their app?
Designing a brand new app or an all new feature into an existing one is one of the most exciting projects I get to take on in my life as a Product Designer. I like to think I have one focus in that role, and that is creating a meaningful, long-lasting connection between an app and it’s audience. Over the past seven years, I have cultivated a process that’s never let me down, and I’m going to share it with you here, beginning with vision and planning.
Vision & Planning
Okay so, what I don’t have for you is a foolproof way to land on your Brilliant Idea. Whether that comes from your employer, your client, or you, hopefully the core concept of your digital product responds to some real gap in the marketplace or deficiency in people’s lives. This gap should be identified through copious amounts of market and competitive research and be based in a real, factual understanding of those conditions — not from your gut. If you need to involve your gut at all, let it lead you to research and let that research provide your gut with honest answers. (There’s nothing wrong with this approach, I use it all the time to get started.)
Deciding what your app will do is not what this series is about. We’re going to talk about how your app does what it does. So once you have your Brilliant Idea in mind, we can get to work finding your app’s Core Values. These Core Values represent three balanced forces that must work in concert in all decisions you make as you move along the path of design and development from this moment forward. They are Customer Value, Business Value, and Brand Value. Without all three, your app is as at least as likely to fail as not (but probably more-so—we’ll cover that).
Defining Your Three Core Values
Customer Value is a way to describe the benefit you bring to a person’s life. Absent any other criteria or measurement, what is the thing your app does to make their lives easier? Many designers live their whole lives answering just this question, though I have often found it overlooked by business professionals. Apps are built to be either entertainment or problem solvers (think Fortnite or Netflix vs. Uber or Yelp). People will use entertainment apps for their own sake, but no one ever downloaded Uber because they wanted to use Uber. People downloaded it because they need to go somewhere, and Uber made going somewhere easier and more pleasant than flagging a taxi at random. This is the Customer Value.
“People will use my app because it makes ___________ easier/better/faster/stronger (etc.) for them.”
Business Value is, directly now, how your app will make money. There are exceptions, and there are other ways an app can provide business value (Garmin Connect, which I was a designer on for three years, was free and offered no monetization at the time but added to the value proposition of anyone buying a Garmin Fitness product), but ultimately companies exist to make money and your app is going to need to sustain itself at the bare minimum. In contrast to the Customer Value, this is where I see most business professionals spending their mental energy, whereas many designers I’ve met need to learn to add more emphasis here. Maybe it’s selling subscriptions to exclusive content released regularly, maybe it’s a paid app, or like Uber it may be transactional per use. In whatever way your app most directly contributes to your company’s bottom line, that is your Business Value.
“The company needs my app because __________ is the best/fastest/easiest (etc.) way to meet this or these company goals.”
Lastly, I like to include Brand Value as a kind of check for appropriateness when combining the above two values. This is the secret sauce, which makes your app unique to the relationship your customers have with your business. An app that people keep on their phones is a lasting connection to your company, and the experience of using it should deepen that connection. A brand is way to describe why your company has customers, and why those customers choose your company. It may be the friendly, supportive systems of Duolingo, the ease of starting-up in Zoom, or the at-your-fingertips fulfilling exploration of Pinterest. The special way your app adds meaning between your company and your customers is your Brand Value.
“My app is special because when you __________, it __________.”
Once you’ve nailed down these three core ideas, get everyone involved to buy-in and carve them in stone. These concepts should be specific enough to describe your unique app and broad enough that it can grow and adapt in the marketplace without discarding what makes it special. You can even rearrange your three value statements to form the core of your elevator pitch (which we’ll do at the end below). Keep them handy, keep them on the wall, keep them top of mind — they are your guideposts for every decision that comes next.
Why Three Core Values?
Balancing three core values, as opposed to two or even one, is tricky. To be totally honest, it can be hard work, especially when seemingly obvious solutions to challenges that arrive later in your process don’t measure up. It can mean more work to get it right, but the upside is you will spend a lot less time spinning your wheels on ideation. You’ll know what you’re trying to build right from step one, and can measure your concepts against your vision immediately.
Briefly though, let’s walk through what happens when any one value is discarded:
Business and Brand Value, minus Customer Value gives you an app that would make a good amount of money, in a way that makes sense to your business, but it doesn’t …because no-one will use it, because it doesn’t do anything for them.
Customer and Brand Value, minus Business Value (what I often call The Designer’s Dream) is an amazing idea that people love, connecting them to your company in a really cool way, but losing money hand-over-fist while doing so and eventually flaming out.
Customer and Business Value, minus Brand Value could make a good impact on your business, delivering something of value to your customers’ lives, but in a way that’s generally meaningless to your mutual relationship. Think of a company like Yelp offering a photo-printing feature. Sure, they could do that, but it wouldn’t make much sense to their business model and people wouldn’t flock to it because it’s just not what you open Yelp to do.
In all of the above scenarios you could certainly bring an app to market and you might even see some amount of return on your investment, but each and every one of them will eventually fail. They won’t make enough impact on your business to justify sustaining their development, or they won’t connect with enough users not to be sunset in favor of new initiatives. Have all three values represented at all stages of your product plan, and you can have confidence your vision is on the right track.
Your Vision Statement
Roll it all together real nice with something like this (the format doesn’t matter, so long as you capture everything in one sentence):
“My app will [BUSINESS VALUE] for our business by [CUSTOMER VALUE] for our customers with [BRAND VALUE] at the core.”
At this point it’s okay to be excited—you now know exactly what is going to make your app special! But vision alone isn’t enough to create a new app or major feature from scratch. Execution and design strategy will ensure your app meets your vision in the end.
