building my first app

I thought of writing this article to mainly tell my journey as I developed my first app for the Apple App Store. Daunting but with loads of fun, excitement & thrill. These are the words that come to my mind. So, without any further delay, grab some popcorns (sorry that is my favorite), choose any of your favorite snacks and let's start the journey.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - Lao Tzu

people call it - the idea

With thousands of apps being developed and added to the ecosystem every month, analyzing the market and your capability and strength are very critical components before anything could begin. The next step would be to find out the gaps that the current market/apps fail to address.

Remember, your idea can be the same idea as tom, dick & harry, the experience of your app is the differentiator.

my story

I knew from the beginning, that it is going to be tough and so I quickly made friends with perseverance. So as it is going to be tough, I needed to find something that I am strong at and that for me was Poetry. I write English Poetry as a hobby so I started researching Poetry apps in the App Store. Quickly I did realize that there are very limited apps that are there which deal with there own poetry, it is mostly collaborators or just displaying famous poets poems.

So as I finalize that I am making an app on Poetry with my own poems, I had to now concentrate on how I should gel technology with the concept. I hope you remember the word 'differentiator' which I mentioned early.

the software

There are many popular languages that you can use to develop your app of choice,

...but by far the most robust programming language is the one that you are expert at.

Remember, as the journey is tough, you have to choose tools and techniques that will ease out some of the pain.

my story

I have a fair bit of experience with iOS & Swift language, so that was my obvious choice. But along with it, I take a keen interest in knowing about the framework and language enhancements that Apple brings to the world every year @WWDC. These pieces of information stand as vital anecdotes when fine-tuning my idea.

I had to make my app unique & innovative, so I had to invest time in how I merge poetry with technology as both are very different in many ways... right?. Few features from my app:

• Voiceover & Closed Captioning - I wanted that there should be a way to recite the poem[as I will not be available to do the same for each one who has downloaded my app :)]. I used the closed captioning technique to highlight the current spoken word just like karaoke songs and at the same time, audio out the stanza. Interesting isn't it! Oh too early...Let's continue...
• Recited voice based on geolocation - The app user should be given the liberty to change the voice style when reciting in voice over mode. This is important because I am launching the app across the world and not specific to my country only
• AI & Machine Learning - In voiceover mode when a particular stanza is being recited, at that moment it refers to a CoreML model for sentiment analysis and conveys the emotion gist of the stanza in the form of an emoticon :), :(, :|,
• Augmented Reality - I wanted the feel of sticking a poem that you like in the wall in your drawing room digitally. I used ARKit to accomplish this
• Siri integration - I wanted poem categories to get launched using Siri Voice assistant
• ...and much more - robust Search, Reminders, Favorite, Dictionary, Today's Widgets, Share in Social Media with a hashtag and this and that and so on...

so you get the idea... right? making your app unique and innovative.

I can confidently say and I think you will agree that, as of writing this article there is no Poetry app in the App Store which has such a robust, rich and innovative feature set.

verify & validate

Once your app is mostly ready, start verifying & validating each and every piece of information. For the content of the app rely as far as possible on contents created by you. By content, I mean image assets, app-specific text, etc. For functionality, keep continuously testing in devices & simulators.

my story

For content, I had to perform the proofreading and also spellcheck as I was dealing with literature. For image assets, I have almost created every banner images used in the app and my website. For app-specific images, I have referred to the new functionality of iOS 13 called "SF Symbols". This saved me on my purchase of an icon pack. Testing of the app is never enough, I have done the max I could. As my feature set mentioned above was hudge. I was only able to test certain features only in the device.

the final leg - when you just think it's over

Once you are done with your development & testing bit and confident to face the world. The next big task slowly kicks in... The App Store story and you need to write every bit of the story, starting with getting an App Store account.

my story

Once the account was ready, I had to fill in with the app description and keywords. Also one needs to provide a Privacy Policy link. You need to host your app privacy policy in an online place and it is recommended to be hosted on your website. In my case it is https://www.ruptapas.com/. You can additionally use your site to demonstrate various features of your app and can be used as your marketing tool.

Once the details are filled, you upload your binary and I must mention publishing using Xcode is a breeze. Kudos to Apple Engineers!!!

The Apple App Store review process is very stringent so try to code your app diligently, and follow all the guidelines before you publish for Apple review.

footer note

Once your app is published, take a moment to appreciate your achievement. Whatever be the fate of your app, the experience of building your app will remain with you for a lifetime.

As I conclude, I would request you all to download my app Poetik and experience it.

If you like it, please spread the word & like, share, rate & review it on the App Store

Website: https://ruptapas.com/poetik

#ThePoetikApp - available for iPhone, iPad & Apple Watch

The app is a free app & I have developed it for my love for technology and a way of giving back something to the world...

So until next time, hope to touch your heart through one of such apps that I create...

? ruptapas chakraborty