When brainstorming iPhone Apps it is sometimes helpful to look at other apps already developed. The best way to check out other apps is on the iTunes store (iTunes is free).

Start a blank Google Slides presentation. Using a 12 point font, complete the following exercise using complete sentences and paragraphs.

Content and Style

In one or more paragraphs describe the situation or problem that your app is designed to address. Note that you are not limited by technological constraints. Your app can have superpowers.
In one or more paragraphs describe your solution to the situation or problem.
In one or more paragraphs list at least three benefits that your solution will provide. You may use bullets.
Describe three market segments that would buy your app—one of which must be your classmates. Provide demographics for the market segments—e.g., age, education, household income, gender, geographic location, and so forth.
Now pick one of those segments and create a fictional persona in the target market. Tell us details about your persona—where they live, how much they earn, where they go on vacation, if they have a girlfriend/boyfriend, and so forth. Remember that your persona must be willing to buy the app.
Deliverables: Electronic submission: Share your Google Slides presentation responses with your instructor.

Plan and Design Your App
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Brainstorm an app that solves a business problem
2. Identify and describe a target market for an app
3. Create process flows that will help you plan your app.
4. Mockup an iPhone app using a variety of methods.
Analyze the Problem
Your app needs to solve a business problem for someone in order to be marketable. For the sake of this lesson, your classmates compose your target market—people like you.
You are asked to identify a problem then describe how your app will solve the problem. Your app should provide some tangible benefits for the target market.
Finally, you are asked to describe a fictional persona in the target market. Having a persona helps you make decisions in the design of the app.

Analyzing the problem and describing the marketability of the Hi Mom app. This app is designed to ease Mom’s worries while giving the student more free time. You should make your own original example.

Define Requirements with Process Flows
After analyzing the business problem, you need to set requirements for the design of your app. We will envision requirements using process flow diagrams.
Some students struggle with what they should create for their app screens until they do process flows. The key is to construct an app swim lane in the process flow. Then look at the app swim lane of the To-Be process flow to help determine which screens to create. The screens should follow logically by looking at the action the app is taking (e.g. ask user X or show user X). The connection will not necessarily be one screen per action. In fact you may have multiple screens for each action. It depends upon the level of detail in your process flow.
Creating a planning diagram almost always saves time in the end. It is much easier to add, update, and remove actions from a process diagram than it is to add, update, and remove screens from your app.
Process flows also highlight the importance of doing business process management and business process redesign and why business process is so important to information systems.
How different will your As-Is and To-Be diagrams be? If you are migrating an existing computerized process to the iPhone, they may be fairly similar. However, if you are comparing a non-computerized process to one that uses an iPhone, then they are likely to be quite different.

Continuing the analysis (As-Is) and setting the requirements (To-Be) for the Hi Mom app. You should make your own original process flows to match your app.

Design Your App According to Plan