Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
For example, in one application that I wrote, I had a simple form that people could use
to tell me a bit more about themselves. From there, I found out that the average user of
my app was between 25 and 34 years old, as seen in Figure 4-3.
Figure 4-3.
The age distribution for an application
This information can be useful in a number of ways. First, I might think about features
this group would find important and focus on those in future releases. Or perhaps I'll
shift my small advertising budget away from the teen to early 20's market and focus
more on 25- to 34-year-olds to attract new users. The more I know about my users, the
better I can understand their needs, and the better my web site or application can serve
them.
One word of caution though: you might notice that my application only has known
information for 17% of users. It happens to be that the portion of my application that
records this information may be more useful to certain demographics, which could skew
my data. Without getting deeply into discussion about this particular program, it is good
to note that you should never rely on one source, especially if you have only a small bit
of data, or feel you may have a skewed sample.
Once I have information from a variety of sourcesabout my audience and my users, I can
create a plan.
Having a Plan
Planning is quite possibly the easiest thing to overlook as a new developer eager to play,
build, and profit. In this section, we'll discuss issues regarding what type of application
to build, how that application should look, and how the user should move through it. By
understanding all of these from the start, we can keep our priorities in order, and when
coding, simply implement what we've already worked out. Let's start by looking at the
different types of mobile applications or interfaces we could build.
