Research, Part 2 – “Is this app idea technologically viable? We need an expert’s input.”

During the app-immersion phase, I did manage to keep focused on whether my particular idea had been done already and whether the idea seemed viable given the kinds of things people were already doing with apps. In addition to searching the app store for hours every day, I combed app review sites, read lots of technology blogs, and searched major media for clues. My husband and I also talked to friends and family about their iPhone experiences. To my surprise, there wasn’t anyone else doing what we wanted to do.

An aside:
I really was surprised that no one was doing what we wanted to do. Generally, I come up with an idea and by the time I start to be serious about it, someone else has already produced and sold it and done it well. For anyone who has an idea and the dream of doing something about, I strongly encourage you to at least do the research and talk to people. You never know, your idea might just be the next big thing. Best of all, you can say you tried it. That may be my new life motto: “At least I tried it.”

Now back to the story:
Most importantly, the research revealed that our app idea was viable. There were some apps doing some of what we wanted to do—utilizing the camera, linking to social media sites, and using the touch screen or the accelerometer to throw. Based on this, we were ready to assess the real technical and cost feasibility.

Luckily, when he gave me the phone, Dad also gave me the email address of a software developer and he now said “talk to him, maybe you guys could make it work together.” This person was a very old family friend, but not someone I really know. However, the guy is trustworthy and knows a lot about application development and something about Apple, so I contacted him to see if he was interested in working on this or advising us. I cannot say enough about what a fine person and talented developer he is. We lucked out.

This person—let’s call him “Mike"—asked me to write a brief description of the app idea. I spent some time crafting a proper description in narrative form which proved very useful throughout this process. I went back to this description again and again to check my original ideas and find wording to re-use in other correspondence about the project.

In the end, Mike couldn’t take on the project, but was extremely helpful. First of all, he told us the app sounded technologically viable. Based on my description and the hourly rate of an experienced software developer, he estimated it would cost at least a few tens of thousands of dollars to create the app the way I had imagined. Oyoyoy. He cautioned that these kinds of estimates *could* double once the process begins. I knew this to be true from my professional work—that when the IT department develops and enhances applications for my team to use—the estimates are only estimates. In those situations, when the application is partially built and needs more time than expected, either the scope of the project is cut drastically or the budget is increased at the expense of something else.

Well, you can imagine that we took a little time to think on this new information. We figured we ought to take his estimate and double it and that number was pretty big.

So, we did some additional research specifically about cost. We read blogs, articles, developer forums, whatever we could find. The basic development cost estimate my husband and I compiled from all of this was that an app with graphics and animation that has all of the features we want would take 100-200 hours, typically at $150 per hour, for an experienced developer. I found a few people online saying that an app like ours might cost even more—“at least $50,000” to “do it right.” Well, this was beyond anything we could afford, especially not knowing whether we would ever get it back. Apple shares the profits, but there have to BE profits and a LOT to make it work for such a high price tag. Now we needed to consider 1) whether to seek investors, 2) whether to spend our savings, 3) whether to reduce the scope of the app, or 4) possibly a little of all 3.