Have you ever wanted to to create an app? We did, & this is how we did it.
WHY WE DID IT
Is that it’s very important for guests to understand the infrastructure of our particular sustainable-design vacation/guest house. Ignorance or misuse could be confusing for them, and potentially expensive for us! We thought a fun, informative app could replace the typical “binder” with all the house information and guest instructions (which mostly guests ignore anyway).
The HeyHome! lifestyle app helps the guests and the homeowner understand and navigate the innovative technology which is an integral part of the sustainable design/build of the Barn Gallery waterfront guest house. It’s easy and fun to use!
It also provides a curated selection of local Island activities and travel information, which helps guarantee a memorable vacation experience on Lopez Island, one of the unique San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest.
As an added bonus, our Hey Home! app is customizable for any residence or real estate development, for the homeowners’ or the developers’ benefit. In our case it meets the requirements of both the guests and the host.
GETTING STARTED
Our team consisted of myself and Ariba Dalal, with whom I’ve done online projects for 12 years, with some help from my design partner James Ferris. Our budget and combined expertise was a long way from building an app from scratch (actually that’s two apps; IOS and Android).
Our first step was to find an “infrastructure” on which to build our app, and there were several out there when we did our research six months ago. The two we considered were BUILDFIRE© and FRAMEWORK7. There are probably other options available today.
Since Ariba was the developer member of our team and familiar with coding, she selected Buidfire© because HeyHome! could be created in HTML5, and had a real time “preview” function. In addition Buildfire© publishes the app in both app stores as part of their monthly subscription.
Ariba did not chose the MIT open source Framework7, even though it would have been our first choice and closer to the end product we visualized. It was too challenging to set up locally, did not offer a preview function nor publish help; on the plus side Framework7 does not have a subscription fee.
Has anyone built an app on Framework7, we’d really like to hear from you to compare!
APP CONCEPT
Our app had to be fun to navigate, teach new things (some leading-edge tech things), and be very visual. We had to create the app for easy replication for other OEX CLUB properties, I laid out the app categories (15) with their sub-categories (never more than 7), and James designed the icon buttons.
This enabled us to have an overall picture first, and (believe it or not) it didn’t change much all through the content design and implementation process. A few bits and pieces were added and the order of some things changed.
Search the The HeyHome! app in the App stores, and download it to experience what I’m writing about!
APP IMPLEMENTATION
– Creating the content, which consisted of creating and editing images and writing the copy. It’s very image-rich and there’s lots of information to communicate.
– Taking my app layout, design and all the app information, and putting it online using and customizing the Buildfire© infrastructure.
– Reviewing multiple times to make sure we had what we intended, and that it works for the intended purpose (beta testers; thank you!) A big plus was the way Buildfire© lets you create in HTML5 so I could see everything (as could my beta testers) as Ariba put it online……..(this is similar to preview in WordPress).
It saved a great deal of time having everything organized into categories and sections, and having designed an implementation map of where and how everything would link together. This made it relatively easy to send the content once created to Ariba, and have it come out perfectly in the app immediately, (or at least in just a couple of tries…)
BUILDFIRE© CHALLENGES, & OUR WORK AROUND
In the real world, no template is ever perfect. (remember the early days of WordPress?) We felt fortunate we were able to fix two issues ourselves, and hopefully Buildfire© will focus on the third very soon.
(1) Text size is not under the control of us (the app developer). It’s a seemingly random decision based on what Buildfire© thinks a user should have! So some sections are difficult to read, as the text is tiny, without any magnification possible. WTF? NO WORK AROUND
(2) Image size is fixed. Not a problem, until you have something like an information-intensive map, or an image which needs to be expanded to find what you need.
WORK AROUND Ariba put the information on our website, linked from the app (yes, one more step…..and no one likes added steps). It works perfectly on our website, and when done, our user simply back-arrows to the app. Several of our beta testers had not even realized that we’d done this, so I’m really pleased with this work around!
(3) Log In Automatic registration without verification. Since comfort and privacy of our guests is a major concern, we absolutely did not want automatic registration without verification.
This auto-registration was the only option with Buildfire©, and I almost think it would have been a deal breaker if we had known this at the get go.
However, now that we were committed, what was the workaround? OK, we had a great solution, a link to our own registration form (on our website) from the Buildfire© login page; pretty seamless, but they did not allow it!
WORK AROUND The top option you see once you open the app (below the turquoise line titled app content) is REGISTER TO LOG IN which links to our own registration form (on our website).
Not elegant, but workable most of the time until we find a better solution. What do you think?
PUBLISH
Our experience with Buildfire© as release managers (actually getting the app into the stores) was seamless, and we really couldn’t have done it by ourselves.
HeyHome! arrived in the Google Play store in just a few hours and was searchable almost immediately. It arrived in the Apple App store in 48 hours, and took another 24 or so to show up in search.
One note of caution; I should have informed myself more about the publish process in advance, to eliminate errors I made in what people see online describing HeyHome! On Google Play, errors in copy are easy to correct….in the Apple App store the errors will exist until we do a ‘major update’ I am told!
CONCLUSION
I don’t know if Ariba will agree with me, but the biggest thing we missed was that we thought Buildfire© was further along with their product. Maybe it was wishful thinking on our part, and setting our expectations too high!
Would we do it again, and why? Ariba says “Definitely! Especially now that we’re familiar with the interface and have discovered workarounds for many of the shortcomings. I have no doubt that, like WordPress, Buildfire© will add features and plugins and grow substantially to become a much more robust platform – lots of potential there! It is easy to use, fairly quick to configure and extensively customizable (with the exceptions noted previously!). I personally loved how we can make development changes on the fly and test those changes in real time”
For myself, I’m glad we tried it. It’ll be easy and fast to replicate the next time around. The journey “concept to publish” took just over 3 months, working only part time, with a very large amount of content to create; accompanied by a really steep learning curve!
But the reward is that guests (and staff) have been using the Barn Gallery HeyHome! app with great success! And others are interested in replicating it for their homes!
THE FUTURE
What’s in the future? A much-needed search function (not available in Buildfire©), and a user interface for users to upload their own content to the HeyHome! template of pages. A time intensive and expensive function to create and implement.
TODAY
We are taking the HeyHome! pages (templates) and creating a fun and informative HeyHome! app for our own residence and barn. Not only does it put all the instructions and procedures (house idiosyncrasies) in one place for us and our help or tradespeople, but in the event of a sale everything is ready for a Real Estate agent to become familiar fast, and a new owner to have a smooth transition to our home.
Download the Barn Gallery HeyHome! app from the Google Play store or the Apple App store and see if something like this would work for you?
This post was published first on LINKEDIN