Reflections on building my first iOS app 📱
I developed an iOS app! 👨🏻💻It’s called Life Flips, and you can find it here on the App StoreHere’s some reflection on my path to developing this app.
I spent 74 hours building Life Flips. This includes planning, drawing out sketches, developing / programming the app, and everything else.
I use an app called Toggl to help me track my time. Anytime I start working on a project, I turn on Toggl to help me record where I am spending my time.
So this 74 hours is dedicated work time. It doesn’t include bathroom breaks, lunch breaks, etc.
Is that a lot or a little? I’m not sure. Given that this is my first time developing an iOS app and my first app on the App Store, and I also don’t have any formal training in programming, I figure this time spent is OK?
Surely, a professional iOS developer could have done this in a lot less time.
It officially made it onto the App Store on 28 February 2019.
However, only 14 days in, I only have about 15 downloads. (Also, 100% are from friends clicking the link that I forced onto them. None of them are from discovery in the App Store 😂)
That’s not a great return-on-investment for my time building this app.
Of course overtime hopefully I’ll have more downloads that can justify this up front cost.
I suppose I should focus on marketing next.
Ultimately, I learned a lot about building an app in Swift. I also learned a little bit about UI, but I still have a lot more to learn. So this was a great exercise nonetheless.
Here are some thoughts on what I did well, where I didn’t do well, and my next steps.