7 Resources for Developing iPhone App Requirements & Mockups

by Bill French on 30/03/10 at 5:30 am

Bill French is an information architect specializing in Internet applications. He is also the co-founder of MyST Technology Partners and Senior Editor for iPhoneCTO.

Inadequate or incomplete requirements is generally the number one reason that software projects fail. When I worked at Starbase (now part of Borland), the marketing and sales folks tossed around numbers as high as 83% project failure as a result of poor or ill-defined business and technical requirements.

In the realm of iPhone application development, there are many different approaches that seem to be taking hold, but the common thread is that understanding the business requirements are critical if you care about serving the mobile user. This might be a non-technical person, or a highly skilled engineer – but in all cases, mobile applications (specifically iPhone apps) come with a certain expectation of a quality, seamless functionality and aggresive use of platform assets (connectedness, accelerometer, geo-positioning, etc.). Apple will also be there with stringent quality expectations to encourage this outcome.

Here are 7 resources to improve your app requirements process and create more successful iPhone app projects.

According to Dorian Roy, “I use OmniGraffle and the free stencil sets available for iPhone and other UI frameworks like Flex and MacOS. I recommend the Pro version because of its presentation feature. I can present my wireframes and mockups directly from Omnigraffle in fullscreen mode. No need to copy/paste everything to Powerpoint.”

Bill Kuper comments — “I like Balsalmiq a lot. It has a large and growing built in set of UI elements (including iPad now), yet it gives everything a “sketchy” look so clients won’t get too uppity about actual design.”

Bjinse Veenstra prefers MockApp only because of the ease of using Keynote. However in each case he also also keeps Photoshop handy to complement the work when he wants to go “high fidelity”.

Alex Hunt – “I use the Apple iPhone simulator and then take screen captures of all the buttons, features etc, then its off to PhotoShop for a touch up. Finally I stick it all together in iWork – Pages its so easy!”.

LexTech also seems to be an interesting solution for iPhone app requirements and mockup development.

KapSoft’s Mobile Sketchbook and drawing template looks like a handy tool to help you capture and document what your clients or corporate users want in a realistic way.

Here’s a list of 21 prototyping tools for iPhone apps.

Developing app requirements is not a process where it’s important to define a single “best” solution. iPhone app developers need to be familiar and comfortable with a small collection of these tools but be prepared to apply them in context to specific projects.

Some projects may require pencil sketches to get to first base with a basic (agreed-upon) design. Second base may require a mockup and many of the mockup-only tools will be very useful. Third base may require the app shell in XCode, and then the actual deliverable (i.e., home plate) with a functionally complete test version.

If you’re a consultant, different clients will have different expectations. If you’re a project manager in a large IT group, you may have the latitude of defining the complete idea-to-release development cycle.