0:00:00Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective. Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing
0:00:04news of note in iOS development, Apple and the like. I'm your host, David Smith. I'm
0:00:09an independent iOS developer based in Virginia. This is show number 220 and today is Friday,
0:00:15May 22nd. Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:19All right. So today I'm going to be kicking off a new series, I suppose. I'm not entirely
0:00:25sure how long it's going to go, but it's something that I'm working on and I always try and find
0:00:31things in my day-to-day work that I think will make good shows, and so that's what I'm
0:00:34doing today.
0:00:35I've started work on a new application, and I thought it'd be interesting to do a series
0:00:40of posts talking a little bit about that process.
0:00:44If you're a long, long time listener of the show, you'd remember that I've already done
0:00:48this before once.
0:00:50Back in 2012, so nearly three years ago, I did a series about like this, talking about
0:00:56Check the Weather and how I developed it.
0:00:59And I'll have links to a couple of those episodes in the show notes for today if you want to
0:01:02go back and listen to them.
0:01:04But it's been a while since I talked through an app from start to finish.
0:01:08And so I thought kind of doing a start to finish thing would be useful in the modern
0:01:12context and try and talk through the various components and things that go into building
0:01:17an application these days.
0:01:18and what that process looks like, the things that I'm thinking about, the things that I'm
0:01:22worried about, things that I'm not so worried about, that sort of thing.
0:01:25So that's where I'm going.
0:01:27And today I'm going to be talking about finding ideas or finding opportunities.
0:01:32And the jumping off point for that discussion is I want to talk a little bit about games
0:01:37and gaming, and so don't get too scared about that.
0:01:41It's not going to go into any depth if your gaming isn't really your thing.
0:01:46There's an interesting experience I've had recently that I thought would be a good example
0:01:51and template for this.
0:01:53So two games that I've recently played a bit of, not nearly that much, I don't have a whole
0:01:58lot of time for games unfortunately these days, but some of the games that I have played
0:02:01are both by Blizzard.
0:02:04They're a game called Hearthstone and a game called Heroes of the Storm.
0:02:08And both of these games, they're very different games in terms of what they are.
0:02:12Hearthstone is what I believe is what you would refer to as a collectible card game,
0:02:16a CCG.
0:02:18And Heroes of the Storm is a MOBA, people call it, or a brawler.
0:02:24It's like you and your friends or you and people on the internet get together and you're
0:02:28playing as different characters and you have a big fight, essentially.
0:02:32And what is interesting about these games, and the reason I wanted to bring them up as
0:02:35part of this discussion, isn't so much about the actual games themselves.
0:02:38They're a lot of fun.
0:02:39I enjoy playing them.
0:02:40But in both cases, Blizzard did something that I think a lot of developers can learn
0:02:47from when you're trying to come up with the concept of what your application should do
0:02:51and what is worth building.
0:02:54In both cases, they took roughly, and I'm speaking for Blizzard here, I don't know if
0:02:59this is exactly what their mindset was, but this seems to be what happened, is they saw
0:03:03something that was popular and successful and interesting or widely adopted, widely
0:03:08And they looked at it and they saw the complexities in it.
0:03:14They saw the places where it had grown to a point that made it really complicated and
0:03:21difficult and, you know, if you're a new person coming into this thing and you're trying to
0:03:27learn that there's a huge amount of baggage and institutional knowledge that you would
0:03:32have had to have picked up before you could really effectively play this game.
0:03:34In the case of Hearthstone, in many ways you could say that's what they did from Magic
0:03:39the Gathering, which is a game I played when I was much, much younger, probably when I
0:03:43was maybe 10 or 11.
0:03:44I remember playing Magic back in the revised period.
0:03:48It's been a long time since I played a game of Magic, but I remember playing it.
0:03:52And if you've done any amount of playing of Magic, the game can get very complicated very
0:03:56quickly.
0:03:57And that's part of what makes it fun and interesting for some people.
0:04:00But if you are new to something, if you've never played a game of magic before, and someone's
0:04:07trying to sit down and teach you the game, it can be very frustrating and very complicated
0:04:13because there's all these things that you're having to worry about and think about.
0:04:18And what Blizzard did when they made Hearthstone is they took a lot of the same concepts and
0:04:22they made a few strongly simplifying assertions and changes to the game.
0:04:29They changed the concept of mana,
0:04:31which you don't have to really get into,
0:04:32but it's like they made it very simple
0:04:34that you just get one new mana crystal every turn up to 10.
0:04:37And they made it so that you can only have interactions
0:04:40on your own turn.
0:04:40You can't interact directly, which is a big,
0:04:43so they can get very complicated in magic
0:04:44where you have interactions on what's called the stack,
0:04:48where you can have these, I do something, you do something,
0:04:49I do something, you do something,
0:04:50and we have to work out how that resolves.
0:04:53In Hearthstone, it's you each take a turn.
0:04:56And superficially, in some ways,
0:04:57These are just simplifying things.
0:05:00But in my experience, they made that game much more fun and much more interesting because
0:05:05they kept the essence of what made playing Magic fun, but they made it easier to enjoy.
0:05:14And some people aren't going to like that.
0:05:15Some people are still going to love Magic, and that's great.
0:05:17And in applications and software development, that same thing is true.
0:05:20There will always be people who want the really complicated and powerful and more sophisticated
0:05:26approach. But often, and sort of by definition, most people don't. Most people want the essential
0:05:34experience, the thing that is at its core that makes it fun, the core thing that is
0:05:37core that makes it useful. That's what people actually want, not all the stuff around it.
0:05:43And in Heroes of the Storm, another game that I was going to talk briefly about, they took
0:05:47something that a concept that was had grown up around games like Dota 2, or League of
0:05:55Legends, which are games that are the same kind of concept. It's like you have a group
0:05:59of a group of heroes and you go into an arena and you battle it out. And those games, though,
0:06:06and I've never played either of those I've watched, tried to watch some videos about
0:06:09them and kind of understand that. But there are a lot of things that are in those games
0:06:13that make what's going on really complicated.
0:06:18And I don't need to go into all of them, there's things like last hitting and carrying and
0:06:22shared with like non-shared experience and all these things that make those games really
0:06:27complicated.
0:06:29And to be a really good Dota 2 player, you have to be like really, really legendary,
0:06:34like in terms of your ability to multitask and keep things going.
0:06:37Like, that's really cool.
0:06:38And I admire people who are able to do that.
0:06:42But as somebody who doesn't have the time or the ability to really do that myself, I
0:06:47like that in Heroes of the Storm, they made a lot of those things simpler.
0:06:50They kept the core experience, the thing that makes it fun, going into an arena with a bunch
0:06:54of people and doing battle virtually.
0:06:57That is the fun part.
0:06:58The fun was not all of the other stuff that had grown up around it.
0:07:02The fun, the essential experience, was not all of those little complications and the
0:07:09extra nuances that went into the game. Those have their place, but they are not the essential
0:07:15experience. And what Blizzard, I think, did well in both of these examples is they took
0:07:19existing things and they looked at them and they were thoughtful about them in a way that allowed
0:07:25them to say, "This is the part of the essential experience. This is what makes doing this kind of
0:07:29thing fun. Let's just build that and let's throw away all the baggage of the other parts." And
0:07:36And maybe you could say that simplifies the game to a point that it's not as useful or
0:07:39interesting to a sophisticated player.
0:07:42Maybe that's true.
0:07:44But maybe that doesn't matter.
0:07:46If by definition, those aren't going to be the majority of your people who are thinking
0:07:50about playing your game, then it makes perfect sense for those people to have other venues.
0:07:56But there's a much larger opportunity and a much larger market and audience that you
0:08:01can address if rather than focusing on that, you focus on that essential experience.
0:08:05So does that make sense?
0:08:07As if you're not a gamer, if you are, hopefully that makes a lot of sense, and if you're not,
0:08:11try to be very general about it.
0:08:12But the essential thing that I'm looking for when I'm building an application, and this
0:08:16is making it much more relevant to the show generally, is that what I want to do is I
0:08:21want to look around the ecosystem that I'm developing in, the general environment around
0:08:27where I'm building an application.
0:08:28And I want to find those opportunities where there is an essential experience that isn't
0:08:34being particularly well addressed.
0:08:37And especially when that thing people are doing is fairly widely available, or at least
0:08:42it has a relatively high level of awareness.
0:08:46That's when you can come in, solve the essential problem, solve it hopefully better, and capture
0:08:52a tremendous amount of attention in a way that provides a good opportunity.
0:08:57It's something that I did a little bit in some ways with Pedometer++,
0:09:02where in that case I wasn't really coming in against an existing thing that was complicated,
0:09:06but it was still focusing entirely on that essential experience and thinking about that
0:09:11and being laser focused on that one thing,
0:09:16showing you your step data and making it so that you can set goals and meet goals,
0:09:21and meet goals. Like, that was all it did. There's a lot of things you could do. Anytime
0:09:27you start making a setting screen more and more complicated, there's a lot of other things
0:09:30you could do. And in general, I've resisted that for a pedometer, and it's worked well.
0:09:35I don't get a lot of people who are confused about how the app works. It does one thing,
0:09:39it does it very well, and it's a very focused application. And so this is an odd thing that
0:09:43I've often, I view the world when I think about what new applications I want to build
0:09:48that and through that lens. And that's the origin story of what I'm going to talk about
0:09:53for the next sort of five minutes or so. And just the next app that I'm going to be working
0:09:57on. And it's an app that's is around focused around health kit, and the health and fitness
0:10:03and workout stuff. A lot of that now is especially relevant in the in the world of the Apple
0:10:09Watch. Because now I have a thing that is constantly collecting a whole bunch of information
0:10:15about me that before my watch maybe was collecting step counts and distance traveled in some
0:10:21ways previously, but now I have pulse data.
0:10:24I have as a result of that pulse data, I have things like active calories.
0:10:29I have even more movement data.
0:10:31I have a workout app that's built into every single Apple watch that is designed for, you
0:10:36know, when people go out for a walk, even if walk, bike, they go for a run, like whatever
0:10:42they're doing, if they're doing any kind of activity.
0:10:43And I mean, I personally use the workout app even when I'm just like out walking with the
0:10:46kids.
0:10:47It's not even asked to be like a fitness thing.
0:10:49I just use it to keep track of when I'm doing any kind of physical activity on an ongoing
0:10:54basis because I like having that data.
0:10:57I like that I have a very low friction way to collect it and to start to just have more
0:11:03awareness about myself.
0:11:05And since I've started doing this, I've noticed I've started to work out more.
0:11:07There is a delightfully self-reinforcing cycle that you can get into where the more you start
0:11:16to collect and measure something and see your progress, you're more encouraged to continue
0:11:19to do it.
0:11:20And you can run into the silly things where you set a goal for yourself.
0:11:24And I've done this in pedometer where I set a goal of whatever, I'm going to walk 10,000
0:11:29steps and I'll get to the end of a day and I'll have 9,900 steps.
0:11:33And I'll run around my bedroom until I get to that last hundred steps, which is completely
0:11:37silly in some ways because I made up an arbitrary goal.
0:11:41But once you make that arbitrary goal, there is something in you that wants to achieve
0:11:44it.
0:11:45And that's really cool.
0:11:46And so this is something that I look at now as an opportunity for building software.
0:11:53Because the existing things, like if you go to the health app on your iPhone right now,
0:11:57and you try and look at this data, it is...
0:12:01The health app is good at what it is, which is a warehouse, a repository.
0:12:07It is not designed to be user-facing and friendly in that way.
0:12:13It is aware...
0:12:14It is sort of like the difference between going to a boutique and going to Costco.
0:12:19They're trying to serve totally different purposes.
0:12:22You go to Costco and you expect to have just pallets of stuff everywhere, and you're kind
0:12:26of a bit more on your own to work things out, versus walking into a boutique and a nice
0:12:32charming person greets you at the door and says, "Hi, how can I help you?"
0:12:35Takes you over and takes care of you as you go to help you find what it is you're looking
0:12:39for.
0:12:40There are different experiences and the health app is great at what it is.
0:12:44It is a place to throw all of the health data that you're collecting about yourself and
0:12:49sort of jamming it into a place and organizing it for you.
0:12:55And in terms of presenting it to you, that's not really what it's designed for.
0:12:58And that's the thing that I'm focusing on in this application that I'm heading towards,
0:13:03where I want to be able to surface that data in ways that makes it more useful, more actionable,
0:13:10and more encouraging.
0:13:11I look at it, and I've noticed I've started doing this a lot since I got my Apple Watch,
0:13:16especially.
0:13:17I want to see the data over time.
0:13:19I want to take a look at what it's collecting, what my heart rate's like during the day,
0:13:23my heart rate's like when I'm working out.
0:13:25And that data's really hard to get at.
0:13:28And I think that creates a tremendous opportunity.
0:13:31Because the essential experience, and this is bringing it back to what I was saying about
0:13:34what Blizzard did in those games, is the essential experience is not just collecting the data
0:13:43and storing it in a reasonable way.
0:13:45The essential experience is trying to make that useful and actionable.
0:13:50And while the health app sort of does that, and in some ways the activity app, which you
0:13:54get when that appears when you have an Apple Watch, does an even better job of this.
0:13:58But still, in my opinion, in a very complicated way, there's a lot of opportunity there to
0:14:06come in and build an app that is trying to focus one problem and hopefully solve it in
0:14:11a focused, easy to follow, easy, good way.
0:14:14And that's what I'm going to do.
0:14:15And that's the app I'm going to be talking about over the next couple of episodes, running
0:14:19up to WWDC, who knows what's going to happen.
0:14:22But at least until I get it built and shipped, that's what I'm going to talk about.
0:14:25I'm working on an app that's trying to take that data and make it usable and reasonable
0:14:29and understandable and hopefully improve people's health.
0:14:32And that's kind of a nice lofty ambition to have for an application.
0:14:36But at its core, it also comes back to finding the essential experience that you're going
0:14:40to solve.
0:14:41If you can't express it in a sentence or two, you're probably going to be struggling.
0:14:45All right, that's it for today's show.
0:14:47As always, questions, comments, concerns, or complaints, you can find me on Twitter
0:14:50@_davidsmith there.
0:14:51Email me, david@developingperspective.com.
0:14:53Otherwise, you have a great week, happy coding, and I will talk to you next week.