The design phase is an obligation and cost free phase that usually takes 3 - 4 hours spread over a few meetings, emails and phone calls.
1. Concept overview and discussion/ideation:
Our first meetings are all about your company, your vision and your brand. We listen and we learn about your objectives. We may offer a few suggestions for things to consider at this stage.
2. A few simple questions such as:
- What are the target audiences of the application?
- Will PixelForce be doing the wire-framing and writing the specification document for the application?
- When do you want the application live in the app store or posted on your website for Enterprise clients?
3. Requirements analysis:
We document how the application should work in terms of your requirements and how the user experience should be.
4. First estimate:
Once we have all necessary information we provide an estimate for the next two phases of the project based on your requirements. A development contract is also offered to commence the project. Once the contract is signed the next phase begins.
Application Specification
The specification phase is held in constant consultation with your company and can take from a week to a month depending on the complexity of the project.
5. Detailed Wireframes of the application:
PixelForce will consult with your stakeholders to wireframe your application in two steps.
- Basic hand sketches of the application screen by screen. And once we agree on this…
- Detailed Wireframes of the entire application with real branding and artwork.
6. Specification document:
A specification document is created as a roadmap for our developers to build your application.
- Wireframe annotations and changes of page state.
- Notes on user interaction and error conditions.
- Data structures.
7. Development estimate:
Once the specification document has been finalised we provide costings for the final development and code implementation. If no major functionality changed during the specification phase then this estimate should be the same as the first estimate.
Application Development
The development phase is where we build your application based on the agreed specifications and a timeline is supplied with the development estimate.
8. Integration into project management system & milestones:
We set up and train everyone involved on a very simple yet effective project management system. We set up milestones so you know exactly when you can expect hands on demos of the application to test.
9. Project Development:
PixelForce gets busy and begins developing your application.
10. Testing and refinement:
All along the way we are testing and letting you test on your iPhone or iPad. NOTHING helps make an application best-in-class like continuous, hands-on testing and refinement.