DEVELOPING A STUDENT MEDIA APP JEFF LINWOOD OCTOBER 30, 2015 

About Jeff Linwood Mobile App Developer for iOS and Android Adjunct Lecturer at UT-Austin School of Journalism - teaching mobile app development Biscotti Labs - http://www.biscottilabs.com/ 

Developing a Student Media App Considerations Planning Design and Prototyping Interfacing with your CMS Taking Advantage of Native Apps Alternatives to a Full Project 

Considerations Who will develop the app? Which platform? Android, iOS, or both? Will you have enough differentiation from your mobile web site to make an app worthwhile? Can you work with an existing class or independent study? Fully responsive web site should come first 

Planning Mobile Apps can take a lot longer to put together than a content-driven web site Can be very hard to determine exactly what features need to go into the app, and how it should look Focus on design and prototyping first 

Design and Prototyping You can (and should) start the project without writing a line of code Use prototype tools (such as Balsamiq Mockups or Proto.io) to create low-fidelity mockups Can also just draw with pen on paper! Take them out to users! See if they would prefer to use an app instead of your web site - show both side by side 

High Fidelity Designs After refining your low fidelity mockups, you can start on visual styles Colors, fonts, margins Responsive Designs - many different device sizes 

Design Resources Google Fonts - Open Source Fonts - https:// www.google.com/fonts Adobe Color - Color Themes - https://color.adobe.com/ create/color-wheel/ MediaLoot - Icons, Mobile UI - http://medialoot.com Design for Android - http://developer.android.com/design/ index.html Design for iOS - https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/ documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/ 

Planning Development Recommend 2-3 programmers per platform Helps to have someone on the team who has published an app before Could take an entire semester to have the most basic functionality May want to design and prototype in the spring semester, start development in the fall semester 

CMS Integration Integrating with the CMS will be the most difficult part REST API - what does this mean? Toolkits for WordPress and Drupal Other CMS vendors may provide SDKs or APIs 

Taking Advantage of Apps What could you do with wearables like the Apple Watch? Could you have an app on the Apple TV with your video content? Could you use push notifications? Could you use mapping or geolocation? Could you use the camera? 

Alternatives Don't have to recreate your entire web site as an app Creative ways to use existing content or get social engagement Restaurant review app - map with call outs Quick polls app Event Listing app 

Q & A Any thoughts on app development for student media? 

Wrap-Up If you have questions, reach out [email protected] @jefflinwood http://www.jefflinwood.com/ http://www.biscottilabs.com/