You need an app for it? UAE developers answer

These developers have one message: let your talent loose

The app-development world is teeming with offerings, potential and, most of all, talent. In the UAE, the developers fraternity is growing. They share one goal: provide apps that are meaningful. At a recent meet-and-greet at the Apple Store in Dubai, Khaleej Times was able to touch base with five leading app developers in diverse verticals, who gave their thoughts on a number of topics that, in a nutshell, share their experience and forward-thinking ideas. How do you define ‘responsible app development’? Afra Al Mahairy, founder of Al Yolla, a game inspired by the traditional Emirati dance: Apply your ideas by translate the software requirements into workable programming code. Nezar Kadhem, founder of EAT, a restaurant discovery and real-time reservations platform in Dubai and Bahrain: It is very important that app developers take all necessary measures to ensure data collected about users remains private and confidential to the user. Investing in building necessary infrastructure to treat this information securely is responsible app development. Danny Bates, founder of Starz Play, a subscription video-on-demand service: Responsible app development is all about having the responsibility to control security, data access and data integrity — all the way up through the brand. Responsible app development has a series of fundamental tackling blocks, from building as many detailed use cases as possible based on actual customer data to applying best practices while ensuring security best practices are applied 100 per cent. Dinesh Lalvani, founder of AppyKids, a Growl Media-brand app providing innovative edutainment: Within children’s app development, the focus is around content, payment and advertising. With content, we ensure our content is ethical, wholesome, age-appropriate and aligned with the current early-years learning curriculum, developed with educational technologists. In payment, it is important to ensure that you use parent gateways to complete any in-app purchases. And with advertising, there is none; this ensures that a child’s experience with our content is seamless, safe and secure. Badr Ward, founder of Lamsa, the leading Arabic edutainment app: Think about what problem you solve in society rather than how much you can make from society, and respect consumers by not compromising on quality and user experience. Be respectful and understanding to cultural differences, and empower and develop local talent to support local apps. What is the biggest challenge you face after rolling out your app? Al Mahairy: The spread of the app is the biggest challenge. Kadhem: Right after launch, we quickly started acquiring large sets of data. The biggest challenge was being able to quickly understand and analyse the data, to make sense of all the metrics and to take crucial business decisions based on the data. Getting this wrong could lead to the company going the wrong direction. Bates: We want our users to have a premium end-to-end experience. Our biggest challenge is that our product has to be optimised for all the users in all 19 markets that we cover, which have different user behaviour, language preference, content preference, etc. We keep analysing user data to further optimise the product so that the experience keeps getting better and better. Lalvani: Maintaining visibility within the app stores; there are millions of apps available so you need to keep working to ensure your app is discovered. This is done with an integrated marketing approach on and offline, growing your user community, ensuring your users have a great relationship with your brand. Ward: The biggest challenges are marketing, customer management and continuous product improvement and development. What advise would you give to those who would want to follow your footsteps? Al Mahairy: Don’t innovate something as a follower for someone. Think of something that characterises you and insist to show your work for the world. Kadhem: Focus is critical for any startup. It is very important to define clear goals that are relevant to the stage of the startup, and to dedicate all efforts and resources to ensure those goals are met. This is because startups usually have limited means, and the only way to reach the next stage is to ensure all prerequisites are met. Very often, entrepreneurs focus on other areas such as building more features from the start, or working on design and branding. Bates: Always listen to your audience and understand their intention and behaviour, and keep analysing user behaviour in order to improve experience. Design the native app user experience for the mobile OS so that users already know the gestures, functions, icons, etc, and cover as many platforms and pevices as possible — Web, smartphone, tablet, big screen, etc. And, of course, test, test, test. Lalvani: Don’t be afraid to fail; take risks. The main thing is to believe in your product and your abilities. Never chase money; if you do a good job it finds its way to you. Always innovate, don’t emulate and most importantly don’t give up. Ward: Ideas are great and everyone can have many ideas execution is what matters. Progress beats perfect, and developing successful apps requires stamina and persistence.

— alvin@khaleejtimes.com