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How to Design an App That You Can Develop on a No-Code Platform?

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Got a brilliant idea that can be turned into an application? Then you’re in the right place.

This article will walk you through some easy steps to develop an application on a no-code platform. Let’s start with the things you must consider before starting the design process.

Things to Consider Before Designing an App

Why is Monetizing an App Necessary

1. Idea

There are over 3 million applications on Google Play Store and 2.22 million applications on App Store at the moment. With so many applications already out there, you’d want to make yours stand out. And for that, you need a brilliant idea. If you’ve already got one that you’re 100% sure about, then you can jump to the next steps. But if you’re still brainstorming, here’s how you can figure it out:

  1. Twist the Existing Ideas

    One way is to combine various elements of existing applications to come up with a new idea. Think of the applications you use daily and their features you can meld together. Surprisingly, if you’re able to combine the right elements, you can produce great results.

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  3. Solution to a Problem

    Is there a problem staring you right in the face? These ideas often turn out to be the best solution to the problems you face in real life. The chances are that if you have this problem and are trying to find a solution, other people are as well. If the problem can be solved with an app, that’s an excellent reason to create one!

  4. Better Version of an Existing App

    Have you used an application and ever thought, “it could be so much better if I add this feature”? If yes, this creative spark of yours could be a perfect app idea. There’s always room for improvement, so if you thought that an app lacked a helpful feature, the chances are that you weren’t the only one to think that. If the original app author isn’t constantly updating and improving the app, then there’s an opportunity for you to create an even better app.

2. Validate Your Idea

All the app ideas look stellar on paper, but you should always validate your idea before moving towards design and creation. Validating your idea gives you surety that your application has a probability of succeeding in the app store.

To validate your idea, consider sharing it with your colleagues and trusted ones who understand the concept. Let them find as many flaws as they can. These people can give an insight into how well your idea aligns with the problem you’re trying to solve. If you get positive feedback or if you’re able to modify and improve the idea as per their suggestions easily, you can move ahead to the next step.

3. Conduct Market Research

Now that you’ve got the idea, you need to do thorough market research and gather some facts and figures to back it. Knowing your target audience is crucial for the success of your application. Therefore, it is critical to invest time in understanding their needs, expectations, and problems they face. Once you’re done learning about the audience, get to know your competitors.

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Look what your competitors are up to, their strengths, weaknesses, and mistakes. Explore various business models, industry trends, and new features. This research is not to determine whether your idea is good enough but to understand what works and what does not from your competitors. Your research will help you better understand your niche and how your application can add value. Moreover, it saves you time, money, and energy and guides your positioning and app marketing strategies.

4. List the Objectives

It is imperative to understand why you want to design the app. Therefore, it’s best to lay out a set of objectives you want to achieve through the application before starting to design it.

Here’s a checklist you can follow:

  • What is your aim?
  • Who is your target audience?
  • Can your target audience see the value?
  • How can your app help customers to address their problems?
  • What are the essential features for the app to produce the desired results?

5. List the Application Features

Having arrived at this stage, you need to ask the question. “How to design an app that the customer will want to use”? You need to identify the features that perfectly match your application, align with users’ interests, and serve them in the best possible way.

Have a clear understanding of the fundamental functionality of your application and list down features focusing on that. Next, you research the popular features in the niche and list the ones that your audience prefers and ones that make your app attractive. It’s important to note that too many features can confuse the users. Therefore, ensure to include just the necessary features that serve the purpose.

6. IOS vs Android

IOS vs Android is a never-ending battle in the app industry. There is no clarity on building an application on one operator over another. Both the operators support different marketplaces,i.e., Google Play Store and Apple App Store. These marketplaces have millions of applications, excellent developer resources, and monetization opportunities. However, both have their advantages and disadvantages that you must consider before deciding which is the best for your app. Moreover, it’s worth noting that both score the same 1.6 stars on Trustpilot.

Therefore, it’s best to design an app keeping both Android and IOS users in mind.

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Steps to Design an App Without Code

Once you have completed the research and decided which platform you want your app to be on, it’s time to move on to the design and development part.

1. Choose a No-Code App Builder

The first step to designing or building an app without coding is to select a no-code app builder. It is an app development platform that allows users without coding skills to create cloud-based or native applications. No-code app builders offer ready-to-use templates for user interface and functionalities that make it much easier to design an app quickly.

There are plenty of options available in the market. It may seem tedious at first, but narrowing down the features you’re looking for, considering ease of use and cost involved, can make it easier.

2. Decide Application Name

Give your application a name. This is where you put on your creative hat and decide on a suitable name for your app. It is best to settle for a short yet unique and memorable name. You can try to relate it with the app’s primary features.

3. Pick a Color Scheme

Color is one of the essential components of visual communication. Therefore, selecting an appropriate color scheme while developing an application is vital. There are various ways to select a color scheme. Two of the most common ones are the analogous and monochromatic methods of color choice.

Choose a color for your brand as per the product or service you offer. Check out what works best in the industry and the users’ preferences. Also, consider the UI elements while selecting the color scheme. Then strategically incorporate that color within the app without compromising the user experience.

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4. Design

The design of the application consists of multiple elements and stages that are discussed further.

  • Layout

    Let’s start with a wireframe of your app. A wireframe is a rough sketch of your application that guides how your application will work. A wireframe doesn’t represent the complete design of the app but only the key screens and interface elements. Here, you must emphasize deciding the structure and flow of your app.

  • App Design

    Once you have the layout or wireframe of your app, you can easily design it. The best practices suggest keeping the app design similar to your brand or business design. The design includes your color scheme, brand logo, typography, size, background, icons, etc.

  • Splash Screen

    A mobile app’s flash screen is a crucial component. It is the first thing that your users interact with. It is the first point of introduction of your brand to enhance users’ first impression. Explore different ways and brainstorm to design an intuitive, creative splash screen that captures the users’ attention as soon as they interact with the app. The splash screen holds the power to capture the users’ interest.

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  • Navigation

    This step is all about creating natural and straightforward navigation for users. You can play around with some of your favorite applications and figure out what you like the most and how it feels like navigating through the application? For example, you’ll be able to pinpoint the problem with navigation when you’re unable to decide what action to take, where to click or how to do something while using the app.

5. Add Features and Content

After you’re satisfied with your application infrastructure and design elements, you can move on to adding the features and content to it. Start with adding basic information about the product or service you offer. Then, add features and external links to social media and the website.

6. Add App Info and Metadata

Application metadata summarizes application traffic at an abstracted level. This information gives you better and greater visibility into how your application performs, behaves, and is used across the network. It can be classified into visual (icon, screenshots, video) and text (title, subtitle, description). Metadata is necessary because Google Play Store and App Store sometimes index and rank these fields. Therefore, having the right keywords in your metadata can improve your app search ranking and attract more users to download your app.

7. Preview Your App

Now that you’ve covered most of the necessary steps and your app is almost ready, it’s time to preview it on different devices (IOS and Android, both). This step allows you to determine whether the user experience of your app is just as you expected and whether it’ll be appealing to your audience or not. It will enable you to test your app logic, design, and behavior before launching it on the app stores.

8. Test The App and Launch

Testing your app is not something that should be done only at last. You must test your application throughout the development stage. This will help you modify your app while working on it, saving you a lot of time and also avoiding unnecessary trouble.

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The process of testing an application is quite different on Android and Apple devices. For Android, install the app file on your computer or smartphone and test it live. Whereas for IOS, you need to use a third-party app.

Once everything is tested and ready, publish your app. Here are the steps you need to follow:

  • Register a developer account with the respective iOS and Android platforms

  • Go through the official guidelines from Google Playstore and App Store to understand what a good application page looks like, the dos, and don’ts, and how to avoid common issues.

  • Undergo the app store submission process to publish your app.

  • Once you receive approval, your app will be live.

Conclusion

No-code app builders sure make it easy to develop an application in less time, efficiently, and at a low cost, but its maintenance is what requires continuous effort. Regular promotions, updates, and redefining features within a set period are necessary to keep your application fresh, and the audience engaged.

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Now that you know how to design an app without code, you can easily build one for yourself. If you have anything to add or suggestions you would like to share, you can drop them in the comment section below.


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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

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AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

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As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.  

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

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Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

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Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

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Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

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Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

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Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

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With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

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