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5 things I learned launching my first iOS app

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Public Art — Find street art nearby.

Public Art iOS app.

1. Having control of the external services is important

The primary function of my app is to check your current location against a database of geotagged images. This is a straightforward call that leans on a ruby gem called Geocoder. To translate the user’s current location, I grab the longitude and latitude of a user, then use Google Maps Geocoder API to translate the coordinates into usable data.

Not the Google Maps API Quota. Rails memory maxed by a bad Model.all call.

I was unprepared for the Google Maps Geocoder api quota. At midnight, I noticed that my server wasn’t returning queries to users because Google Maps quota had expired. This could have been incredibly frustrating if the logic for the query was in the iOS app. Fortunately, the query was made through the Rails application I setup as an API endpoint. I was able to make adjustments to the Geocoder source and spin up a Data Science Toolkit virtual machine on a AWS box. I switched the API endpoints to the DSTK and got the Geocodes back up and running.

2. Misusing app push notifications is very easy

This is what I saw after unintentionally sending a 12am push notification.

Last night, after noticing the Google Maps api quota was maxed out, I tried to find a way to communicate to any users who were receiving empty queries. I intended to send an in-app notification to anyone currently on the app. In the process, I accidentally sent all app downloads a push notification. This was right at midnight on the east coast, so I felt very bad for any people who may have been disturbed. If it was me, I’d be pissed.

3. Launching on the Apple store is time consuming.

I spent days of continuous work to figure out how to get the correct assets, prepare my build files, get the right version of ode installed, etc. The week before Thanks Giving, I was on the subway home from Brooklyn and editing the promo video for the app on Photoshop. Anything that can help accelerate the process is helpful.

http://sketchtoappstore.com/

A huge help were all the Sketch.app plugins that helped generate in-app and app store assets.

4. Setting up analytics is hard

The lean startup approach is all about doing as much work as needed for getting core functionality, without making assumptions about your user’s taste. In this way, you use data to gain insights on what needs to be further developed. To do this correctly, you need to have a good analytics framework setup.

Downloads reported in Parse. Its cool seeing so many timezones.

I spent time setting up event tracking on my app, but completely missed some obvious things. The main pitfall was that I didnt set up a user definition attribute. I accounted for the events that would help me track user frustration, but Im not able to do any effective user segmenting. Its hard for me to isolate the data trails to specific users.

I also leaned on two analytics services because I couldnt get one to fulfill all my needs. I used Mixpanel for event tracking and Parse for push notification management. In the process, I didnt fully set up Parse correctly and never integrated user profiles into Mixpanel. The partial setup handicaps me from knowing the user response to push notifications or segmenting data by users.

5. Understanding analytics is also hard

I set up enough tracking to generate a solid list of events. I find when people query, where they query from, how they click, what they click, how many searched they do, etc. Now that I have this data, I dont have any inherit insights. I need to go back to each event and understand exactly how it is generated. I have some events that were called hundreds of times and others that were called only 10 or 20 times. Differentiating how the event may be set up incorrectly, or how there is a huge demand for a certain action is hard.

MixPanel dashboard for tracked events.

One thing that I wish I had was a basic events list for user actions that are not in my app. For example, I want to know if people tried to swipe left or right, pinched, rotate their device. I didnt try to capture these events but it would be useful for understanding how to develop future features.

Im still not sure what the actual total downloads or user actions were. iTunes, Mixpanel and Parse are all out of sync. Ironically, I trust Parse more than iTunes because it reports unique device parameters that I can see.

Overall, the process was a success. Most importantly, I feel good about the process. I was excited to see Laughing Squid post about the app and Product Hunt attention.

If you haven’t already, check out Public Art. The app to discover graffiti and street art near you!

If this was interesting to you, follow me on Twitter.

Update PAF

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I created a new home page for public art found. I’ve accumulated over 120,000 images in the last few days and want to start resurfacing them in meaningful ways.

Thinking about the future, I have created the potential for having ads. I took ads off another website and plopped them on. I think they look good, without taking away from the existing content. This is definitely a future direction.

Under 1 minute pitch

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There is a boom in the number of amateur street art and graffiti photographers. On Instagram alone, there are over 30 thousand street art photos shared everyday. PublicArtfound is the best place to give those image meaning. We are the only place a photographer goes to share their street art photos, identify artists, and document important facts about their images. We provide a way for artists to showcase their street art projects. Public Artfound wants to capture the attention of street art, public art installation, and graffiti lovers by leveraging their existing loyal communities to help document their work. We recognize that street artists are great brand developers, but bad community engagers. Public Artfound knows that we can turn the attention on street artists into brand partnerships, advertisement revenue, and 100 million monthly active user community. Public Artfound is capturing the attention of trend setters, bloggers, artists, and brands. We are looking to take intelligent next steps to best leverage our existing momentum and attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdDedwisrJQ

Update: publicartfound.com

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I decided to take my project to the same name as my twitter account. I think this is a good name for what I want to accomplish. I bought publicartfound.com to continue this.

Im at 357 github commits and counting.

I built out some major features today:

  • The user ‘activity feed’ is up. This is a feed that shows a users contributions on the site. For example, if they submit a post or make an addition/edit to an exiting post, they will have a record.
  • Users can also now comment. This will be a contribute function, but for now, the ability to add text on the site is important.
  • I re-added the “graffiti” or “piece” feature. I initially took out the ability to have a page on a single piece of art. I thought it was unnecessary with the focus on locations and artists. After the debacle with the “white flag” on the brooklyn bridge, I thought it was too good of a story to pass up. This feature could be used to track a press worthy piece, so people can discuss and share the various points around this.
  • I integrated a instagram feed for “location” pages. The feed is a way to showcase the types of paintings that are currently coming out of the area. The feed’s last picture is an image that goes to a follow page for the @publicartfound twitter account.

This have a long way to go in regards to style and design. This is not a problem for me. I want to get the function out of the way before I get too caught up in the details.

Post note: I wrote this 5 days ago and placed it in the Queue. I didnt realize it took so long to process. Since then, Im at 421 commits and counting.