Nick Hargreaves, the winning developer in the Kipokezi Apps Challenge has kindly agreed to provide advice to prospective developers in creating apps for the FMNA platform.
Nick’s personal summary of his winning app ‘Tokezlezea’:
Tokelezea is a social SMS event check in and management application. Users can search for events by location and in the future they’ll also be able to search by category when we have a big enough database of events. After finding an interesting event, users can view details such as description, address, date and time. From here they can choose to check-in (tokelezea) and invite their friends. They can also buy tickets by MPESA if the events are not free. It also allows attendees to interact by posting and viewing event comments and viewing the attendees.
As an event organizer, one can easily add an event, edit event information, delete event and view total attendees and money collected.
All of this happens on a basic SMS capable phone with no Internet access. Tokelezea has a mobile web version that shows the event page with information, and allows the user to locate the address on a map.
Nick’s 5 keys to success
Be simple and intuitive
The app should be easy to understand and users should be able to quickly navigate and use it’s features without having to go through a manual first
Be Social
If there’s a way to add a social dimension in the app then you should try and utilize it. People always want to share what they’re up to and the content they are consuming. In the current tech scene, it’s difficult to sell applications that are not social. The way Tokelezea achieved this was to allow users to post comments and view comments and attendees.
Have a Large Target Market
The app should be useful to a large target market.
Be Practical
Think about the culture of the people you are building the app for. Think about how they usually do things and if the app would actually make sense to them.
Most importantly, take the feedback from the FMNA team seriously.
They know the Industry; they know what works and what doesn’t.
The Winning Tokelezea Team
REMEMBER to join the official FMN Developers Facebook group
Tags: Apps, Apps Challenge, Developers, FMNA, Kenya, KIPAPPS, Kipokezi, Safaricom
