Kiran Bel­lubbi, Founder & CEO, 955 Dreams

The price of an iPhone app is about the same as a really good qual­ity French pas­try or even baguette. How­ever, mediocre apps spoil the envi­ron­ment for all devel­op­ers. Medi­oc­rity is the enemy. It kills great ideas. One mediocre ideas leads to another, which leads to another, and so on.

How do you fight medi­oc­rity in app development?

Have a point of view. This clar­ify the vision behind the prod­uct and crys­tal­lizes the team around a cen­tral focus.

Touch changes every­thing. The fact that you can manip­u­late objects on a screen changes the way peo­ple relate to tech­nol­ogy. Under­stand what a phone feels like, and what the expe­ri­ence should feel like.

Design every screen right down to the last pixel. Every pixel counts.

Iter­ate until you love your prod­uct. Then, bring your users along for the ride.

Ship only what you love.

Why fight medi­oc­rity? Why is this important.

Con­sumer expec­ta­tions have changed. Blue screens of death are rare nowa­days. The expec­ta­tion is that

The 7 sec­ond rule: a mobile app needs to make the value propo­si­tion or “Wow” some­one in less than 7 sec­onds, oth­er­wise they won’t use it again.

Cus­tomer sup­port for chew­ing gum just doesn’t work and doesn’t scale. If you build some­thing that’s shoddy, you will spend a lot of time in cus­tomer support.