Knowing your app (part 25) My story. developing an app with zero development skills.

In the past few weeks, I have been getting wonderful feedbacks on my app. It is far from what it should be but it has been doing better than I expected and i'm very grateful to everyone who has been supportive so far. Many people do not know how long it has taken me to build the app and many make several hypothesis of how I have managed on. The Idea of Just talk came to me more than a year ago. At this time I had no app development skill. I knew nothing about coding languages and how they codes actually worked. But I had with me the most brilliant idea ever. How did I know this was a brilliant idea? easy, I believed in it, I told people and I entered it in a completion. The feedbacks from people were both encouraging and depressing but I worked on the criticized points of the app improved the already good parts and best of all I was successful in the competition.

At that point it felt I have gotten a certificate that said to me confidently that my app would change the world. With this in my mind the next stage was to build the app. With no app development skills I obviously needed to find help. I spoke to a couple of people and I was advised to find  co-founder who was good with app coding. How was a fresh graduate who studied BSc economics and MSc Entrepreneurship going to find someone to join him in a crazy new project. Not being in University anymore just makes things harder as there are less people to ask questions. All I thought I had was the brain of think of the idea and that was it. Well I studied entrepreneurship at a good university so I had to do something somehow. Perhaps using the degree somehow would be a good start. I decided to begin my hunt for a co-founder. As I was succesful in my competition i had some acces to university and it's facilities so became a stalker at the computer science department at the University of Liverpool trying to find someone to join me. I spoke to a couple of people and they loved the idea but the challenges and the work was enough to put them away. Most of them were students so I didn't really get the best of help there as they had their university work to bother about also. Then I went on Facebook and linkedin perhaps a few messages to a couple of people should find me a co-founder. Fortunately I did find two people who were students. I was able to spark some interest in them, but they had university work to do and coding challenges deterred them. It wasn't totally a loss at time this time because one of them did teach me one or two things about coding. The moment I discovered I could grasp some knowledge about coding I decided to do some more learning. next thing I knew I found myself watching coding videos on YouTube.

I started learning one or two things about app development. It didn't take me long enough to learn that my dyslexia was going to become a deterrent. Reading and writing long words were just not my thing. Thus didn't stop me from writing 40 pages of words describing my app, all its features and however button should work in details though. After a number of YouTube videos it was time to start getting things done. I knew I couldn't do it alone because even after learning one language I had to code the server end anyways. I decided I would do something with my newly learnt skills and begin creating my app.

I decided to divide the development of my app into different stages. Front end, back end and Server end. Inbetween those ends I also divided into other smaller stages. I went on LinkedIn to scout for developers. At this stage I was no longer looking for co-founders as I had given up on that move and decided to do things myself. I needed to find a way to create the app in the cheapest way ever. I began messaging people I believed would be able to develop parts of the app for pretty low prices. Learning how coding works made me look and feel knowledgeable and was able to convince the people I spoke to that what I was asking for was little and didn't require much work. prior to speaking to this people I had already completed my very long description of how everything about the app works and had gone on pain to draw how the app should look. (Talk about designing skills) so yeah, I basically designed everything about my app. My brother was able to convert it from the paint look to a more realistic look on photoshop. I spoke to someone who made me a fully functional front end for a very cheap price. I went on freelancers.com to scout for developers. obviously no one very good was going to do it for cheap. If I at all did find someone who could do it for a cheap price, it would mean I was going to find someone who only just learnt how to code and was going to use my app as practice. To be fair I didn't mind so I went for it. Most of the new app developers who were happy to develop the app for a cheap price where Indians and language was a great barrier, explain exactly what you wanted was a task on its own. I had to break every stage down in very little bits so they could understand and begin developing, in many cases I've had to do some research on how to get along with certain parts of the app and teach the developers how to do it. It didn't go very smoothly if  I'm honest. I went through three different sets of developers with one set containing a minimum of about three people. Changing hands from one developer to another was also a challenge as it too about one month for some of the new developers to get used to the codes and understand where everything are.

The challenges just never stopped but I managed anyways. I went through so many even after finding the developers who are still the best till date. I have managed to create the app and made it available on the app store. updates are still flooding in daily and will keep coming to improve user experience. Just Talk, is one of a kind. none that have ever existed and I very much love all it's users. Those I know and those plenty people who I've never met. Bless you all and I wish you all the best of days.
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Knowing your app (Part 17) how to record and send messages

In the previous post we learnt how to search and add new contacts. Now that we've learnt how to do that, let's learn how to send messages. Just like everything about the app, sending a new message is pretty simple (there will be diagrams to elaborate on me words). Once you've logged into the app, you will notice three icons on the top of the screen from any part of the app except the "filter page" (A more elaborate explanation about this three icons can also be learnt from the previous post and older post). They are located at the top of all but one of the app page and they are called (top left to top right), the settings icons, the profile page/screen icon and the record page/screen icon. For this tutorial we would be talking about the "record new page/screen". More information about the "profile page can also be found in the previous post.

At this point we would love to assume that you have made some new friends or just have your old ones on the app. Perhaps I am one of your new friends (keshjacobs is my username on the app, feel free to add me). So back o the matter at hand. You have made some new friends and you wish to start talking to them. Or you have already received one or more messages from them and you wish to reply (if you add me "keshjacobs" I would most-likely have already send you a voice note saying a big thank you for adding me and downloading the app). Once again we return to the reason you might be reading this post. To send a new message, simple tap on the icon on the top right corner of the screen (the record new icon). you would then be taken to a page (the record page) showing a list of your contacts and a button for recording new messages (note the main  three navigation icons would still remain at the top of the screen). To record a new message simply tap on the person you wish to send a message to (this would tick the circle besides the name) then tap and hold the button below the name to record a new message. let go off the icon once you're done recording your message. Your recorded message will play back immediately then tap "send" to send the message to the selected contact. If you do not wish to send the message you  just recorded, simply tap "cancel" to delete it. Taping send will take you back to the timeline page (more details of timeline page in older posts). here you would see the status of the message you have just sent. You will get a notification at the bottom of the screen's page indicating the message has been sent. For best performance and to ensure the message reaches the receiver, please wait in the current screen (timeline screen) until you're notified message has been sent. Once you have been notified about this, the information that says sending besides the receiver's name would change to "sent".

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