I know we all hear about awesome apps that are visiting change the planet. You hear about the most recent millionaire high school student who made an app and has now retired.

My name is Ryan Knell, I run Snappy Apps from Brisbane, Australia, and I’m doing a guest blog post for my friends at ALT Agency. I buy pitched new ideas each day, some brilliant, many averages. But, wow, the terrible ones can really stand out.

If you're looking to urge an app developed, don’t be afraid to achieve bent on a developer. persistently folks that come to me with a plan that won’t work, go away with an inspiration that does. It's all a part of the startup process.

The magic lawn bowls app

The irony of this one is it actually did get made by somebody else and was a hit. What was the idea? Take a photograph together with your phone to live the space from the jack (white ball) and bowl (black balls).

The idea is sweet on a high level. the matter was the customer’s rigid requirements:
“It must be able to take a photograph, with none set up, at any angle, and be accurate to the millimeter”. His budget was also about $2500/AUD, but that’s another story.

Why isn’t this possible? Well take a glance at the interpret photo above, are you able to say, with absolute certainty which one is that the closest? No! you wish to manage the environment.

The app(s) that ultimately got made used the phone’s gyroscope. They required the user to face above the balls, once the phone determined it absolutely was level, then it took a photograph. The photo was then processed using some advanced photo analysis and a few user inputs.

I still worry it's not “mm” accurate. But if the customer was willing to work with the technology, it would have gotten off the bottom.

Google Translate

This is the explanation I now vet my customers a bit before I conform to converge and discuss your idea.

Once I arrived for the meeting, no sooner had I walked through the door than the discussion started.
“We want an app that may do translations”
“Ok…” I said with skepticism here. “There are quite a few good offerings that try this.”
“BUT!” They said excitedly, “We want it to be ready to translate from a photo”
“Google has an app called Google Translate that does that very well”

I proceeded to point out them Google translate, took a photograph, did the interpretation demo. this can be all before I even managed to take a seat down.

It’s not fair to expect everyone to understand every app that's out there, but if you have got the “next great” idea, google it first. Not only will you see who your competitors are, but you would possibly find a hole within the market. Apps are expensive, you don’t want to waste your money on a design that's not visiting work.

Tinder for single artists with pets and NO HOOKUPS.

When I was pitched this one just quite made me laugh. It doesn’t need lots of explanation, but that's a crazy tight niche. The customer also wanted a quote for “millions of simultaneous users” and to be all-inclusive.

But some practical advice on agency / social media apps. you wish to make sure you're visiting reach a critical mass before your app becomes a hit. you wish to place in situ an inspiration to seek out those people and fast because your mobile app won’t have any value without an energetic user base. In these cases, I often suggest starting out with awfully tight geography, saturate that and march on from there.

The fly swatter app

I love how bad this concept is. It's not a “fly swatter game” as you may expect. No. It puts an image of a fly swatter on your phone. you employ the phone’s screen to reign down terror on the unsuspecting fly.

Where the women at?

Have you ever wanted to search out the closest female, because they're just missing? Nowhere to be found?

What if you had a compass that told you where the closest female is? Wouldn’t that be great?

Now we just need all the ladies to opt into being tracked 24/7 just in case a random decides to stalk them down. This one sounded a psycho alert, and that I moved on pretty quickly.

“I haven't any money and no ideas”

This is a real story. I swear.

I got a call, a possible client wanted to satisfy up to debate some app ideas. That's what we do, so I agreed to fulfill them at a cafe on the thanks to another appointment.

The meeting went something like this:
“So I need to create an app. I’m just unsure of what reasonably app I want” He said.
“Ok… What does one want it to do?” I ask.
“I’m unsure. does anyone have any ideas I can make? I don’t have much of a budget.”

An app that intercepts all Facebook and Instagram messages after you are drunk

Sure, again, I know people would absolutely use this. If it were possible.
The problem is smartphones fixed one very big issue that has plagued PCs for years. Viruses. I want to run a PC repair business and also the reality was, we made our money from virus removal.

Once I saw what was happening within the smartphone space I moved on from that business. Anyway, what do viruses should do with this idea? Everything is cordoned off. It’s looser on Android, but apps still sleep in a “sandbox”

This is both a decent and bad thing. It implies that nobody can easily manipulate your app. But it also means you can’t go into and begin manipulating the messaging system of Facebook – permanently means or bad.

Unlocked

Unlockd is truly a “successful” app. This got somewhere over $50M in funding. It had massive backers – giants within the business world. Superannuation funds were visiting pour an additional $40M into the app before it folded.

The premise was that you simply could opt-in to being forced to observe ads once you unlock your phone for reduced phone bills.
It got to pack up. they'd a large tantrum. They blamed (and even tried to sue) Google.

But the writing was on the wall from the start. Why? Because it operated in an exceedingly area – there's a reason it absolutely was Android only. It broke that “Sandbox” mentioned in point 7. you have got to figure out the system you're developing for. Loopholes are a brief-term solution.

It goes to indicate, everyone can have a foul app idea. Even smart and wealthy people can back bad ideas. I've got another blog entry on validating your app ideas. But reproval your app developer, and genuinely asking what they think, could be a good beginning.

Mobile app development can have a profound effect on your business – if your app idea is sound and also the development of your app is executed correctly.

When trying to find a mobile app development agency remember to try and do your research and speak with a view app development companies as there are lots out there on the market.

Whilst a number of these app ideas showed some promise, well – depending on how you define “promise”, some were just all out awful ideas and positively deserve their place amongst a number of the worst app ideas ever.

Don’t let your app fall by the wayside – there are loads of great benefits to having an app, so take care to actually hash out a transparent idea, get marketing research and understand the crucial elements within the app development process.