
Ask HN: How to create a simple ios/android app? - guilamu
I&#x27;ve been working for a pretty big union in France for a couple of years now. I&#x27;m working in anything related to IT: websites (using Wordpress but with pretty good php&#x2F;mysql&#x2F;css bases), mailings, logos, etc. I&#x27;ve never made an app, though.<p>We&#x27;ve got hundred of thousands of members and for each member, we have to send him a paper member card which contains: first name, last name, member number on the front side and &quot;stamps&quot; on the back side (one stamp for each month, 99 % of people pay for 12 months).<p>Of course, everything card-related is &quot;hand made&quot; : printing, pasting each of the 12 stamps, inserting the card into an envelope, etc.<p>IMHO, the amount of time, paper, and money involved in this is mind-boggling.<p>So you see where I&#x27;m going with this: why not make a simple ios&#x2F;android app where the member would just have to input first name&#x2F;last name&#x2F;date of birth and voilà, its member card would appear on the phone (there are thousand other things this app could be useful too, like contacting the members directly via notifications, but I&#x27;m not there yet).<p>For someone like me with 0 knowledge on how to do a very simple - at least for now - universal (ios&#x2F;android) app, where should I start?<p>Thanks a bunch!<p><i>TL;DR:</i> 0 experience. Need to make a Android&#x2F;iOS app for members of a big organisation. The app would only display a virtual card containing first name last name and member number. The user would identify himself with first name, last name, date of birth.
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on_and_off
Seems like the app is quite simple and should not grow too much in scope.

You are lucky, it seems like a case where hybrid apps are interesting. There
seems to exist an inflexion point where hybrid frameworks become an hindrance
and it is more productive to just go with native.

You should start by having a look at either Xamarin, Flutter or React Native.

They are rather good multi platforms solutions.

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brudgers
My random advice from the internet is to hire a top notch consulting firm to
develop the app for the organization.

To me, there are two orthogonal ideas in the question. One is solving an
organization's problem. The other is an individual learning app development.
The members of the organization are better served by one approach, the
individual will learn more from another approach.

To me, the amount and type of work that is likely to be required in order to
change a significant organizational process might be better put to simply
learning to build apps for something else. The skill set to change an
organizational process is probably orthogonal to technical skill as well. I
mean the premise of the app is along the lines of "everyone is doing it wrong"
and that's a hard sell. The sale requires building allies among the people in
a position to institute the change and to sell it to the hundreds of thousands
of members as a benefit...and there are probably people like me among the
membership who would rather have a card than something on their cell phone and
maybe a few who run Windows on their phone.

Good luck.

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guilamu
First, thank you very much for your time and input!

The thing is unions in France are really short-handed and do not have a lot of
money. Hiring a "top notch" consulting firm to develop the app is not
financially doable.

I'm not saying, "everyone is doing it wrong". I'm saying "everyone is doing it
like it was done in the 1950", because it's true.

Now the top brass wants to modernize everything. I just made for them a brand
new website, they want a Facebook/Twitter presence and everyone agree that the
old "member card" is a problem.

My thinking is that for these kind of people, I'd have a better chance of
convincing them by showing something already working (I'm totally ready to get
a "no" even if I worked on the app 100 hours, I would have learned new skills
in the process anyway).

Of course, at the beginning we would offer people the choice between the paper
card and the e-card.

~~~
brudgers
I suspect that a well designed app including all the security and
authentication and backend infrastructure could easily run take a thousand or
more staff hours. Without a learning curve or research.

I'd put it another way...if digital cards in the form of a mobile app are
viable, then why have cards at all? Just verify paid dues against a database
and authenticate using an existing form of id such as a passport or other
government issued document. I mean even with a mobile app, sound practice
would be to authenticate identity using a third party service rather than
something created in house.

There's the possibility of a hybrid approach where a physical card is
permanent and the cardholder's payment status is verified against a database.
And perhaps a delinquent status can be fixed by swiping a credit card using
Stripe or a similar service...that might even increase membership renewals by
reducing friction.

I'd put it this way, building an app using developers without experience is
kind of 'doing it like it was done in 2009.' In the interim people's
expectations have become higher and building a quality multi-platform app
requires more sophistication. Not to mention maintaining one has become more
complex as the app store requirements change and hardware diversifies, e.g.
the latest iOS requires 64bit compilation.

To me, the business problem is not the lack of an app. It is the process of
maintaining the union's membership roll. An app doesn't really solve that.

~~~
guilamu
Thanks again for your input, a lot of (good) food for thought!

