In developing an App, there is an element of copying from other Apps. I'm talking about the layout more than anything because if we created something completely unique, it would be annoying and confusing to have to learn how to use something that should feel familiar. But that doesn't mean we can't have unique features.
In the Run Detective App, we'll have the basics - Profile with image & name and ability to view and edit. We'll need a way to list the Investigations, broken into Seasons (because of course, we'll have more than one season as we progress).
I'm also thinking about writing some separate investigations for Halloween, Christmas and other holidays. That will have to come later.
Some other features users may like are games to play along your run. For example, pick a point on the map to run to and collect clues along the way to solve a crime. We could also introduce discoveries for those people who really love to read more about the stories we're telling.
But before we get to a stage where we can be creative with the features, we must get back to the basics. We need a place for users to create their own routes.
We also need to think about the social side - requesting friends, commenting on their activities and giving them the ability to create challenges.
I also wonder if people would find training plans useful. I know I would, so that's on the table for development.
We need people to be able to view their own activity history and log activities they didn't record live. Along with that, displaying statistics will be a challenge and creating leaderboards will be fun.
At some stage we'll be looking at what memberships would look like. We really want to reward early adopters and supporters. There will also be the opportunity for people to test new features and we're excited to get to that stage.
I also think that connecting social accounts is important and we'll be looking at ways to sync your Run Detective activities with your other favourite apps, like Strava, Runtastic, May my Fitness, etc.
We also be looking at different settings to allow automatic downloading of episodes or simply stream the episodes as you run.
You can see, we have a lot running through our heads at the moment. But our development environment is set-up and we're in the early stages piecing those basic together. On top of our other jobs, I think we're doing OK. Although we aren't setting deadlines at the moment, we aren't in any rush as we want to get it right.