制作优秀手机应用的6大技巧编辑本段回目录
作者：Erica Ogg
在日前举办的Mobilize 2011大会上，很多游戏公司的创始人和高级主管上台讲述了他们的产品，并与我们分享了他们在制作应用程序和手机服务中所学习到的东西。而我们从中挑选出了一些最适合的建议。以下是来自于Pandora、Flipboard、Instagram、Hipmunk、Formspring以及Grey Area的六点技巧：
1.不要总是认为必须从HTML5和原生程序中挑选其一
Pandora正在用一种混合的方法去管理他的音乐服务网站以及应用程序。Pandora在上周发行了一个基于HTML5的网站，其首席技术官Tom Conrad表示，他可以预见公司将在不久的将来开发出一款HTML5与原生应用相结合的应用，而这也能够帮助他们更好地使用现有的技术去击败竞争对手。“这么做能够让你更加了解操作系统以及真正高性能且高灵活性的用户体验。结合HTML5的内容，即那些能够将平台多样性统一起来的元素，并将其快速整合至用户界面的发展中。”
HTML5 from msii.cn
2.快速发行一些小型应用程序
Instagram（游戏邦注：这家公司在1年时间里从0位用户发展到1千万用户）花了好长一段时间去发行他们的照片应用程序，并在上周对此进行了第一次更新。但是该公司CEO Kevin Systrom并不推荐这款应用程序。因为他认为发行这款应用程序的时间过长，“我们需要快速完成一些事。”“这么做并没有错，我们也花了很长时间在制作v2.0.，但我希望我们能够转变到一个更快速的迭代过程，因为我认为如果我们能够习惯于按照一定节奏去发行游戏，那么我们便能够取得更加长远的发展。”
3.尽早且频繁创造游戏原型
Hipmunk（游戏邦注：旅游搜索初创公司）的移动应用负责人Danilo Campos表示不应浪费开发者的时间：“原型设计能够节省你的时间。让你能够随时了解到你的应用，而无需投入过多的资源。你只需要花费一个下午的时间便能够创造出原型，总比花了几周的时间却发现这个原型并不适合好多了。”
4.人为干预
Pandora主张任何东西都不能完全自动化。Conrad表示：“Pandora的创始人Tim在创建这家公司的时候所追崇的一大原则便是，在保留音乐本质的前提下创造出我们所喜欢的音乐。所以如何才能创造出一种服务，让艺术家也认可你？最好的方法便是制作一组音乐指纹，或者说是根本的音乐学属性。现在电脑上的音乐艺术还不足以用来传达各种细节问题，所以我们决定人为进行操作，让专业人士带上耳机去区分那400多种的属性。”
5.说出你的期望
当Formspring在思考如何将旗下的问答网站转变成一种手机应用程序时（即他们在这个月初所发行的应用程序）时，他们便领悟了这个道理。首先，他们认为重现网站很迫切，但是后来他们意识到在手机的小屏幕上很难实现这个目标。Formspring的首席产品专员Tom Wang说道：“你的期望，就应该由你自己说出口。”也许你的网站看起来与你的应用“截然不同”，但是如果能够提供好的用户体验，那么便没关系了。“你真的需要重新思考你在表达些什么以及你是如何表达的。”
基于定位模式的热门多人在线手机游戏《Shadow Cities》的开发商Grey Area同样也有自己的期望，即他们希望在游戏早期便能够对用户行为产生重大影响。共同创立者兼CEO的Ville Vesterinen表示，他们假设那些在玩手机游戏的是一些休闲游戏玩家，而这就意味着他们花费于游戏中的时间都较短。实际上，Vesterinen继续说道，如果用户选择在他们常待的场所玩游戏，那么他们就可能投入更长时间于游戏中了。正是这种觉悟推动Grey Area再次思考他们游戏的用户粘性以及游戏内部的体验问题。
6.与自己竞争
Flipboard的编辑主任Josh Quittner说道：“很多公司在与自己进行竞争。这是他们在长期竞争后的最后一步。他们不用思考其他人在做什么，因为如果当你开始在意别人在做什么的时候，便会不自觉地效仿他的做法。”
来自于手机付费创业公司Square的Keith Rabois附和道：“我们每天都在观察自己，所以别人做了什么对于我们来说一点都不重要。我们真心认可这一态度。如今有很多公司总是在烦恼的一个问题便是‘我们是否拥有别人的那些优势？’而我们正在努力让自己摆脱这个束缚。我们的工作只是创造让人惊讶的好产品，成功与否取决于这些产品的质量。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译）
Building a mobile app? Here are 6 tips for you
By Erica Ogg Sep. 28, 2011
At Mobilize 2011 this week, we had a wealth of founders and executives of mobile companies onstage who not only talked up their products but also the things they’ve learned as they’ve built their apps and mobile services. We’ve picked out some of the best advice they had to offer for young mobile companies just starting out. Here are six great tips from Pandora, Flipboard, Instagram, Hipmunk, Formspring and Grey Area:
1. Don’t feel that you have to pick sides in HTML5 vs. native
Pandora is taking a hybrid approach to its rapidly growing music streaming service’s web site and its apps, and its not alone. Pandora launched an HTML5-powered website last week, and CTO Tom Conrad said that he could see the company developing a hybrid HTML5-native app. It’s the best way to get the best of both worlds with the technology that’s available right now, said Conrad. “That gives you integration with the OS and really, really high performance and really fluid user experiences. But integrated with some HTML5 content, whose strong suit is uniform platform dynamics, and rapid turns on user interface development.”
2. Do smaller releases quickly
It took Instagram (which went from essentially zero to 10 million users in the space of a year) a while between the release of their photo app and the first major update last week. But CEO Kevin Systrom wouldn’t recommend that. “Do fewer things more quickly,” he said, rather than waiting a long time between big releases as Instagram did. “It’s not a mistake, it just took us a long time to do v 2.0. But I’d like to move us into smaller iterations more quickly because I think that if you get into a rhythm of releases you end up making more progress in the long run.”
3. Prototype early and often
Danilo Campos, head of mobile at travel-search startup Hipmunk, offered his best advice on how not to waste your developers’ time: “Prototyping is going to save you from shipping crap. It allows you to touch the application in front of you without having to invest a deep amount of resources in it. It’s something you build in an afternoon’s time rather than over the course of weeks and [then] realizing it’s not good at all.”
4. Human intervention is good
Pandora learned you can’t automate everything. “One of the key observations that [founder] Tim [Westergren] made when he started the company was that part of what we love about music is how it sounds,” said Conrad. “So to make a service that really introduces you to new artists, the best way to do that is to have a catalog of the musical fingerprints or underlying musicological attributes. The state of the art in computer listening is insufficient to tease out those hundreds of details, so we have human beings that come in and put on headphones and categorize those 400 attributes.”
5. Throw out your own expectations
This dawned on the Formspring team when they were figuring out how to translate their Q&A site into a mobile app, which they released earlier this month. At first they felt pressured to recreate their site, but they realized that wasn’t realistic for the phone’s small screen. “Some expectations are yours that you need to throw out,” said Tom Wang head of product at Formspring. Your website may look “radically different” than your app, and that’s OK if it gives the best user experience. “You really need to rethink what you’re presenting and how you’re presenting it.”
Grey Area, the company behind the hit mobile location-based massively multiplayer online game Shadow Cities also had their expectations of user behavior turned upside down early on. Co-founder and CEO Ville Vesterinen said they assumed those who played mobile games were casual gamers, meaning they engaged in brief play sessions while in transit. In reality, Vesterinen said, users play their mobile games in places they are most often, meaning they play for longer sessions. That realization made Grey Area rethink engagement and in-game experiences.
6. Compete with yourself
“A great company thinks about competing with itself,” Flipboard Editorial Director Josh Quittner said. “That’s really in the end who they compete with. They don’t think about what everybody else is doing because if you start thinking about what everybody else is doing, you end up following them.”
Keith Rabois of mobile payments startup Square echoed that. “We look at ourselves in the mirror everyday….it doesn’t really matter what other people do. We really strictly believe that. Insofar as a lot of companies start with the premise of, I have to worry about this feature, and they send around emails (asking), ‘Do we have that?’ We try to take ourselves out of that. It’s our job to build amazing products and we either succeed or fail depending on how amazing they are.”（Source：gigaom）
