How did you get sparked on the iPhone?
The iPhone didn’t really grab me when it came out. But, one year after release, Apple made the SDK available so people could write apps for it. Then, I was like “wait… I can write those cool looking apps that animate and respond to the user’s finger like that? Sign me up!” I was seriously entrenched in the Microsoft space before that, and I can’t really remember doing anything on a Windows Mobile phones where I said “holy crap, that’s cool!” From the moment I started writing software for the iPhone, I’ve said that pretty much continuously.
How is mobile app development different from or the same as developing on other platforms?
From a technology perspective, it’s very different for me, because it’s a new programming language (Objective-C) for me to learn. Before the App Store, pretty much the only people that used Objective-C were Mac programmers and Academics, and I’m neither.
From a design perspective, it’s very different too. My background is helping companies build business software, and before that, health care apps. In both of those cases, your user is chained to a desktop computer and you don’t have to think much about the impact of adding yet another button to their toolbar to do some “hey, we gotta have it” feature. The iPhone, with it’s smaller screen, bigger touch areas, and most importantly, its mobility, brings with it a whole set of design challenges. It’s fun to think about this stuff in new and different ways. You go put yourself in some unusual (but realistic) situation and say “OK, does the app work well here, where it’s noisy and I can only use one hand?”
Describe the booquet mobile app. What features are you excited to see in the hands of consumers?
The booquet mobile app is basically a smaller version of the booquet.com website, tweaked to bring you just the features you need while you’re shopping for or tasting a wine. If you’re looking for wine information while you’re sitting at your desktop, it’s probably research for the future … you’re looking for what you might buy later. When you’re on the iPhone looking for info, it’s probably because you’re actually standing in the store wondering what to buy, so we optimize for that. The bar-code scanning feature, where you can scan the UPC on a bottle and get instant info about the wine, is probably the feature I’m most excited about.It’s not just about shopping for wine, though. We also have features to let you find wineries and tasting rooms near you. Then, when you’re tasting wines, you can easily share your comments about the wine with the booquet community, as well as post via your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
What is the greatest challenge when developing an iPhone or mobile app: Limiting the number of features or rolling out the right features?
A little of both. It’s definitely easy to pile on 100 features that you want in your app, but a well designed iPhone app should do a few things very, very well. It takes real discipline to keep refining and rejecting ideas so you’re left with a small number of features that are really useful and really wow your users.
What did you want to be before you became a developer? Is it related or wildly different in your mind?
Honestly, I can’t remember a time before I wanted to be a developer. I’ve been programming since I was in 7th grade, before the first IBM PC even came out, so when it came time to think about a career, computers were very much a part of my life. My major in college was Bio-medical Computing, which is both Computer Science and Pre-Med, and I briefly entertained the idea of going on to medical school, but in the end I decided that I was much better at programming than anything else, so here I am.
What interests you about booquet? Do you believe regular people (”consumers”) want to learn about wine?
I do. I’m a total wine amateur myself, and I believe booquet is a great way to learn about wines that regular people like. There are a number of wine websites out there that cater to people that are so much more sophisticated than me, they just seem impenetrable. I don’t want a masters degree in wine, or be a collector that stocks a cellar with bottles that are more trophy than drink. I just want to find new wines to try that I’ll love, and it’s fun to use the wisdom of the crowd to lead you to new and interesting wines.
Share something we’d never know about you.
As a kid, I was in a number of radio commercials, mostly for businesses in the Albany, NY area. My father worked for a recording studio, and I hung around there a lot. Whenever a client needed some child talent for a commercial, I usually got the gig. Most were speaking parts, but I actually needed to sing a line in a jingle for Bilinski’s Meats (http://www.bilinski.com/). Most people don’t know this, and I’m sorry I told you, because now I must kill you.
Tags: Booquet team, iPhone, Kyle Davis, mobile, uncorked
[...] Kyle Davis, booquet Mobile Posts Calendar [...]