Part 3: Impacts of an App on users

Greetings Everyone, The following is another part of the series. In this part, I will be sharing some of my thoughts on the impact of apps on normal users. As I have already mentioned, there are different types of apps. Social media, games, entertainment, photography, etc. Each app has different impacts on users. As a developer, our goal is to keep the users engaged. Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc have very successful in this business, but in my point, this is not a good practice as it becomes an addiction and diverts attention and focus of a particular task. In my opinion, a good practice would be to make a useful app that contributes to making the user's life better rather than making them addicts and victim of social bully. Even though Hashtag is a social media app, it has the time limitation and is mainly for the general news purpose rather than just silly stories and feeds. My target was to develop a platform where people are aware of the latest events and situations of the world rather than someone's personal life. In a nutshell, I believe that an app is considered beneficial only if it has a more positive impact than negative impacts. So, while making an app try to pitch ideas that benefit the user and thereby engaging more users for a good cause rather than making them an addict.

Part 2: What is Hashtag

Hey there, Welcome back. As you have read in the previous blog (Part 1), this blog will be about the app and its interesting features. The idea first started as a school exhibition project. I was working with my friend Saksham and we decided to make a simple social media app for the exhibition. He was designing and I was responsible for its working mechanism.
We started it as a web app. It consisted of login and register, the user could post pictures, like, comment, follow and chat with the other users. We were able to secure the third position in the exhibition and we both were proud of the project. One day I realized it would be really cool it the Hashtag had a mobile version ie. mobile app. So I made up my mind to start the second phase of the project, The App.
I started with the android because I was familiar with Java. I made up the UI and started working on it. At this point, I needed a beautiful logo so I ask my friend Deeparshan to help me with it. I made activities, fragments, layouts and so on then I realized I had to do all of this all again for the IOS. This was demotivating me because I had to do everything I had done till now all over again and three months had already passed. I also had to learn Objective C and I didn't see this going anywhere so I stopped and took a break.
I thought it was a fail but then I heard about flutter. A simple yet compatible with both IOS and Android so I started learning this language and as I learned I implemented everything in the Hashtag. This was a big turning point. I successfully completed my project and now the app is launched in the Google Play store.
This was all about the app the phases it went throughout the development. Next week blog will be about the impacts of most of the apps to the users.

Part 1: Simple Introduction about the Series

Hi I am Ashutosh Sharma. I am an Information Technology Student and developing app is one of my hobbies😊. In this series I'll be taking you through a story behind an app and along with it I'll also be giving you some hints and tips.


In the rough estimation of 2019, there are about 2.1 million apps in the Google Play Store and about 2 million apps in the Apple App Store. There are different types of apps such as: for entertainment, for education, social apps, business apps, utility apps, etc. Each app has a specific purpose. Some are general tools, some are games or other sources of fun, some are educational apps and so on.


In this blog, I will be discussing one of my app Hashtag and our journey together to the play store. With this, you will have ideas about the impacts of applications on the user, steps of making a good app, the process of distributing them to the public and things to keep in mind while making an app so that it becomes a successful project.


For you to start developing an app you must have some idea of programming and knowledge of JAVA and Objective C will be very helpful because these are the main languages used for developing apps.


Next week, I will be writing about the app Hashtag and its interesting properties.


(Part 2)