Ecliptic development process

Ecliptic take an agile user-centered design approach to the development process, resulting in the following five steps:

1. Requirements

The first step involves a meeting with the client to find out about the company and their requirements. We will then go back and analyse these requirements and draw up a detailed requirements specification that will outline the functionality of the application.

2. Design

Once the requirements have been agreed with the client, we will iteratively develop a series of wireframes and designs that will reflect both the visual and interaction design of the app. We are experts in the areas of user experience and usability and strive to innovate in design whilst adhering to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines.

3. Development

Ecliptic specialise in the development of native iPhone applications, as opposed to iPhone “Web Applications”. Building native applications allows the entire functionality of the device to be harnessed, optimisation of the user experience, and allows distribution via the App Store. We have extensive experience with Apple's iPhone SDK and associated tools. Depending on the size of the project we use an agile development cycle to ensure our time is optimised in this process.

4. Testing

During the development cycle of the app we carry out thorough testing of the application. Internally, we test the application using edge case scenarios, and then we can provide builds of the application for client testing. Optionally, we can provide usability testing at this stage.

5. Distribution and warranty

The final step is to submit the application to the Apple app store - this process takes around two weeks. We can manage this entire process, or we can provide a provisioned application to be submitted from the clients developer account. A typical project will include a warranty phase of 30 days, where any major bugs found in the app will be fixed.