I'm really novice when it comes to programming but I need someone to build me an app and I want to attract ppl who aren't stupid. If you can read my job description and tell me what it's missing or whats wrong with it that'd be cool. Here it is:

I don't have any background in coding/programming I'm just someone who loves teaching and wants to create a learning APP. I'm also using this as a first step toward potentially competing in the learning Xprize (details here http://learning.xprize.org).

I understand how frustrating it is trying to give people accurate timelines/prices when they are so non specific and general. I'll try my best to detail what I need/want specifically and if there is anything I'm too unclear about ( which I sure i will be) just let me know and i'll do my best to specify.

I want to create a APP that can allow kids to write stories even if they don't know they alphabet (tall order lol). My goal is for them to learn how to read by doing this. It would look like the built in notepad app for IPAD ( if you don't know what this looks like just google it) just more colorful but instead of creating new files on the left hand side that would be used for different categories of words. For example a color category, (with a picture next to it so they can recognize it) when you click it it gives a drop down list of the words pink,yellow,red etc.. I'd tell you all the categories and the words I'd want in them.


You could then touch the word, hear the sound ( if you touch the word pink it says "pink" for example) and if its the word you want you drag it over to the right side. I'd also need them to have the option to manually type in words on a keyboard if they want. I need them to be able to embed pictures or video into their story as well. On the bottom there should be buttons for tweeting/facebooking/emailing their story

They should be able to save and name their stories with a button on the top right and access them on the home screen. They should be able to go back to the home screen with a button on the top left that is a picture of a house. The home screen would just have some background kiddy design ( which i'll pick out), name of the APP at the top and list of the stories they saved in the middle that when they click them it opens it up.


Thats the end of it. I don't have any plans for monetization so I left that out. Obv cool to send me a PM if you're interested in doing this. There are a ton more features I wanted but I want to make it as simple/cheap as possible. If for some reason you guys are interested I'd be down to share.

So for fun, lets try this: lets say I'm a person capable of doing what you have laid out above. What, in the above post, should convince me that I should do this? Be specific.

"Hi, I'm looking for an iPad developer. If you don't know what an iPad is, just Google it."

Title of OP: "I'm looking for someone good at developing iPad apps."

I put some words in your mouth, but trying to make a point.

Question for programmers: is it pretty common to have people come up to you with random, vague ideas for programs they want done with no actual plan for paying you like this?

I've had a couple of friends coming up to me and saying "You know how to code,right?! I have an awesome idea bla bla bla".
Sometimes the idea seems kinda good, but the market just isn't there, or they want to implement it in a very weird way, or they have no idea wth they want other than a vague idea,and it's amazing how many of them think it's a 1 afternoon thing.

Coding an app from scratch ain't cheap. Unless you want to end up with a pile of crap.

That being said,

OP has given some important details of what the app needs to do. It's not really that vague,actually I already have an idea how it'd look. But it'll take big hours to make it smooth. Specially if he wants sounds recorded for each little thing,he'd need to get someone to record it or use a generic voice from somewhere with no copy rights.

Money? Not being sarcastic but didn't think there was much to it other than that when posting a job on there. If there was i'm not rly sure what looks cool/enticing to Dev's

Thx

I was planning on paying some fixed amount for this. What about my idea was vague? I spent a few hours on this trying to be specific lol

Ya I realize that ideas are basically worthless w/o action and wouldn't mind giving out every idea I had for the APP but I realize if I did that the APP might cost 50k+ so ya trying to do something simpler. Anyways I expected my posting to come off rly newbie and bad so ya I appreciate the input.

OP,

the best way to hire a developer is to come up with a small microproject that would bill out at ~$500 for a day or two of work. Give that project to the 3-4 best looking resumes or portfolios you run across and then award the real project to who ever you enjoy working with the most.

FAQ:
What do you mean it's going to cost me $2000 to find a developer?
Yes, it will. It might cost more than that if the first 3-4 don't work out. Finding a good one though will save you 10x this amount in the future.

Yeah, but what if my budget is only $2000 for the whole project?
You're out of touch with reality. You're unlikely to get an app that you are happy with for this amount.

Isn't there any other option?
Yes, you could skip this process and hire me. I'm good, but expensive. PM for details.

Sorry mate, wasn't trying to offend if that occurred. I'm new to programming and just trying to get a feel for how things work in the freelance world. The most vague thing was payment. My programming experience is very limited, but I think it's quite true that even simple things can take a decent amount of time to program, and you said you weren't looking to monetize the app, and wanted it done as cheaply as possible, so it made me wonder if I got to be a good programmer and started doing freelance work, if I would be bombarded by lots of people with random ideas for programs they want written, with no idea of how to pay for the development.

Yeah, I've had this happen a few times.

One of the big problems is that people don't have a good frame of reference for software, which is something that once produced can be copied infinitely. Like, if you build a house, you can't then produce 100,000 copies of the house for almost nothing. As a result people are like "hey I can buy Office for like a hundred bucks, how expensive can custom software possibly be?". To which the answer is: very.

----

OP:

My rough guess at what it would cost to build the app you're talking about would run into tens of thousands. I know that sounds incredible, the problem is that making this thing usable for kids involves a lot of slick stuff, like voices, nice animation and so on, and that stuff costs big. It's like saying "hey I have an idea for a TV show, the premise is X and the plot for the pilot is Y". There's grabbing a GoPro and filming your friends reading the lines, and then there's properly producing something that people will watch. The cost difference between those two things is vast.

btw, sometimes the opposite happens. Like 6 months ago I had someone approach me through my girlfriend to do a little Excel stuff for her. She had numbers from surveys they'd done on clients and needed to prepare a report for management, but couldn't COMPUTER her way out of a paper bag. She wanted me to knock up some graphs for her and do a quick presentation. Probably took me like half an hour and she gave me $50 cash in hand. Not "programming" exactly I know, but still. Management were very pleased apparently. I feel like there's a business oppportunity doing stuff like that, but don't know how you'd go about locating clients.

So yeah, the flipside of people being terrible at understanding what it costs to do various stuff on computers is that occasionally they give you money to do things that are trivial.

Edit: Also a friend of mine took a temp job at an energy company here a while back. They gave him his job and he was like "I could write a program to do this". They were like "yeah whatever br0 just do the ****ing job". He wrote the program in his spare time and it completely replaced an entire person's job, so like 50K a year. They didn't actually go out of work because unions, but he let them repurpose an entire person to do something useful.

Then a few months later, they called him up in a panic because his program broke. He said "It'll be $200/hr to fix this" they were like "sure just get it done". He went in and they'd incorrectly named a directory "Feild Data" instead of "Field Data", or something like that. He was like "i before e except after c, $200 please".

I feel like there's a big market producing software for things that could be automated, but I don't know what they are because I'm not familiar with the relevant fields and the relevant fields know nothing about IT. It's a bit like that in the company I work for even. We produce software for schools and it generally doesn't help to ask clients what they want, because they're so unfamiliar with IT they can't even envisage what is possible.

ChrisV,

Wow, very interesting story about the temp job! You guessed the development costs of the app would be > $10,000, how many hours do you think it would take one person to do, assuming they did everything, even the voice recording?

I'm guessing it couldn't possibly be knocked out in a week?

I'm really handwaving hard here because OPs specification, while not hopelessly vague, is also not super detailed and because I don't write phone or tablet apps. Maxtower would probably have a better idea.

That being said, I'd find it pretty hard to imagine something like this being done by one person in less than a month, and that's if you found someone capable of doing everything (graphics, animations, programming, voice etc). A problem with this sort of thing is that it's hard to work in parallel, as the graphics, voice, animations etc tend to interrelate a lot. And having multiple people working in parallel requires coordinating their efforts, which adds overhead to the project, a factor often underestimated.

So, kids writing a story without writing it? So, a voice recognition program?

Or just randomly touching words on the screen and hoping that enough users eventually outputs Shakespeare?

Would all the vagueness be solved here with a mockup or is there something else I'm missing.

The latter with a deemphasis on the randomness

Oh, so kinda like digital madlibs?

Only more word choice on directing the story

The handwaving is more in how slick you're imagining the thing to be. Apps for kids need to be intuitive and engaging. The functionality you're talking about in terms of programming is not hard. Easily the majority of the time spent developing the app would be spent on polish.

Like I said, that isn't really my department, so maybe maxtower can weigh in. I do know from experience that moving something from "basically works" to "actual product" is usually a surprising amount of time and money.

You might be interested in the perspective of someone on the customer side of education software. If you're looking to do this for profit, the real key is to find someone who knows how to sell to school districts. The best program in the world is probably already out there and not being used for your specific task, but some crappy cheap (in development cost, not market price) knock-off that a large education company spent a few pennies on while wining and dining the tech coordinators and principals of big school districts, who are then the ones who go to conferences and pitch your product for you. The software that comes out of the big education publishers is really terrifyingly bad, like from Pearson and Saxon, and they get away with it because districts are already locked in to curriculum deals with them or with hardware and software vendors tied to them, and district management isn't usually knowledgeable enough in any specific problem domain to actually find good competing software products assuming they even care to. There's little incentive for these publishers to make their products usability and feature competitive with other offerings when that money is better spent securing distribution.

iPad apps are starting to move away from that ecosystem of wholesale software licensce purchasing, where a district might use one of several different payment systems with apple which allows teachers to have their own apple id with a volume purchasing account and a stipend from the district for their iPads and MacBooks - so things are more promising for products without a huge marketing budget if you can get some positive buzz on teacher run forums, youtube, etc. We've just started messing around with that, so I don't have a whole lot to offer.

When hiring a developer, the more specific you can be the better. It's certainly possible to hire a developer to make an app with a short description and a budget, but you're unlikely to get exactly what you want.

What is your budget for this by the way?

under $2000: you're talking about a few days work for a cheap developer. You can get an app built, but probably only one OS, 1-2 screens using built-in UI controls. Probably no interaction with the web or other devices. Probably bugs, probably doesn't look right on all devices.
ex: built in calculator app, stop watch app

$2000-5000: You can get a decent simple app built. 2-4 screens, one OS, a few custom UI controls. Small amount of web interaction.
ex: maybe a meme generator app. one screen for camera, one screen to write funny text, and share on FB function.

$5000-10000: Same as above but now available on iOS and Android

>$10000: You're in this category if you need a lot of custom UI work, a lot of interaction with the internet for users, data, etc.
Most apps you use routinely are in this category.

Maybe, I was thinking about having them put in every word for the story but that can be a good idea. Basically how I think should APP should work is incomplete/incorrect. I think the premise is correct though, that kids can write before they even know their ABCs ( provided a good APP) and that would drastically increase the time to learn ABCs/reading. I'd want to iteratively improve this APP for many years and then hopefully it will be good. Maybe if I run like god I can win Xprize too.
I'd have to build a team of sickos or spend 6figs to do this, both of which seem impossible but ya thats the plan lol.

Rly interesting. Have no clue how i'd address this but def something I will think about.

Even though I read how expensive APPs were I somehow drastically underestimated the cost of this. I don't think I can spend 10k+ for a fraction of the functionally i'd want. I knew I was going to have to find some people to work for a % of profits sooner or later but was hoping to have a working APP to help entice people to work with me. Rather than just being like 1 of the infinite ppl with nothing but an idea asking programmers to work with them.