From Idea to the App Store: Do You Really Need an App?

I had always wanted to build an app of my own. After several years building and maintaining products for large companies, creating my own app felt like the natural next step. The problem was: what app should I build?

My technical knowledge gave me the ability to build a solution, but it could not tell me which problem was worth solving. Even so, I started down the path that is most tempting for a developer: I thought about the app first—its format and the features I could implement. The ideas multiplied, but none of them began with a clearly defined need.

Looking back, I can see that I had the process backward. If you are also a developer who wants to create a product of your own, this series covers the mistakes, decisions, and lessons that took me from an idea to the launch of Volei+. This is the first of three articles, and it focuses on what comes before the code: finding a real problem and deciding what belongs in the first version.

The problem surfaced away from the code

Many months after deciding that I wanted to create my own app, my attention had moved elsewhere. I started playing beach volleyball and quickly became hooked. The sport became the center of my offline time: I began with just two lessons a week, and before I knew it, I was playing every day, whether in lessons or pickup games.

As I became more involved, I started noticing an important problem during those games: how could we form balanced teams and distribute the players fairly so everyone could play together?

That led me to search the App Store for a way to create balanced teams. Most of the options I found were designed for soccer, and I could not find a volleyball-specific app that combined a good interface with ease of use. In that frustration, I recognized the opportunity I had been looking for to revive my project.

Validate before you build

I had found a problem because I dealt with it almost every day. But experiencing a problem myself was not enough to conclude that other people needed the solution. Before defining the MVP—the minimum viable product I could test with an audience—I spoke with about six fellow players who organized a beach volleyball group with more than 70 members.

Those conversations confirmed that three needs came up in every pickup game: rating players, creating balanced teams, and keeping score. They were recurring problems that could also be addressed with relatively simple features. This combination of frequency, value to the user, and engineering effort shaped the scope of the first version.

Defining the MVP also meant deciding what not to build. I considered helping users find games in their area, collecting player ratings after each match, creating complex rating criteria based on specific skills, and integrating with Apple Watch for real-time score tracking. All of them were interesting possibilities, but they would have expanded the scope without being necessary to validate the core idea.

Ideation is rarely a linear process. I considered many features along the way, but I had to resist the temptation to implement them. To reach users sooner, I stayed focused on the smallest set of features that could solve the problem confirmed in those conversations.

From context of use to technical decisions

Once the features were defined, I needed to turn the scope into an experience suited to the context in which it would be used. At this stage, it is important to become a micro-expert in the problem: observe not only what users need to do, but also where, when, and under what conditions they will do it.

Sand, sweat, and constant motion were part of that context. Volei+ would be used at a beach volleyball venue, possibly with a poor connection, surrounded by noise and questions about the teams. The interface needed to quickly answer the questions that keep a game moving: who is on each team? Who plays next? Who won the last match, and what was the score?

Those conditions led to concrete product and engineering decisions:

• Offline use: the app needed to keep its data stored locally;
• Fewer interactions: each screen needed to reduce the time spent using a phone during a game;
• Team balancing: the algorithms needed to turn player ratings into more evenly matched teams;
• Quick sharing: the team assignments needed to be easy to send before the game even started.

The share button, for example, made it possible to send the teams to the WhatsApp group and start the inevitable debate about whether they were unbalanced—as always 😂. More than interface details, these choices connected the constraints of the environment to the product’s implementation.

Launch is part of validation too

Volei+ reached the App Store and grew beyond the group where I first identified the problem. Today, the app has more than 170 registered users and 40 subscribers.

Those results do not complete the validation process, but they show that the need extended beyond my own experience. The first version did not need to include every idea I had; it needed to solve a frequent problem well for a specific group.

Start with the problem, not the code

For software developers, starting with code is especially tempting. But technical knowledge is not a substitute for understanding the problem. Before opening a project, it is worth answering three questions: does this problem happen often? Do other people care about it too? What is the smallest experience that can deliver value and test the idea?

Not every problem needs an app. Sometimes automation or a change in process is a better solution. When a product does make sense, however, starting with the problem helps you build less, learn sooner, and apply engineering where it creates real value.

In the next part, I will explain how I turned this scope into the technical decisions behind Volei+.

If you are creating a product and need to turn an idea into a clear scope and a viable technical path, tell me about your project. I can help you identify the risks, define the first version, and decide which technical choices deserve priority.