After we learned that we won the Fast Track to the Mobile App contest, we looked at our schedule for this month and next, both of which were already packed, and were perplexed as to how we'd shoe-horn the actual development and design of our app into that time period.

Oh boy, was it ever going to be tight.

When I submitted our app design to the contest, I really didn't think we'd win. Truthfully, I was hoping for an honourable mention, but that was about the extent of it. I knew I'd have some stiff competition, so to have won, well, it still kind of blows my mind.

The app we submitted was based on rough, some rather lofty, ideals and features; we knew parts of it were going to be simpler to build while others were going to take much longer and require substantially more thought, experimentation and testing.

Mike and I decided to leave the app design as it was submitted and start developing the back-end services and technical architecture first. This would give us time to think about how the app works and make modifications to the software interface and interaction design, if any, based on what was going to be technically possible in the given time-frame. We can always add more features and details later; our current focus needed to be on whatever core functionality would help us get a high quality, first version of the app to market.

This "design, then quickly prototype" approach has given us a chance to play with the app and get a feel for what needs to be done, rather than drawing it all in a design program, like Adobe Fireworks (which is what I used to design the interface). It also afforded us time to research other apps more in depth, which is good, because we hit a snag with the app's name.

Our app used to be called Rhythmatic until we found an already existing product called Rhythmatic in the Apple App Store. Oops. As it's a possibility that we may bring our app to other platforms in the future, we wanted to keep that door open and so re-named our Windows Phone app to Cash Hound. We then hired a brilliant local illustrator to design our Cash Hound icon.

Look, a puppy!

After the app's back-end pieces were in place, we moved to look at the visual design and user/system interactions again. I knew that there were some key areas of the app that I want to clean up, optimize and polish. What I submitted to the contest was pretty bare bones; I wanted to dress it up and really pay attention to the visual and interaction design of Cash Hound.

As the weeks have flown by, Mike has gradually applied the new look/functionality to our app prototype. We continually tested it in both the emulator and on our Windows Phone devices to get a good handle on how it all felt, behaved and worked. As of yesterday, we've got a fairly polished app running in Expression Blend and Visual Studio, not to mention on our phones, pulling in real data. It's getting close...very close.

We always prefer getting to a workable prototype sooner than later, so that's what we're doing here. We've learned from years of experience that while you can have great looking software in a design program, that design may or may not hold up to real world use once it's actually built. To mitigate that risk, we do things fast.

Our preference when it comes to process is to always do some initial design up front, but then build as quickly as possible so we, and others, can get hands dirty. As time ticks by, we apply more polished design and interaction layers. We're confident enough in our design and development abilities to do so, and that makes a huge difference when it comes to shipping good software on time and on budget.

To date, we've been solely focused on building our app, thus, we don't have much in the way of marketing going on yet. That said, we do have a Cash Hound Twitter account if you're of the tweeting sort, so we invite you to follow our progression there, here or on the Core77 blog. Thanks!