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Built & Released app within 2 weeks

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After successful launch of my last iOS app,  I wished to make another one for a different app category. Last time it took me comparatively long time to make highly stable, premium quality UX after much many iterations. Thanks to valuable feedbacks from my peers & social media friends. But this time all I need it in a very short duration. Yes! at the speed of F1 car.






Being an F1 fan, I felt heat of upcoming 2019 season a month before it actually begins. I was assured that there are already couple of apps in the App Store which serves the same purpose. Even the official F1 organisation has got own feature rich / futuristic app. So why I am thinking to make my own version which could be a clone... 🤔

Well... the official F1 app is loaded with many great features & uses Unity framework under the hood for live circuits (a state of art feature). All these made heavier (~165MB when installed in my phone) app size to just view race results (if in case!). Couple of other apps that I found was flooded with ads & few others with good features but not impressive UX. In short - I was expected to have a F1 app which is minimal, light weight & ads free.

Until App Store submission

First 2 days I listed must have features in the app & a rough UI/UX flows - those I can be implement in remaining 10 days. I separated into 3 simple segments - keeping in mind that every season it needs to be updated. So that, each segment has to be implemented & integrated within 3 days. BTB, About backend, I’ll keep away from this post ;-)
  • Racing tab : Circuit details, Race dates (+ remainders) and view results if race finished.
  • Standing tab : Driver standing & team standing segments - giving brief details on each of them. I highlighted scores, Any way that’s all we need when each time race ends right?
  • New F1 Rules tab : Most probably every season F1 adds new rules. Keeping it in a short list could be useful for a F1 follower.
  On the 10th day - all about testing & preparations to ship the app. Entire app written in Xcode 10.1, Swift 4.2. & Cocoa Pods - as a dependency manager I installed :
Object Mapper - for parsing JSON
Alamofire - Consume REST API
JGProgressHUD - To show activity progress indicator.

 Spent ~2 Hrs designing simple splash screen & app icons with the help of gravit designer.

After Apple Reviews

Apple reviews nowadays very fast - assures within 24hrs. It was true in my case too - as they completed review overnight. But ... the app was rejected 🛑 for 2 reasons.
- Drivers pictures that I took was from unknown source.
- Expecting to consider results from last season if not already begun new season.
Correcting above changes, on 13th day I uploaded 2nd build (fingers crossed 🤞🏼). Finally it took a longer review time than first (Expected) At the end the app (F1 Score Card 2019) was visible in the store after 7-8 Hrs. As a result it was a light weight (~10MB), minimalistic app as I expected in the store. 🎉 Feel free to rate, share your feedback in the store or below comment box. Thanks for reading till end.


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