Speccy – Spectrum Analyzer - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

I've been a developer for years, having worked on products as diverse as multiplayer games, online casinos and TV box software. Finally, I wanted to work for myself and try new things - so I decided to get into mobile development.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

The most challenging aspect of developing Speccy was optimising the spectrum analysis algorithms to perform well on a range of devices. There is such a wide range of mobile devices, with different strengths, different sensors available and different performance profiles, that it can be challenging to create an app that will work well on most devices. If your app suffers on just 1 device, you could have bought yourself an angry review from a disgruntled user. Testing and optimising is paramount.

_{Liam O'Donnell}

Hi there! I’m a designer/developer, with over eighteen years industry experience in games/web design, development and animation. That means I speak both ‘designer’ and ‘techie’. I’m an advocate of ‘agile’ methodologies and encourage writing clean, maintainable code. Strong in both techie skills, such as unit testing, version control and pairing; and creative skills, such as interaction design and animation. I sharpened these skills while building a high performance UI for the resource constrained YouView Set Top Box. I’m a keen rock-climber, musician and love to travel, picking up bits of foreign languages and eating new, unidentifiable things. I enjoy learning constantly, study martial arts, play badminton sometimes and occasionally perform stand-up comedy.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

- myFitnessPal. Very well made and worthwhile just for the barcode scanner which tells you how much fat you're about to eat! - Ecosia. Although primarily a search engine, they have a simple app too, which can serve as a replacement to the Google search icon on your phone and plants trees with the revenue from your searches. Gotta love that! - RemixLive. A fun to use sampler with a few effects; nice for laying down some beats, or just playing.

How long have you been working on this app?

Speccy is a relatively new app. I've only been working on it for a week or so. Hopefully more cool features are still to come.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

I had the idea of developing an app that might help you get into a safe or combination lock for which you've forgotten the code. This is because the tumblers of a mechanical safe make a very slightly different 'click' noise when a correct number is dialed - if you could 'see' all the subtle frequencies of a sound, maybe you can distinguish them. But Speccy has a range of other uses, some of which only users will have imagined.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

As with all my apps, the main thing I bring to them (that some developers do not) is responding to user's feedback. You see a lot of angry feedback for some of the most popular apps out there and the developer has forgotten their users. When someone has a suggestion for my app, I do my best to implement it. An example of this is that my app is the only spectrum analyzer to allow exporting of data - something a user asked for.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

I'd like users to tell me what the future features of my app should be, I'm democratic like that :)

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

I'd love for users to send me their feedback. I only have a few devices to test on, so it's all about the users out there helping to make things work better.