Achieving ‘Angry Birds’ Success With Your Mobile App

Angry Birds has done something that every mobile app developer dreams of. Through a relatively low cost development effort, Rovio has created one of the most popular mobile games ever and found a gold mine in the mobile marketplaces. So how did they do it, and how can you do the same?

New Media Monthly had a chance to talk with Niklas Hed, CTO of Rovio, and his explanation for the success of Angry Birds shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads my blog.

“I think what makes Angry Birds so popular, is the fact that it defines what mobile gaming is”, Niklas said.

“Previously, people have tried to copy games from other platforms straight to the mobile, which usually means you end up with a game that feels worse than the previous version.”

Niklas hit the nail on the head. Instead of taking a game that was developed for another platform and bringing it over (see Madden NFL 11 for the iPhone - yuck), Angry Birds was developed specifically with mobile users in mind. That means that the UI, screen layout, graphics design, etc was all optimized for mobile from the very beginning.

I advocate taking this exact same approach when designing any mobile app or mobile web site. Don’t take an existing web site or application and try to port it over to mobile. It usually results in a poor user experience. Instead, throw out the desktop design and start fresh. Define the mobile user persona and identify the use cases applicable to that persona. By doing so, you will truly be developing a mobile app, not just an app that is mobile…