DrawMatch is an awesome drawing game we’re hoping to see much more of in the near future. Unfortunately it hasn’t gone quite as viral as Flappy Bird yet, but we hope to see it top the app store rankings in the near future.
Now, before the whole world goes crazy over DrawMatch, we managed to get a developer interview early on so you can be one of the first to hear how this amazing app was made.
Before we start I’d like to thank Zhengyang Qu for participating in this interview, and for spending some of his valuable time in answering our questions. Thank you very much.
Introduction
First, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Zhengyang Qu, Ph.D. student majoring in computer science in Northwestern University.
Mobile application development, including Android, iOS is a time killer for me as a hobby.
Ok first up, why did you decide to make DrawMatch?
Initially, one mobile application contest attracted me. The requirement is to develop software on TPad phone, which is an Android smartphone with a variable-friction haptic display [http://haptics2015.org/news/articles/student-innovation-challenge.html]. It came to my mind drawing/sketching is a good aspect where I can demonstrate the specific feature of the display on TPad phone.
How to involve people is a decisive factor of making the app popular. Luckily, I have some background on image processing, which I could leverage to design and implement a mechanism to quantify how well users draws. Then, I reviewed a series of drawing games/tools in the market and found this idea is unique to the best of my knowledge.
I submitted the proposal. Even the night before the submission deadline, the competition organization still sent emails to invite more students to join, given the low number of submissions. Surprisingly, this proposal was rejected without a specific reason (I finally found out that the first prize winner also hold a drawing app without other features). I was a bit frustrated at that time and even doubted if I could be a good mobile app developer or designer. But I did not give up simply with the development interest and willingness to validate my idea in the market.
I see, so what programming language and or software did you use when making DrawMatch?
I keep using Swift when implementing DrawMatch on iOS platform. This is a relatively new language just open-sourced by Apple. Basically, I love this language, which is easy to start. To be honest, I began using it in June this year and DrawMatch 1.0 was done in September. Although, this language keeps changing (changing to Swift 2.0 this September took me several days to reconstruct my code) and has drawbacks, I do believe it is a trend for general developers.
For the backend, I implemented in Python web framework, which is quite standard and classical.
Ok here is a mean question. What was the hardest problem you needed to overcome when developing DrawMatch?
The major problem is that I started with an individual developer, where I needed to focus on front-end, back-end, graphics design, pretty much everything. But this is also where the interesting part lies, I needed to learn a lot of new things, such as Photoshop, web design. So, I should say all of them are happy troubles. Right now, I tend to get some motivated people from various backgrounds working together.
Last question. Where do you get your inspiration or ideas from?
The idea is from the motivation of developing an app to demonstrate the features of TPad Phone with a mix of my background in image processing.
A few words to DrawMatch fans on Edamame Reviews.
We are pushing updates of DrawMatch after carefully considering the comments from users. Moreover, we are specifically exploring the market in schools and the group is working on the structure for classroom mode.
Lastly a few words on how you feel about Edamame Reviews and our service.
It is pretty good to work with Edamame Reviews. The entity has a novel idea in modeling the app review market. Developers at the pretty early stage would largely benefit from collaboration with them.
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