[JAVA] The story of releasing the Android app to the Play Store for the first time.

Overview

Self-introduction

Hi, I'm a freelance engineer (26 years old) working in the web industry in the Kanto area. To be honest, since I made the Android app for the first time this time, I have no idea what is common sense in the Android industry.

What article?

As I said earlier, I will not touch on what I felt during development and technical know-how in this article. To the last, I will briefly write something like that when I made and released such an application.

What app did you make?

It is an Android application that synchronizes with the user's account registered in Duolingo and allows you to easily search for the word you want to search from all the words learned in Duolingo. In addition, you can tap the word you want to see from the word list to see detailed information about that word, such as translations and part of speech.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.app.ks.thinkit.duovoc

The main points are as follows.

--You can manage the words you learned in Duolingo. --You can easily search for the word you want to find from the words you learned in Duolingo. --You can see detailed information about words.

By the way, Duolingo itself may not be a major service, so I would like to add that it is a service that allows you to learn various foreign languages for free according to the scientific learning curriculum. You can practice listening, speaking, writing and reading in a well-balanced manner, so if you are interested in learning a foreign language, please use it!

https://ja.duolingo.com/

Why did you decide to make it?

Duolingo is certainly a great foreign language learning site, but it has had the following weaknesses for some time. (I'm sorry if such a feature existed just because I didn't know it)

--There is no function to access the learned words. ――Even if you want to review a specific word, you can't access it directly, so it's difficult for the word to settle!

For the above reasons, we have built a system that displays a list of all the words that the user has learned and selects the word that he / she wants to refer to. Of course, as the number of words learned increases, it becomes more difficult to reach the word you want to refer to, so we have also implemented a convenient search function.

However, this search function has a very simple implementation, so I would like to improve it so that I can perform more advanced searches if I have time!

To make it available not only domestically but also overseas It also complies with laws such as COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Law) and GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation). I will write an article about the implementation of this application someday.

Various things to release ...

Rejected to Play Store about 3 times

Yes, no joke, it was rejected twice before the release and once after the release. To be honest, I feel like I was rejected so far and released well. The reason for rejection is as follows.

――Your app is set to be "family friendly", but it doesn't comply with the policy! ――Your app name is similar to the existing brand (Duolingo), so change it!

To be honest, I don't think the examination is so strict until it is released. ** Licking the release of the Android app. ** **

Family policy

The first one, as any Android app developer knows, is the one that can be set from "App Content" on the console. At first, I set it up with the feeling that "it's an educational app, so it's decided for all ages!" ** Google teacher didn't allow such a sweet idea. ** **

After that, I read every corner of the family policy. I didn't know how to solve it, so I decided to change the target age of the crying app to 18 years old or older. Even for the advertisement displayed in the application, if the user is a child, only the advertisement for children is displayed, so it is implemented. I hope we can re-release it for the family in the near future ...

Similar to existing brand name

The second is the rejection related to the app name. Well this is easy to understand, isn't it? I think it was determined that the name of the app was initially "Duovoc", which violated the policy.

I thought it was a good name for me with "Duolingo + Vocabulary = Duovoc" (~~ ** Don't say it's crap ** ~~), Finally, I decided to fix the source that cries and cries without going out into the world.

Finally

At the time of personal development, everything can be done with Ikeikedondon, but when it comes to putting it on the market, the eyes of the public are very strict. Before the release, people who are starting to develop Android apps should stop the development once and the rules of the world that the apps they are developing are supposed to be before the trouble of making various busy changes. It may be better to check if it is properly compliant with.

By the way, I released this app, but personally, the degree of completion is about 60% at this stage. There are still many functions that we would like to add so that users can use them conveniently, so if we have the time and energy, we would like to develop them!