Brewing App Development

[vaster_brygd]

I've recently been thinking more and more seriously about making my own brewing app. I've got a little experience with both iOS and Android development. The focus of this thread isn't going to be technical questions on writing the code, but rather asking for advice on what features/designs people want to see in a brewing app and collecting formulas for calculations which ought to be performed. That said, I won't turn-down coding advice on this thread, I'm just not going to go out of my way to make it a topic of discussion.

I plan on letting this conversation evolve on its own, but here are a few starter points for things that I would like to see addressed*:

• A list of features that people would like to see and how important they are. For example, timers, calendars, calculators, push notifications, email notifications, sections for taking notes, the ability to export your information, or anything else that comes to mind.
  
  
• How should the app be organized? Is it more important to be able to access things by recipe, items on a calendar, a ToDo list style, or something else that I haven't thought of? Would the ability to switch between different organizational styles be valuable?
  
  
• What types of calculations to experienced brewers actually use and how would they like them displayed? Original/specific gravity measurements, water pH, and bitterness calculations are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, but there's got to be more to it than that.
  
  
• Anything related to design. A distinction for the layman: design and development are two separate elements of creating software. Design focuses on the "look and feel" whereas development is writing the code and creating the logic that makes everything go. I'm a developer with very little design experience so any tips to avoid making this app clunky or ugly would be appreciated.
  
  
• Pros and cons of existing apps. I've seen a few videos of people using apps like iBrewMaster and BeerSmith, but the people in those videos didn't really go into what they did and didn't like about the apps, they just focused on how to use the apps.
  
  
• Desktop application integration. How important is this? Do most brewers tend to just do everything from their phones or do they prefer to do all the planning on a desktop/laptop and then just use their phone as a reference guide while brewing?
  
  
• How important is it for a brewing app to be free? Do brewers tend to only buy it if they can try it first? If it's ad-supported will people simply avoid it? What kind of features would people consider worth paying for in a "Pro" version?

The above list doesn't cover all the angles, but it should be enough to get a conversation started. Any advice and suggestions people can offer is appreciated, though keep in mind that making a suggestion will not automatically make it a feature of the app. Once enough details have been ironed-out for development to start, I'll also be sure to let people know how they can try it out. Beta testers will be needed to ensure the final product is stable and works on a variety of devices.

Thanks for your time and have a good one!

*Not all of these points need to be addressed at once. Feel free to just comment on one thing if you've got an idea or expertise in that arena.