Thanks to Apple's brilliant marketing, we all know, with just about anything you can think of, 'there's an app for that.' And it does seem to be the wave of the future that we will all increasingly have information delivered to us via apps on a variety of mobile devices that are becoming more and more common.

For those interested in bringing information to your clients or patrons via the world of apps, what do you need to know or think about? Working on our first iPhone app creation for the Utah Arts Festival, we walked through the process to conceptualize, plan, design, and complete an app.

• First, what will your app do? What information would your clients find convenient and useful in the shape of an app? (This is definitely technological opportunity that is different from your full-scale website.)
• Second, how will your app acquire its information? How will you make information from your website update to your app so that you are not maintaining two separate areas for the same information? (The key to all of this technology is to make the maintenance of it easy and scalable.)
• Third, what will your app look like? How will it mesh with your current marketing plan? How will it be an effective extension of your brand strategy? (Design is key!)

Just like any good website, the app will only be as good as the information it houses and as user-friendly as the navigation that has been well thought out and executed.