Mobile: More than just an app

Topic for the next few slides

‘Name of referenced work’, Author/source/URL, date.

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Technology has changed

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We behave diﬀerently

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Creating better mobile products

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Building mobile apps

Here’s what we’ll talk about:
We’ll take a brief look at changing technology and how that’s aﬀected the way people behave
Discuss how we can create better mobile products
Walk through some approaches to engineering better apps

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First, a note about stats.

We’re using local research
wherever possible
US market and mobile trends
are similar to Australia

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/avlxyz/308574017

We’re both aﬄuent nations, big love for gadgets and internet.
Culturally and socioeconomically similar.

Technology, people and time
100%

90%

80%

COLOR TV

ELECTRICITY
60%

INTERNET

AUTOMOBILE
40%

TELEPHONE

MOBILE PHONE

AIR-CONDITIONING

20%

REFRIGERATOR

COMPUTER

0
1900

1915

1930

1945

1960

1975

1990

2005

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/02/10/opinion/10op.graphic.ready.html

If we look back over the last 100 years, we see only the most critical technologies reach saturation point (over 90%). And
it takes a long time.

100%

90%

80%

COLOR TV

ELECTRICITY
60%

INTERNET

AUTOMOBILE
40%

TELEPHONE

MOBILE PHONE

AIR-CONDITIONING

20%

REFRIGERATOR

COMPUTER

0
1900

1915

1930

1945


Electricity, 50 years
Telephone, 70 years
Automobile, 80 years

1960

1975

1990

2005

100%

90%

80%

COLOR TV

ELECTRICITY
60%

INTERNET

AUTOMOBILE
40%

TELEPHONE

MOBILE PHONE

AIR-CONDITIONING

20%

REFRIGERATOR

COMPUTER

0
1900

1915

1930

1945

1960

1975

1990

50 YEARS

70 YEARS

80 YEARS


Electricity, 50 years
Telephone, 70 years
Automobile, 80 years

2005

100%

90%

80%

COLOR TV

ELECTRICITY
60%

INTERNET

AUTOMOBILE
40%

TELEPHONE

MOBILE PHONE

AIR-CONDITIONING

20%

REFRIGERATOR

COMPUTER

0
1900

1915

1930

1945

1960

1975

1990

20 YEARS

50 YEARS

70 YEARS

30 YEARS

80 YEARS


Let’s look at Internet and Mobile phones. These have been much quicker.
They’re both still relatively new.
Internet on phone is even newer
These ﬁgures only report to 2005.

2005

Internet adoption over time (percentage American adults)

80

60

40

20

0

‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11

Pew Research, 2012. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Digital-diﬀerences/Main-Report/Internet-adoption-over-time.aspx

US trend: Adult internet users.

Internet adoption over time (percentage American adults)

80

82% of Australian adults
online in 2012

60

40

20

0

‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11

The Australian Online Consumer Landscape Report, Nielsen 2012.

It’s the same in Australia.

Adult gadget ownership over time
90
75
60

Desktop PC
Laptop
Mobile Phone
Tablet

45
30
15
0
Apr ‘06

Apr ‘08

Sep ‘09

Sep ‘10

Aug ‘11

Feb ‘12

Pew Research Center, 2012. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Digital-differences/Main-Report/The-power-of-mobile.aspx

But how are people accessing the internet?
Let’s take a look at device ownership.
Desktop in decline over last five years.
Laptop have become the preference.
Almost everyone has a mobile phone.
Tablet has very sharp growth.
This shouldn’t be news to you, but it is significant.

In Australia...
90
75

110% mobile device penetration
60

Desktop PC
Laptop
Mobile Phone
Tablet

52% of those are smartphones
45

18% tablet ownership
30
15
0
Apr ‘06

Apr ‘08

Sep ‘09

Sep ‘10

Aug ‘11

Australia - Understanding the Mobile Consumer. Australian Bureau of Statistics. May, 2012. http://bit.ly/MKj8dq
Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index. 2011. http://www.aimia.com.au/ampli
The Australian Online Consumer Landscape Report, Nielsen 2012.

It’s basically the same in Australia.

Feb ‘12

AMPS
Analogue

Telecom ‘Walkabout’

‘87

3G UMTS
NextG

GSM
2G/WAP/WML/i-mode

‘89

Motorola
Brick

‘91

‘93

‘95

‘97

‘99

Data: http://isc.org; http://amta.org.au; http://wikipedia.org and various websites

Let’s look at where we’ve come from...
Analogue networks. First phones were all voice.

‘01

‘03

‘05

‘07

‘09

‘11

AMPS
Analogue

3G UMTS
NextG

GSM
2G/WAP/WML/i-mode


Motorola
Brick

SMS is born
1st mobile
web browsers
Predictive
Text

‘87

‘89

‘91

‘93

‘95

‘97

‘99


SMS comes with 2G about 1993.
1st web browsers around 1997... but nobody used them

‘01

‘03

‘05

‘07

‘09

‘11

AMPS
Analogue

3G UMTS
NextG

GSM
2G/WAP/WML/i-mode


Motorola
Brick
Nokia 5110

SMS is born
1st mobile
web browsers
Predictive
Text

‘87

‘89

‘91

‘93

‘95

‘97

‘99

‘01

‘03


Remember Nokia 5120? I bet you didn’t use the web browser (there wasn’t one)

‘05

‘07

‘09

‘11

AMPS
Analogue

3G UMTS
NextG

GSM
2G/WAP/WML/i-mode


Motorola
RAZR

Motorola
Brick
Nokia 5110

Palm Treo
SMS is born
1st mobile
web browsers
Predictive
Text

‘87

‘89

‘91

‘93

‘95

‘97

‘99


Palm Treo/Moto RAZR. Now we’re starting to browse.
3G arrives, but not common yet.

‘01

‘03

‘05

‘07

‘09

‘11

AMPS
Analogue

3G UMTS
NextG

GSM
2G/WAP/WML/i-mode


Motorola
RAZR

Motorola
Brick
Nokia 5110

Palm Treo
SMS is born
1st mobile
web browsers
Predictive
Text

‘87

‘89

‘91

‘93

‘95

‘97

‘99


WebKit in 2005. Nokia s60.

‘01

1st WebKit
browser

‘03

‘05

‘07

‘09

‘11

AMPS
Analogue

3G UMTS
NextG

GSM
2G/WAP/WML/i-mode


Motorola
RAZR

Motorola
Brick
Nokia 5110

HTC Dream
(1st Android)

Palm Treo
iPhone 3
SMS is born
1st mobile
web browsers
Predictive
Text

1st WebKit
browser
iPad 1

‘87

‘89

‘91

‘93

‘95

‘97

‘99

‘01


You know the rest. Apple release iPhone... People go crazy for web on mobile.
Web on Mobile is less than 10 years old.

‘03

‘05

‘07

‘09

‘11

So What?

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/jakecaptive/3205277810

There is new technology, and people are using it...
So What.

“...we tend to place the
emphasis on
the technologies
themselves, when it is
really the social impact
and cultural change that
will be most dramatic.”
Don Norman, 1998

mitpress.mit.edu/books/norvh/chapter1.html

Don Norman is my man for cognitive sciences, design and usability engineering.
He wrote some seminal books.
What he’s saying in essence is that...
it’s not gadgets that change the world, but how we humans use them.
He is right. And we see this play out in a number of ways.
Let’s look at an example.

What is the most radical,
innovative mobile device
released in the last few years?

You probably thought of a smartphone ﬁrst.

What is the most radical,
innovative mobile device
released in the last few years?

Vodafone 150
$10 - $15

The Vodafone 150 only do Voice, SMS, USSD. That’s it.
But it’s had an astonishing impact in some parts of the world.
We tend to focus on smart phones, especially in the city
Don’t forget that forget that smartphones are not ubiquitous yet

Population Density

http://na.unep.net/globalpop/africa/Appendix_6e.html

A lot of people on the north african coast and up the nile.
Very dense in parts of west Africa, especially Nigeria.
Heavy pockets through east Africa as well.

Access to electricity

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081005.html

When you compare access to electricity, it looks like there is a lot of overlap...
Actually only about 4% of the population that have access to grid power

GSM Network Coverage

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap081005.html

Now look at GSM:
Strong GSM coverage.
Around 98% of the population
Moved from having access to information only in immediate surroundings
to now having access to a global network of information

What does it mean for
information sharing?

RapidFTR

RapidFTR is a system to help aid workers reunite lost children with their parents
The old way: People printed photos of lost children and posted on walls in centre of communities
The new way: Needs to deal with misplaced children with a global perspective. Asylum seekers moving around the globe in
response to various disasters and events.
It needs to work oﬄine (dropping connections), data sync later and be secure enough to avoid exploiters taking advantage
of people at risk.
It’s dramatically improved the eﬀectiveness of goal at hand: reuniting lost children with parents.


Yesterday,
We went go to the computer to use internet

Africa is a poignant example of social change brought about by technology.
At home, we’ve also changed, just in diﬀerent ways.


Today,
We access the internet any place, any time.

Web on a phone is not remarkable itself.
But how it is changing our behaviour is.
Let’s have a look at that in a little more detail.

Use of the mobile phone for diﬀerent purposes
100

80

60

2009
2010
2011

40

Banking

Search

Visit web

Entertainment

SMS

0

Voice

20

Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index. 2011. http://www.aimia.com.au/ampli

This data is from the latest Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, and shows how we’ve been using phones over the last
three years.
Voice and SMS is ubiquitous and hasn’t changed.
Entertainment
websites
search
banking
People clearly use their phone to do more things, and they’re expecting to use it for more.

‘Just in time’ information

86% of smartphone owners access
information just-in-time...

Pew Research, 2012. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Just-in-time/

Mobile enables ‘Just in time’ behaviour
10 years ago, we:
Phone friend on landline, arrange to ‘meet under the clocks’ at Flinders St. Station at 2pm.
We’d Arrive. On time!
Friend not here? Seek out a pay phone and call at home to see what time they left.
For transit info we carried the printed timetable, or memorised the sequence.
3 trains per hour, every 20 mins departing ﬁve past the hour.
Today, we get that info ‘just in time’


86% of smartphone owners access
information just-in-time...
41% coordinate a meet-up
35% solve an unexpected problem
20% get a up-to-the-minute
transport info

Pew Research, 2012. http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Just-in-time/

Mobile enables ‘Just in time’ behaviour
10 years ago, we:
Phone friend on landline, arrange to ‘meet under the clocks’ at Flinders St. Station at 2pm.
We’d Arrive. On time!
Friend not here? Seek out a pay phone and call at home to see what time they left.
For transit info we carried the printed timetable, or memorised the sequence.
3 trains per hour, every 20 mins departing ﬁve past the hour.
Today, we get that info ‘just in time’


In Australia...
55% accessed maps/location/traﬃc
34% use mobile search daily
39% restaurant or cafe info

Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index, 2011. http://www.aimia.com.au/ampli

It’s the same in Australia

What does it mean for payments?

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/martinhoward/2709364519

About 50% of IB logins are on a mobile device
Signiﬁcant value-transactions are taking place via mobile devices
Customer are comfortable with this, and it’s now expected
old slow movers are innovating: Banks are running m-payments trials all over the world, with lots of technologies
New entrants are shaking things up: Bank Simple, Movenbank, Square... and so on.

20-25% of GDP
paid via SMS
http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20081202180014/

Back to Africa...
A different take on mobile payments, but incredibly successful: mPesa
~$200m AUD profit (most profitable mobile app in the world - double Angry Birds)
20-25% of GDP
mPesa works on very rudimentary technology, but it meets a very real user need
It solves a people problem first, using whatever technology is available.
We should learn from this.

What does it mean for retail?

50% of smartphone owners use
their device in-store to help
make purchasing decisions

Have you ever done this? Of course you have.
Aside from price matching, there’re other uses for this.
One example:
- An app that scans barcodes to give ingredient list and match with user’s allergies
- accessibility features on the iPhone mean this can be used by people with impaired vision
- it’s not just changing behaviour, it’s creating new opportunities

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How do we take advantage of these new opportunities?
Lets look at what makes a good mobile product, and how we can create mobile products that meet changing customer
expectations

What does success look like?

2007 A dedicated mobile website
2010 Native iOS and Android apps
2012 Integrated mobile experience
2014 ???

In two years, it will look diﬀerent again...
We need to build products for today’s market, and be preparing for tomorrow

Post-mobile world

Integrated with life
Opportunistic interactions
Everything is ‘smart’ and
all things are connected
http://g.co/projectglass

Soon, we won’t need a phone to be mobile. Mobile will just be a part of everything.
Integrated with life. Some call this ‘ubiquitous computing’.
One example is Google’s Project Glass prototype.
The marketing videos are pretty cheesy, but the concept is on point.
Don’t forget that it’s early days, and there are lots of things to work out.

Remember the ﬁrst
10 years of radio?

First radio broadcasts were stage-play recitals.
It took a while to use it for news broadcasting, and to discover SoundFX and... advertising.

Remember the ﬁrst
10 years of television?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television

First television was radio with pictures.

Remember the ﬁrst
10 years of the web?

http://www.icehousedesigns.com/webarchive/images/ﬂshbk_COLLAGE2.gif

First websites were static, digitised documents.
This is Microsoft in 1995. Brochureware with image-map navigation. Awesome!
Web on a mobile is emerging from a similar place, it takes a while to mature into meaningful and useful experiences.
So, how do we create better mobile products?

We’ve been saying ‘do less’
(on mobile) for a long time
‘Graceful Degradation’

‘Content/feature discrimination’
Big assumptions about customer needs
We’ve been saying ‘do less’ for a while, and ‘graceful degradation’ was once the way to do it.
It can be a valid approach, and useful for established products and services, but it has problems.
We take a large-screen design and make it smaller for mobile.
In this example, a unicorn.
As the screens get smaller, we chop bits oﬀ usually at the extremities.
Tail. Legs. Torso.
Eventually, only the head is left.
So, most of the time it ain’t that graceful.

An example from banking
‘full version’

mobile version

Product info

★

★

Exchange rates

★

Interest rates

★

Product disclosure statements

★

Forms & documents

★

Content

Features
check account balance

★

★

transfer funds

★

★

pay a bill with BPAY

★

★

schedule a future transfer

★

Change daily limits

★

Update mailing address

★

Full feature set on desktop version.
Truncation on mobile.
Content like forms, documents, Product Disclosure Statements and so on.
Or so called ‘peripheral’ features.

Customers want to do more on mobile
Mobile Internet Users

Desktop Internet Users

Mobile Majority is very close

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Morgan Stanley Associates Internet Trends (2010)

But as customers, we expect to do more on mobile today, so truncation - even at the periphery - is a dangerous strategy.

A good start...
‘Progressive Enhancement’

Mobile first, content first
Feature parity
This is the same idea as graceful degradation but in reverse.
Instead of starting big and degrading, we start small and enhance.
Progressive enhancement is what is usually happening in ‘mobile first’ thinking, and ‘responsive web design’.
Start with a small unicorn - one that works for mobile - and then deliver unicorns to all screens.

An example
‘full version’

mobile version

Your bags

★

★

People

★

★

Notiﬁcations

★

★

Blog

★

★

Help

★

★

Create a new bag

★

★

Edit existing bag

★

★

Explore

★

★

Search Bagcheck

★

★

Create new discussion

★

★

Comment

★

★

Content

Features

Bag Check was was built mobile ﬁrst, by the guy who wrote the book on Mobile First.
This is becoming a more common approach.
Deliver unicorns consistently on all screens.
But it still misses something.

What if that version of the unicorn
isn’t helpful for me right now?

Adaptation (usually) only deals
with the interface not the content

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jednoro%C5%BCec.svg

We’ve delivered the unicorn accurately, but if I can’t interact with it in a way that makes sense on my device, then we’ve
only gone part of the way.
An example from banking:
On mobile, a list of future-dated payments is viewable, but I cant edit the payments details. Useless.
Or PDF forms that render to screen, but can’t be used or printed.
This doesn’t work, because the content hasn’t been structured and presented in a way that is useful for the mobile
customer.

Responsive content

Adapt content as well as features
Portability and consistency
Create Once, Publish Everywhere

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/tomazstolfa/4845875443/

How can we provide diﬀerent versions of content and features that are most appropriate for each device?
Create once, publish everywhere (COPE). Easier said than done.
Requires a strategic approach to content management.
What content is required... on what devices... and in what format?
Are your content and marketing teams ready for this?
Is your content management system capable of structuring content in this way?

Another example

National Public Radio do this really well.
This is ‘adaptive content’ more than ‘responsive content’.
They serve diﬀerent versions of their content, from a simple CMS, across many devices.
Karen McGrane - my favourite content strategist - talks more about this in her book Content Strategy for Mobile.

Seamless experiences

Customers choose when and how
they interact with your brand
Make it easy for them

Awesome, now you have appropriate content and features rendered properly across many devices.
Keep everything connected and transition as seamlessly as possible
Because customers don’t see your ‘channels’ - All they see is a brand, and their needs

Precious Design Studios. http://www.slideshare.net/preciousforever/patterns-for-multiscreen-strategies

You know they’re likely to be using multiple devices.
A seamless experience across your channels is expected.
Provide pathways through content...
Seamless connection through appropriate and relevant versions of content.

AirBNB - getting it wrong.
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/thewolf/5812767917

I travelled to London recently
airBNB is a site that connects travelers with hosts for accommodation.
I signed up with Facebook, and booked accommodation on laptop
On the road, I couldn’t authenticate with the app, because FB Open Auth didn’t work properly
Using email to login - with forgot password - failed too (because I wasn’t in the database)
This became a real problem, I almost didn’t have a bed to sleep in.
Not ideal for a brand who’s goal is connecting travelers with hosts.

realestate.com.au - Getting it right.


Search, browse and create a shortlist in your lunch hour.


AirPlay the fullscreen image gallery from iPad to TV in the evening to discuss with your partner.


Use the open-inspection planner to help you on Saturday afternoons


There are some great interaction patterns emerging around multiscreen experiences.
Device shifting.
This is where a consumer begins a task on one device, then completes it on another.
AirBNB is an example of this gone wrong.
Draft an email on mobile, ﬁnish it on desktop.
Fill a shopping cart on eBay, complete purchase at home.


Simultaneity.
Jump-in is an iPad app that ThoughtWorks was involved with for NineMSN.
It’s a ‘second screen’ experience designed speciﬁcally for tablet and TV.
The iPad experience is simultaneous with the TV broadcast.
During Olympics, able to interact with content such as live news, current medal tally, event schedule and realtime twitter
conversations that are related to the broadcast.

An ecosystem of screens
and physical interfaces

So we have an ecosystem of screens and physical interfaces.
Apps are seen as today’s heroes. Let’s look at those in more detail.

Consumers expect a
continuous experience

Let’s look at what’s expected from your apps now: continuity across all channels
- people do different tasks on different devices
- that means your app, the mobile website, desktop systems all talking on the backend
-“we’ll just connect it up on the backend”, simple stuff
- what about people who phone in? or visit in person?


- all these standalone backend systems that don’t talk well to each other
- in reality, “the backend” is not one nice continuous system
-> lots of separate systems, different technologies... we don’t even know how some of them work anymore, so we don’t
touch them... but they seem to work
- so to get our continuous mobile experience, we also need to wrangle all this other stuff
- the mess on the backend doesn’t give you the flexibility you’ll need going forward
- but it is the bit the consumer sees, the thing they will judge you on

Call Centre

Retail



Call Centre

Retail

Legacy Thing



Call Centre
Legacy Thing
Database

Retail
Message Hub
Mainframe

Some expensive and proprietary system


Diﬀerent mobile platforms

- mobile is booming, everyone is getting connected...
but we’re not all buying the same devices (sometimes not even similar devices)
- 5 main platforms: iOS, Android, Windows, Blackberry, Web
- going to simplify to 3: iOS, Android, the Web
-> Win7/8 looks really promising, make your conclusions about the future of Blackberry
- how can we target all of these platforms?
- Do we even want to? Diﬀerent interaction patterns.

Native or Web?

Going to quickly explain each of these approaches and some of the tradeoﬀs
-> one of the great debates in the developer community at the moment

Native or Web?

In the app store
Objective C and Java
Lowest barrier to a
great experience

Being discoverable in the app store is still important
- a reasonable proportion of users can’t distinguish between the app store and web search
(even though search is so bad in the Apple app store)
- means you’re writing using the tools provided by the vendors (Apple, Google, Microsoft)
- Objective C is kind of a strange language, and Java isn’t exactly the new hotness
- native apps have the lowest barrier to awesome (it’s not automatic)

Native or Web?

Distribute through
the browser
HTML, CSS, Javascript
Some reuse across platforms

- apps that you actually distribute and run inside the browser on your mobile device
- easier to manage versions and updates
- HTML5 is going to save the day, and everything will just work
(in reality you have a bunch of tweaking and performance tuning ahead of you)
- get to work with familiar technology: in house skills, easier to ﬁnd devs
- don’t underestimate the challenge of ﬁnding good developers for native apps

or

- no one size ﬁts all, it depends
- but it’s not an either/or choice, there is a whole spectrum between the two
- modern mobile platforms have reasonable support for running parts of your app using web technologies
-> people are calling these hybrid apps, can be a confusing term

NATIVE

HYBRID

- at the other end, we have pure web apps written in HTML, CSS and Javascript
- at one end, we have completely native apps written in Objective C, Java
- full native apps: expect heavy usage, oﬄine access, high performance slick UI
- tools that wrap up a web app inside a native shell to go on the app store (Phone Gap)
-> eg. BBC Olympics app... good screenshots, sluggish performance, but hits-all-platforms
- custom hybrid apps: native apps with web components
- interestingly, Facebook has been rewriting their app to have more native components

WEB

The Guardian

NATIVE

HYBRID


Democracy Now!

WEB

Instagram

NATIVE

The Guardian

HYBRID


Democracy Now!

WEB

Instagram

NATIVE

The Guardian

HYBRID

Democracy Now!

WEB

BBC Olympics
using


PhoneGap

Instagram

Jump-in

NATIVE

The Guardian

HYBRID

LinkedIn

Facebook

Democracy Now!

WEB

BBC Olympics
using


PhoneGap

Instagram

Jump-in

NATIVE

Facebook

The Guardian

HYBRID

LinkedIn

Democracy Now!

WEB

BBC Olympics
using


PhoneGap

How should you build your app?

User Experience

Platform Coverage

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/raeallen/200891658

- there’s a whole spectrum of approaches to choose from, which should you take?
- there are a number of things to take into consideration:
-> time to market, quality of the user experience, performance, development capability, platform coverage, discoverability
-> going to simplify this to the fundamental two factors
- let’s look at these tradeoﬀs, and approaches that favour one over the other

User Experience

Platform Coverage
- this is where we want to be: a great experience on all platforms...
- let’s treat that as the goal, but we’re not going to get there straight away
- for a lot of people, this is where they are at the moment, with a fairly large and tricky mess
- two ways we can go:
-> tackle a single platform ﬁrst, and go for a really polished interface, slowly expand both the feature set and platform
coverage from there (calling this the Laser strategy)
-> go for a shallow cut of both the experience and feature set, but hit as many platforms as possible (calling this the cover
your bases strategy)
- let’s look at each approach, and where it might make sense to use it

User Experience

Laser

Platform Coverage
- initially, focus on a single platform and nail it... eg. iPhone app
- for new companies trying to win customers, where experience is an important selling point
-> if you can’t win the market with this focus, what makes you think you can win it at all?
- for existing companies, look at your stats: which users to do you want to hit ﬁrst?
-> In Australia, and your company is targeting professional adults, it’s often the iPhone
eg. high end fashion, even banking and insurance, selling cars or houses
(if your product is aimed at teenagers, you’re likely to see more Androids)
- iOS is more dominant here than elsewhere (employment, wages, no carrier lock in)
-> read stats about number of devices purchased, but usage of those is very diﬀerent

User Experience

Cover your
bases

Platform Coverage
- cut scope and quality ﬁnish to try and hit as many platforms as possible
- might make sense for companies with existing customers: don’t be exclusive
- where playing favourites isn’t really an option (eg. ATO - eTax, except they didn’t)
eg. emergency warning system: want it to go to everyone (people have ignored this)
- depending on the content you're presenting, HTML/CSS might be well suited
eg. for text markup and layout...
-> for inﬁnite scrolling tables/multiple gestures, native still a long way ahead

or

- not an either/or choice, you can use both (native and web)
- use native where it makes sense, use web components where it makes sense
-> compromise between the laser and cover your bases strategies
- there are frameworks out there to help do this (eg. PhoneGap/Cordova, Titanium/Kony)
-> but don’t want to lock yourself in

and


Don’t lock yourself into
doing everything natively or
everything using the web

and


Sharing between platforms

Shared logic using Javascript
Shared presentation using HTML/CSS

- it doesn’t have to be Javascript, could use Mono and C#
-> Thoughtworks Tech Radar: treating Javascript as a ﬁrst class language
-> “it depends” eg. a banking app vs search and listing or directory app
- complex UI, gestures, animations... native eg. Hipstamatic/Instragram/iPhoto
- marking up content (text/images) without a lot of interaction
-> HTML/CSS have evolved for exactly for that purpose
- reuse at all costs is not the answer, focus on what the user is trying to achieve
- be pragmatic about how to reuse parts where it will save you time and money

User Interface

Client Logic

iPhone

Objective C

Objective C

Mobile
Web

HTML / CSS

Javascript

- how this evolved from experience with the laser approach: a global bank
-> iPhone, Android, web apps: diﬀerent languages for each platform
- the left hand column is your opportunity to share the presentation
-> depending on the size of the UI code, how complex it is, how expensive it is to maintain
-> might make sense to duplicate across platforms if it’s simpler and quicker
- the right hand column represents the opportunity to share the logic of the app
-> is it common? Does it make sense to write it in Javascript?
-> simple state machine? Yes. Complex image ﬁltering? Probably not.

User Interface

Client Logic

iPhone

Objective C

Objective C

Mobile
Web

HTML / CSS

Javascript

What would we do differently?
- how this evolved from experience with the laser approach: a global bank
-> iPhone, Android, web apps: different languages for each platform
- the left hand column is your opportunity to share the presentation
-> depending on the size of the UI code, how complex it is, how expensive it is to maintain
-> might make sense to duplicate across platforms if it’s simpler and quicker
- the right hand column represents the opportunity to share the logic of the app
-> is it common? Does it make sense to write it in Javascript?
-> simple state machine? Yes. Complex image filtering? Probably not.

Objective C

HTML / CSS

Client Logic

Calatrava

User Interface

Objective C

A bridge between native and web
- want a bridge between the Javascript and native code
-> knows how to call javascript code, and also to get values out
- other side of the bridge allows us to pass data to be presented
-> choice of whether to present it using web views or native views
-> pass actions from the UI back down to the appropriate logic
* ﬁnally, need a registry to match up the components of the system with technology
-> we’ve been using this successfully for a major airline

Javascript

Calatrava

Technology choice per feature
More an approach than a framework
Will soon be open source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puente_del_Alamillo

- named after Santiago Calatrava, designs bridges (this one in Seville, 4th bridge in Venice)
- nice to name something after a bridge (feel like a real engineer)
-> acts as the bridge that connects native and web code (gives us that technology choice)
- calling it a framework might be overkill, it’s only a few hundred lines of code
- we’ve been using this approach at a “major airline”, it’s been working really well
-> adding a few new ﬂows within existing native apps, using this approach
-> can come back and polish the UI later if needed
- we’ll get this open source, so watch this space
- so we’ve got an approach for building our apps, but...

But the app is just the
tip of the iceberg

- calatrava is best option I’ve seen for ﬂexible, pragmatic reuse... but I’m biased
- tools like PhoneGap, Titanium, Mono are all useful as well, it depends on the app
* what about the rest of the system?
- maybe we’re optimising the wrong part?

App

Backend

- typical app talking to this mysterious “backend”
* Lots of talk about how to share logic across platforms, but not enough people questioning what all that logic is doing in
your app in the ﬁrst place
- a lot of complexity can be added by talking to an old, chatty backend system
-> if it’s messy, don’t write all the logic in the app and try and reuse it
* put a layer in between

App

API

- Simplify the backend systems your app has to deal with, protect them
- this API can provide a simple view of the backend, as if it was a nice continuous system
-> the LinkedIn engineering blog has a post on using a node.js server to do this
- it also gives you a buﬀer for change (some people never update their apps)
- whenever you write new logic in your app, see if you can put it in the API

Backend

How do we build simpler apps
and smarter backends?

App

API

Backend

Product-aligned teams
RESTful web services
Serving data and style
- the app should be as thin as possible, that's the best reuse you can get - how???
- much easier if you develop the API and the apps at the same time (not technology teams)
- RESTful web services are great for mobile apps
-> if you don’t know about REST, look it up, basically structuring systems like the web...
-> think of it like a replacement for things like SOAP and WSDL
-> great for reducing the amount of logic required by the client (discoverable)
eg. switching a single URL and getting completely diﬀerent data, diﬀerent static image server
- create APIs that serve both the JSON data and visual style in HTML/CSS
-> give yourself more control of your apps, and keep that logic server side

Focus on customer behaviour
before technology

http://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcavazza/2012/08/13/why-launching-a-mobile-app-is-pointless

Gadgets and technology won’t in themselves change the way your customers behave.
Find out how they behave and what they need ﬁrst, then work out how to best meet those needs.
Forbes put it quite nicely...

Focus on customer behaviour
before technology
“Competitive advantage will not be
gained by providing your customers a
sharp mobile app, but by making sure
every decision maker in your
organization understands the needs
and habits of mobile users”
Forbes.com. August 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcavazza/2012/08/13/why-launching-a-mobile-app-is-pointless

Gadgets and technology won’t in themselves change the way your customers behave.
Find out how they behave and what they need ﬁrst, then work out how to best meet those needs.
Forbes put it quite nicely...

Do more, not less
for mobile

We know that people are using their mobile devices to do more things than ever today.
There’s a growing expectation to do anything on mobile.
Truncation for mobile is a dangerous strategy.

Break large systems into smaller,
faster moving components so you
can better respond to change

- the mobile market is changing rapidly
- if it takes you a year or two to put out an app, and it’s scraping your backend website, because you don’t have an API and
you only deploy new versions of the websites every few months
-> that’s not going to cut it going forward
* start up companies that don’t have this legacy, wont have this problem, they’ll be a threat
eg. Ingogo and Uber taxi apps... don’t want to integrate with existing providers
- Either need to be good at innovation or good at fast follow and delivery... can't fail at both
- Plan to have APIs for your backend systems, even for mobile web applications.
- Amazon talks a lot about having lots of small, single purpose APIs
- if you want zippy mobile web apps, it likely means doing a bit more on the client side
- reduce load on the network, hide that high latency mobile connection

Whatever you do, use short iterations,
measure and learn quickly.
- we’re still working out what the impact of smartphones is going to be
- by the time we do, we’ll probably be past smartphones
-> so get good at reacting to change, and moving quickly
- there will be many opportunities, but you will need to be learning and moving fast to take advantage of them.

Thank you

“Nulla facilisi. Phasellus mollis nibh eget
tortor cursus congue. Vivamus velit

tortor, sodales sed feugiat in, gravida eu
Stewart
Jonny Schneider
turpis. Pellentesque quis neque at liberoGleadow
jschneid@thoughtworks.com
malesuada tincidunt a in risus.
@jonnyschneider

Maecenas.”

sgleadow@thoughtworks.com
@stewgleadow
A. Person, 2011


Mobile: More than just an app

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