With around 600,000 apps in the App Store, and 400,000 apps in the Android Market, it’s safe to say that apps are as much of a mainstay of modern life as networking. Or are they? Are apps really the be all and end all of mobile?
If you’ve got a smartphone, you’ve got an app. We’re not even going to say probably. In 2008, the App Store was launched. Fast-forward a few years, and we’re talking billions of downloads. Whether it’s Angry Birds or a something a little more productive, apps have become a fact of life. At Designit apps have become something we’re really rather good at. From banking to events, we’re asked about app design on a weekly basis. But it’s not just us. Business and organisations all around the world want to get their fingers on an app, and the demand has skyrocketed in the past 12 months. If the 90s meant you had to have a website, and the 00s meant you had to be on Facebook, then the 10s means you have to have an app.
But while the download and demand figures are astronomical, the figures for usage and removals are less than fantastic. 80% of smartphone users don’t use free apps more than once. 26% of all apps on all platforms are discarded after just one use, and the lifespan of an app can be as short as 30 days. Were apps just a flash in the pan? Even though everyone has jumped on the app-wagon, things may be about to change…
“In a few years…native apps will be mostly dead…”
“Wait, what? Dead? But I haven’t finished Cat Physics yet!” OK, maybe they won’t be dead, but there is a good chance they won’t be quite the same thing as they are today. Words like responsive web design, progressive enhancement and HTML5 are floating around, so we thought we’d take a look at them and see what they mean, what it is they actually are, and why it is we’re hearing them.
With the new language of HTML5, you can still use the app as a kind of template (that is, you’d still have the icons on your phone), but you can now fill that app with much, much more content. Content which all loads at the same time, allowing for instant access. Even offline. Throw in some responsive web design and you’ve got a site that will scale up or down depending on whether you’re viewing it on your iPhone, or massive stationary computer at the office.
Sure, we’ve had flexible design for some time – that’s the kind of site that scales according to the user’s screen, but only on desktop browsers. Now with all the screen sizes out there, we need something that will provide great content, easy access and look good – on all those screens.
Henrik Hedegaard, an Information Architect in Aarhus, gives his expert explanation on why there’s more to mobile than apps.
More to mobile…
Until now, the market has had quite a narrow focus when talking about apps for the mobile domain. Most of the apps we know are so-called native apps, made specifically for, e.g., iOS. But a new and significant array of contenders are lurking just around the corner. One common denominator among these is the concept of HTML5 technology.
We’re starting to see applications the four different categories: native apps, hybrid apps, web apps and responsive web design.
Responsive web design focuses on detecting the user’s technological context, i.e. which device they use, whether it be laptop, tablet, smartphone etc., and adapting the content display and layout according to the device resolution. This allows the sender to customise and optimise the content delivery to the end-user, thus giving the best possible experience of a website on any given device. Remember - responsive design is used to deliver website content to mobiles, not to deliver a mobile app experience.
Along the same path is the web app. It’s a new way of using HTML5 to mimic the user experience from native apps, i.e. giving the user a feeling of using a native application by using simple and common web technologies. The main advantage is the possibility of using only one code base for multiple devices, using in-house web knowledge. A consequence is low time to market and shorter implementation cycles.
Finally there’s the hybrid app. The concept of hybrids is to intermix the best user experience values from the native domain with the implementation benefits from the HTML5 universe. This means you decide how much of your application is implemented as a native application and which parts are implemented as HTML5. A main benefit from hybrid applications is access to hardware sensors and features, such as camera, microphone, accelerometer, gyroscope etc. Such features (except GPS) are now accessible in pure HTML5 web apps.
User Experience defines your choice of platform
It’s a clear fact that there’s a close correlation between technological platform and the level of user experience as well as cost. Sure, the HTML5 apps may be cheaper and faster to develop, but their ability to convey the optimal user experience is very poor, when the app reaches a certain level of service complexity.
Furthermore, web apps and hybrid apps with a maximum level of integrated HTML5 respond very slowly to user interaction. There are examples of delays from tap to app response in the range of 0.3 – 0.5 seconds. Also, HTML5 apps often need to download images and media assets from servers as their cache level often only ranges from about 5-15mb. When designing retina display applications these limits are reached very fast. If the end-user has a limited data plan on the mobile it means tremendous costs to the user when using their mobile app (e.g. banking).
In conclusion, if you want to deliver a great and highly responsive user experience you should still focus on native applications (or hybrids with low HTML5 integration), until web technology is more mature. On the other hand, if you have a simple application/service or a very limited budget, you should look into the possibilities of HTML5 and tailor your service to deliver a user experience within the limits of the web technology - never try to overdo it.
So how likely is it that we’ll start to see a major change within apps? Brian Kennish, formerly an engineer at Google, thinks it’s pretty likely, “One word: distribution. There are 2 billion web users versus 50 million iOS users.” Can’t really argue with that. Ultimately it’s about providing the best user experience possible. The app will give way, or perhaps evolve is a better word, to more web-like mobile experiences. It’s about finding out what people do on what device and creating the perfect version of a site for each device. Not only does this mean a better experience for the user, but it also means less work, saved money, and also moves developers out of the restrictions of Apple’s guidelines. Add ease, speed, offline access and the multi-platform functionality and it would seem that the app world is headed for a bit of a shake up.
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