Mobile Applications

Every year, people rely more and more on mobile devices to meet their needs. Websites used to be the gold-standard, but mobile applications are gaining more popularity. Since technologies used to create mobile applications are improving and keep getting better, it’s an exciting time to develop a mobile application.

• Smartphone users spend at least 90 percent of their mobile time on applications.
• Mobile applications account for more than half of all time spent consuming digital media.
• At least 85 percent of consumers prefer native mobile applications over a website.
• The average consumer has about 30 applications installed on his device and spends at least 35 hours per month using them.

Mobile Platforms

When it comes to mobile applications, we work with two frameworks: Ionic and React Native. Ionic Applications are cross-platform, so they canb run on Andoid, iOS, Electron, and Progressive Web App (PWA). React Native can be used to develop applications for Android, Android TV, iOS, macOS, tvOS, Web, Windows and UWP by enabling developers to use React along with native platform capabilities. You just need to tell us what framework you want us to use, and what are the platforms you have in mind.

Development Phase

If you have an idea for a good mobile application, we at Obiltech can help you develop your idea. We will start by doing research on your target audience. We'll get a good idea of how the application should behave, and how easy it'll be for your target audience to use it, since hard-to-use applications don't do well in the market. This is a crucial step, since you need to determine what problems the application will solve for your customers, what features it will include, and how it will appeal to people.

Wireframes

If you already have a good idea of what your application will be like, and what it'll do, we'll start sketching out your app and creating a storyboard, or roadmap, to demonstrate how users will navigate through the application. Wireframes allow us to make out the functionality of your application, catch problems early, and can save us a lot of time. You can overcome any technical limitation found in the process in this phase. It is better to make changes to a wireframe than to change features of an already-developed application. Wireframes also allows get feedback from the client and get to know the client better.

Define the Backend of Your Mobile App

Wireframes and storyboard will give us a good understanding of what the application will be like, but a mobile application cannot be functional without a back-end system. We'll decide what kind of API your application needs. We are talking about APIs, data diagrams, servers, data integration, and push notification services. In most cases, we'll have to develop the application's backend ourselves. In this stage we may realize that some of the the application's functionality is not feasible, and we may have to go as far modifying wireframes and/or storyboard to adapt the application to technical limitations.

Prototype

For this phase, we'll use the wireframes we have already developed. The idea here is developing a prototype that a user can touch and see how it'll work for all users. The prototype should be developed with the simplest wireframes we have created. We want to know if things are going in the right direction. If we could get regular users, or even stakeholders, in this phase, it'd be great, since we want their feedback, and we want to implement it into our work. Users, and stakeholders, should get a good look of the application and validate it. Without feedback, it may not be safe to proceed to the next step.

Design

Here is where the User Experience (UX) designer, and the user interface (UI) inspect the look and feel of the application. This process is usually completed in one single afternoon, but sometimes it can take a team many hours. It'd be ideal to create multiple variations of screen by playing around with the buttons, the layout, and the multiple visual elements. We want an original product, with an original UX (user experience). This is the step where we all get a good idea of what the final product will be like.

Develop

Once we are gone with the Design step, we canstart coding the application. Depending on your needs, we may decide to use either the Ionic or the React Native framework. At first, the application may be buggy, and some of the functionality may not work. n the second stage, a lot of the functionality proposed is incorporated. The application has ideally gone through light testing and bug fixing, but some issues may still be present. At this point, the application should be tested by a small group of people. Once the bugs have been dealt with, we should be move to the deployment phase, as the application is ready for release.

Not all applications are the same. If we are dealing with a complex project that changes all the time, we may use agile methodology to deal with the project. We may need flexible planning and constant improvements. In fact, we may have to break the project into smaller modules and milestones, and use agile methodology for every part.

Testing

We will test your application as much as possible. The deeper we get into the development phase, the costlier it'll be to fix bugs. We should test the application as we make progress. We should test it for usability, compatibility, security, interface checks, stress, and performance. Once again, the application should be given to a group of certain users, and we should ask a lot of questions. Once your application passes this small acceptance test, the application should be submitted to a beta trial, perhaps through the solicitation of participants. The feedback received from beta users will help us find out whether the application can function in a real-world situation.

Deployment

Finally! If the application reaches this point, it is ready to be launched. Of course, developing an application does not end at deployment. Users are going to use the application, and there'll be feedback, and some of that feedback can be used to improve future version of the application. Every application needs updates and new features, and when an application is launched for the first time, the development cycle starts again. A project involving a mobile application never ends.