TechDecisions sat down with Nic Grange, CTO of Retriever Communications, to talk about the benefits and specifications of the right mobile app designs for businesses with end-users in mind.
TD: What is so important about mobile application design?
NG: Retriever has been doing enterprise mobility for about 18 years now, and we’ve seen the changes in mobility, not only in what’s possible but also in what the user expectations are. We’ve always taken the approach of trying to develop a platform that makes it easy to build cross-platform applications. We work in a space where we integrate our applications with back-office systems and a lot of those back-end applications have existing mobility solutions but they’re basically just back-end desktop or web applications shrunk down into a mobile application without any thought to how users are going to use it on a mobile device. Our strengths are in developing applications, looking at the workflow of what the person in the field is going to be doing and then building the application up from that, rather than back from what the back-office system needs and how that works.
TD: What are the problems with the applications that you’re seeing right now?
NG: They’re trying to have too much on a screen, they’re not well suited to a mobile device, they need to be online to be usable – it doesn’t matter where you are there’s always coverage issues – and also there seems to have been a large shift in the market, particularly driven by IT, to say that the solution is to build HTML 5 apps and give it to everybody. Contrary to the consumers that have largely wanted native apps, responsive apps, apps that will work offline. One of the biggest shifts that I’ve seen over the last ten years is really what the expectations are from business users that expect to get an enterprise application that looks and feels like the applications that they’re using every day in their social life.
TD: What would a well-constructed mobile application look like?
NG: Some of the things are very subtle but it’s about being familiar – some of the apps have a common place to put an action button or a close button or where they put their menu. One of the first things is about making it familiar to the user and making it specific to them and natural to them, so they don’t need to learn how to interact. It’s about being consistent throughout the application. Every time you get to a new screen you don’t want to have to learn how to use that screen. It should be the same as the other screens that led you to that. Also, always being aware of where you are in the application. Often applications will be deep in the navigation structure and then you’re somewhere and you don’t know which way to go back out and where exactly you are.
TD: How can end users be sure they are procuring a technology with a worthy mobile application?
NG: From the end user’s point of view, if it’s consumer based, they should be able to try it out. In some cases it’s not possible, but it’s a very common model these days to be able to try something out for a trial period to see the value in it and whether they like it or not. If they don’t like it they’ll know pretty quickly and move on to the next one.
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