Do you live in the Portland Metropolitan area and ride TriMet? Have you ever missed your stop because you were busy viewing the inside part of your eyelids, reading a great story, or watching the drama unfold in the back seat? Fear not, here at Shepherd Interactive we are developing an application for mobile devices that will notify you when your stop is upon you, using the built in GPS device found in modern phones. Better still, the app will be free to download and distribute. Why? We ride TriMet ourselves and know how frustrating missing a stop can be, we like to give back, and it gives us a great excuse for developing cool new apps. Stay tuned for more to come on this must have download!
Developing applications on mobile devices presents both challenges and opportunities. Mobile devices have constrained screen sizes, less computational performance, and lack the keyboard and mouse inputs that desktop applications take for granted. But at the same time, mobile devices tend to feature unique advantages not present (or not utilized) on desktop machines:
- pinpoint geolocation
- input via touch-screen and accelerometer
- camera
- vibrating alerts
These features make mobile devices much more interactive and in-touch with their surroundings, both in terms of their human interface and their physical location. A perfect port from desktop to mobile is not a realistic goal, nor should it be since the paradigms are so different. The differences between desktop applications and mobile applications mean that designing a mobile application requires much more than simply resizing it to fit on a smaller screen; it requires a substantial design shift. The shift ensures that the application fits within the mobile environment by fully utilizing its unique features and that it does not rely on missing aspects of the desktop environment.
The challenge of building mobile applications, however, is more than just designing the application to take advantage of the mobile environment. The more difficult problem is the abundance of mobile platforms which each provide their own unique way of implementing applications. In the past, developing a public transit mobile application would mean writing the same application several times, once each for iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices. This, however, is beginning to change thanks to PhoneGap, a cross platform mobile framework.
The Web has changed the way that we develop applications. No longer do we have to target PCs or Macs for application development; now we write a web application according to established open standards and our application will work across all platforms. Write once, run everywhere. This same reality is now coming to mobile devices. Furthermore, not only does PhoneGap mean that a mobile application will be interoperable across mobile devices, but the technology behind the mobile application is the same technology in your desktop’s web browser. This means that components written for your website can also be immediately included in your mobile application. This reduces development time and eases maintenance since there is only one standards-based technology stack.
To understand the benefits of mobile devices refer to the Cardiology team at the University of Southern California (USC) who began using BlackBerry smartphones to improve medical communications and to have access to patients’ clinical information on-demand at their bedside. The benefits of mobile devices became very obvious soon after the program started. As a direct result of having access to medical database applications and search engines at their fingertips, physicians were able to efficiently manage the treatment of their patients, providing better quality healthcare. Mobile business application usage and implementation has been skyrocketing in recent months.
But what about other companies and markets? Mobile ROI calculations depend on scale and scope of each individual implementation and they can be tricky. However, in the current economic downturn, it is no surprise that CFOs are increasing requirements on their IT staff to develop quantitative ROI models as part of their business case for mobile projects and initiatives.
Shepherd Interactive understands the importance of developing mobile applications to support business needs and to do so efficiently in a cost-conscious economy. If you’re planning a new mobile project or just thinking about how you could leverage mobile devises effectively, think of Shepherd Interactive and contact us to find out more.