This white paper traverses from past to future exploring the nature of mobile applications

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The Future of Mobile
Applications
AKP@anoopkumar_p
WWW.SMACNEWS.COM
WWW.SOCLOMO.ORG
May 31, 2014
Mobile applications enriched human lives
beyond proportions by
 quick access to critical informations
 accelerated decision making
 creation and consumption of digital
contents
 collaboration in online and offline
modes
 public information lookup and
reference assisting decisions
MOBILE BECAME A SYMBOL OF USABILITY ,
IF NOT USABLE, APPICIDES (APP SUICIDES)
HAPPEN
First generation mobile applications followed
pc strategy and most of the desktop apps
with their usability was “one to one” ported
on to mobile devices.
However the information & ux crowding
made the apps (almost) unusable in most of
the times. The magic solution was to
approach a new usability which made users
more engaged and interested , we called
them intuitive, immersive, rich etc. And that
paved the way for new look and feel to
anciently existed decision making. Ux became
the “brand governing” paradigm
of modernization.
UX IS A GREAT STRATEGY, IT COMPLICATED
LIVES IN THE PROCESS OF BUILDING
Rich UX made developers think deep into
ways of representing and engaging users.
The secret was pick the best usability from
best of the best desktop paradigms and

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mash it together for mobility. Things became
“fluidic”, and way too much “gaseous”. The
cost to usability almost shot up and
practicality of quick solutions became
infeasible for enterprises in B2E use cases .
For average B2C users, every app looked like
a dynamic brochure used for
exploting them. Moreover the number of
device platforms and their cross pollinations
complicated the development process. The
life expectancy of a device platform and the
operating system versions scared
businesses to invest more for achieving the
transformations with a phenomenal UX.
APP SOCIALISM WAS THE ONLY SOLUTION
Suddenly HTML5 became the next best thing
after Oxygen and Water in the Universe. The
battle against HTML5 for security, storage,
usability , performance couldn’t fetch
prolonged attention. This was not because
they are not there , but, because hyper
fragmentation in HTML5 frameworks almost
had answers for everything that was argued
till then. The positive side of things is the
flexibility HTML5 provides , where a problem
can get solved multiple ways. The negative
side being , as a Java script framework
embraces more native like UX, it tend to
lose its performance edge. The patchup
always ended up consuming the memory
called the might DOM overloads. However
every limitation , was an opportunity and a
new HTML5/JS framework emerged. The
developer community embraced and
advocated each and every one of them.
HOWEVER, HTML5 CREATED A MEGA
ECOSYSTEM CONFUSION
SOAP and REST, the so called new age
interfaces which pretty much demolished a
JDBC way, a BAPI way of talking to
enterprises, started losing their charm.
Everything became JSON ized (The HTML
way to talk to systems). The transformations
that are stuck mid way with SOAP /REST
rooted legacy modernization is rethinking on
new integration paradigms. Mobile first-also-
only is almost eradicated by html5 first-also-
only. RWD/AWD ( Responsive/adaptive
web designs) is stuck midway on their
identity crisis between desktops &
smartphones; ie from where to start and
where to adapt to ?. The only winner seems
to be CSS in all these games. The traditionally
modern UDDI service exposures get a new
shape as API gateways and now API stores (
API copyrights law is a new calamity, industry
keeps fingers crossed)

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AND THEN, APP WEAVING, THE CRAFT
EMERGED
Mobility is all about offline first, online
second, what will we do with online HTML5 s
?. The answer for mobility was simple , make
every mobile host the local copies of HTML5
pages and package and “containerize”.
Along with ways to interleave native
capabilities to html local pages by java script
hooks almost revolutionized the way HTML5
is looked at, in Mobility. Phonegap disrupted
mobility. Thanks to Adobe to bless in
supreme way and Cordova is just the
beginning of a cycle of innovations. I will not
be surprised the containers go and swallow
HTML5 UX ( MVC err! MV*) technologies. The
mega disruption is yet to come. App
weaving became a craft, we have to build the
apps from a mix of JavaScript frameworks
with and without HTML; sitting on a
container which talks to device OS , which
also has flexibility to get managed by
enterprises.
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF MOBILE
APPLICATIONS ?
The future of mobile apps will definitely NOT
be based on how an app is built, how easy
or complex the systems are , how usable-
reusable and unusable the strategies to build
them.
The future of mobile apps will definitely NOT
be based on how an app is built, how easy
or complex the systems are , how usable-
reusable and unusable the strategies to build
them.
Information analysed, aggregated and
represented paves the foundation of the
success of any future use cases. While
usability renders information, the smartness
of the use case is based on how rapidly the
user is engaged to take decisions.
Some of the key critical themes that are
imminent in mobility are;

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 Multi mode user engagement within
application
 Intelligence
 Context Awareness
 In App Analytics
 Simplicity in engagement
 Self service
 Talk to any
 Jigsaw- able modules
 Configurability
 Discover-ability
 Self healing
Multi mode user engagements
within application
Multimode user engagement is where the
same application interacts with user in
multiple mechanisms like
 App use case alert channel
 App usability – traditional mode
 App alerts via email/ sms
The application client and server will have a
mechanism to convey the messaging ; the
useable screens otherwise would have
conveyed. This enables users to prioritize the
choice of using the application itself for
further decision making .
Application Intelligence
Application will have intelligence beyond the
workflow business logic. Application will be
robotic enough to analyse the performance
and quality of the workflows and re-prioritize
and advise user with a key to do
recommendation.
Context awareness of applications
Application will have dynamic behaviours
based on the context of the device , the user
and the application itself. Based on the
contexts the behaviours of the applications
can get adjusted, to cater to, the use case
nature fitting to a specific context.

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In App Analytics
Application should be assessing its own
workflow and system key performance and
quality indicators. This enables the users to
be alerted of the health of the application on
the application while it is being consumed.
This can be typically system related and
workflow related analysis.
Simplicity in Ux
Mobile apps will align to the principles of
simplicity, the OS platforms as such are
shifting towards Simplicity centric.
Self Service
Application should enable to be managed
remotely by the enterprise, this will ensure
application availability to end users. Key
capabilities that needs to me managed by
enterprise ,
 Critical Logs
 Remote debugging
 Crash dump reporting
 Application initial on boarding
 Data Management – install/wipe
 Application patch detection and
install
 Application Life cycle Information
Talk to Any
In future Mobile can be a feeder for
wearables in companion mode. Mobile can
also be data aggregators for various
wearables & internet of things around.

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Mobile can be the hub of a spoke of devices
connected by BTLE/WIFI/Proprietary wireless
mechanisms/NFC etc. This makes the apps
also be #wearable and #iot friendly. Hence
the power of application notification
mentioned above is profound.
Smartphones can be hub for connected cars,
connected homes, smart offices , smart cities
etc.
Application componentization and
modularization
The principle of building application
components should be loose coupling , that
enables the components to be federated &
orchestrated by management modules or
configuration modules. This enables app to
be adjusted based on context dynamically.
This provided the flexibility of super
customization with a “one size fit all” strategy.
Configurability
The traditional application being multi mode,
context aware , multi component based
demands the need of a feature switching.
Hence a meta data based configurability is a
mandatory element of applications of future.
Discover-ability
The applications written should be search
friendly , discoverable and interconnected
with all searchable tags of the world. The
applications especially B2C, B2B2C , should
have a mandatory self marketing element
with multi depth insights into the capabilities
and fitments. The seriousness of SEO for web
contents is what the level an App should
have in a store.
Self-healing
Apps are consumed in multiple
environments with multiple users types.
Hence the cost of managing apps remotely
can be extremely high. When the sensitivity
of the data and the workflow is high, the
management of the applications also fetch
great priority

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Apps are consumed in multiple
environments with multiple users types.
Hence the cost of managing apps remotely
can be extremely high. When the sensitivity
of the data and the workflow is high, the
management of the applications also fetch
great priority. It is important to have serious
“error handling” & “exception handling”
considerations for applications. The principle
should be based on minimal app
manageability with the “event to incident to
assurance” is taken care of.
The next generation applications will be
integrating various elements of assistive
capabilities beyond the core workflows. It
will be based on the strong elements of
application architecture/ design agnostic
to a device platform or adoption of any
specific development paradigm. This kind
of approach will enable maximum business
reuse of between applications so that
key learnings of past are inherited for
newer steps taken for an ever evolving
landscape.
~AKP
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