The document discusses the history and challenges of mobile app development. It notes that early mobile development faced issues like small screens and difficult input methods. The iPhone helped by standardizing controls and guidelines, but competition from Android and varied form factors now pose challenges. Properly testing apps across many devices is difficult and traditional usability testing is expensive. The document promotes TryMyUI as a more cost effective alternative that uses a demographically curated remote panel.

1. By Chandika Bhandari
@seattleapplab

2. Like you didn’t know already!
Published March 2014

3. Apps Still Dominate
Published May 2014

4. How do we use our devices?
Published May 2014

5. Historical Challenges
• Smaller screen size
• Difficulty of data input
• Mobile web – cross browser challenges

6. iPhone
Then the iPhone happened...

7. Life WAS good
• Consistent development environment
• One screen size
• Beautiful/standardized controls
• Guidelines that made sense
• Not a complete story

8. Competition increases...
Android
Competition increases...
By the way Microsoft is there too somewhere...

9. Current State
• Life is better than before
• Powerful (GPS, Camera,
Accelerometer, Browser, Apps)
• Beautiful
• Thriving ecosystems (App Store, Play
Store, Titanium, Xamarin, PhoneGap,
Cordova, Azure, IBM, PAAS)
• Unprecedented developer interest

10. Houston - we STILL have a problem
• Explosion of form factors (smartphones,
tablets and phablets)
• Many technology choices

11. How do we test?
• UX / UI designers/consultants
• Unit tests
• Test plans/integration test
• May be test on few devices
And hope for the best...

12. Not Enough
Because we need to....

13. Usability Testing
Traditional Testing:
• Expensive / Time consuming
• Hard to source people
• Not a candid UX
TryMyUI:
· Cost & Time Efficient
· Demographically curated panel
· Remote and Candid

14. Summary
• Desktop paradigms don’t work
• Not enough space to fill up with extra features
• Invest more in usage not features