I recently spoke at the HTML5 Dev Conference, and wanted to share some insights from the experience. HTML5 and its related technologies are entering a stage of maturation. It was great to see more and more vendors at the HTML5 Dev Conference showcasing new frameworks and tools that could be used for rapid deployment. It was at the conference that Intel announced it’s new XDK. I was there to speak about the benefits and limitations of using the XDK to build our app – SmartNotify.
SmartNotify is a mobile application that enables users to consolidate and simplify the way they communicate.
When it comes to developing applications, one tool cannot rule them all, so keeping to open standards is key. For SmartNotify, we had to stop using the XDK because we integrated with Twilio via the PhoneGap plugin. The XDK simply did not support what we wanted to do.
However, we were able to simply port out our XDK work into our new environments, and we still use it quite a bit in terms of emulator testing since the emulator/testing angle is one of the most complicated angle for smaller tech shops (we cannot afford to buy all the available devices!).
We needed to bring an app to our users quickly based on our desktop application. Because it is an enterprise app there is not the same need to focus on design (thankfully!). Rather we wanted to be able to deploy on multiple platforms quickly and cost-effectively. The XDK emulator enabled us to run testing and launch more quickly on multiple devices.
Users want fewer features on mobile than on desktop so in essence we have two versions: A complete, browser-based application and a mobile one.
When considering whether to incorporate gamification as an element of our app, several factors were at play. Gamification should be about giving users intrinsic incentives to use software and providing them with the right feedback as they progress along their path to expertise.
Leaderboards, badges…all these techniques work in the short term but they do not create the right interaction with the users. It makes them “addicted” for the wrong reasons and we want to avoid that even if it means onboarding fewer users at first.
There are a few challenges with building in HTML5 that I’d like to outline. It’s hard to define a proper “offline” policy (what can the user do, how much can they access, what happens if the device is lost…) and eventually it would be nice for a tool like the Xdk to help manage this. QA and Testing is difficult. However, good emulators that can give us a view of our work on multiple devices are key. This is great news, as most developers cannot afford to purchase all these devices for a single test.
I’d still rather get a root canal than manage the deployment process to test devices, especially towards iOS*. We currently use Testflight, which helps quite a bit but still is cumbersome.