Web on Mobile: Gap Analysis

July 2013

Status

This is a draft, work-in-progress analysis derived from the “Closing the Gap with Native” Headlight task force.

Introduction

A regular debate animates the community of mobile developers: which of native or Web apps are the best option to provide content and services on mobile devices (such as phones and tablets)?

Indeed, whereas Web applications have taken an increasing share of tasks that use to be accomplished via native software on traditional computers, a reverse trend seems to have emerged on mobile devices, where services and content traditionally provided via Web applications (e.g. news) are now provided either complementarily or exclusively via native applications (see Review of application development approaches per category in appendix).

If quantifying these trends remain difficult, there is undeniably a lot more and much broader efforts devoted to the development of native apps on mobile than there ever was on desktop. This new investment in native technologies can only reasonably be attributed to strong differences in what native and Web technologies enable service and content providers to offer to their mobile users.

Why are Web apps so much more challenged on mobile devices than they have been on traditional computers?

The first obvious consideration is that mobile devices come with severe hardware and networking constraints, that the latest generation of Web technologies had increasingly ignored due to the rapid evolution of the hardware and networking capabilities of computers. Since the ability to access that content is a critical component of the value of the Web, there can only be marginal improvements that can be made on technologies that have suffered from that approach.

Another consideration is that the popular native frameworks for mobile devices were developed once the Web had already shown a lot of its potential, and thus integrate natively the hooks needed to benefit from that potential: streamline installation, streamlined network (and in particular HTTP) operations, easy access to Web formats interpreters, inclusions of Web views as software components. As a result, re-using part of the Web platform without some of its other characteristics has become a lot easier in native apps, and has conversely reduced some of the appeal of Web apps. Among other things, while running executables obtained from the Web has long been taught as a bad practice to users of traditional computers, mobile apps come within a much stronger security framework (with a sandboxing model that browsers have long used), and can be obtained from a curated and easily-accessible entry point.

The popularity among service and content providers of so-called hybrid applications (where Web technologies are used in complement of native ones) is another illustration of how Web technologies have been embraced by native development framework on mobile devices.

If Web technologies remain a popular development component of native apps, why does it matter if “pure” Web apps are challenged by native apps?

Native apps reduce or remove some of the benefits the Web had brought to our digital ecosystem:

• the ability to run on a wide variety of devices and operating systems,
• the ability to access content and operate on it without the cost of installing and managing software,
• the ability to access content and operate on it with strong insurances in terms of protection of one's local data and services,
• the ability to reference and share content in a uniform naming scheme (enabled by URIs).

This document make uses of the terms “Web applications”, “browser-based applications”, “Web-OS application” as defined in the taxonomy of mobile application platforms.

This document analyses in detail how the development approaches differ in terms of the experience that can be offered to the user, and the associated costs/benefits for the service and content provider, highlighting possible actions that would reduce the gap from which Web technologies sometimes suffer in that comparison.

2. User experience

In a world of many competing applications, service and content providers need to offer a user experience that reduces as much as possible the friction of using their applications. User experience considerations are particularly important on mobile devices since their hardware and network characteristics often exacerbate the difficulties that users face.

The parameters that influence the quality of the user experience for mobile apps include:

Ease of discovery and acquisition

Before a user can use any app, she needs to know the app exists, how to get it, and she needs to actually get it.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Searching an app
• Reaching an app from physical artifacts (ads, paper magazines, TV screen, product labels)
• Reaching an app from on-line interactions (social networks, on-line reviews, etc.)
• Paying for an app
• Downloading an app
• Authorizing an app for special privileges

Ease of finding on device and launching

Once acquired, the user should have easy access the application when she needs it; the shortest and simplest the task, the less time she will be ready to wait to start accomplishing it. For instance, looking up the weather or the time should be near instantaneous, while a slightly longer wait before starting to play a game might be acceptable.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Locating the app launcher
• Starting the app
• Waiting for the app to be ready to use

Intuitiveness and ease of understanding

When using a new or rarely used application, the user needs to find her way easily to accomplish her task at hand; the more the app user interface resembles other apps she is used to and re-uses the same interaction patterns, the less effort she will need to feel at home.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Adopting familiar user interfaces
• Adopting familiar user interaction patterns
• Guiding the user

Smoothness and responsiveness

Any glitch and slowness of the user interface creates a barrier to the accomplishment of the task the user started the app for.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Navigating through views provided by the app (e.g. different sections of a news app)
• Interacting within a given view of the app (e.g. content of a specific section of a news app)
• Obtaining content from the network
• Pushing content to the network

Adaptability to user access requirements

Depending on her physical conditions (temporary or permanent) and on her environment (e.g. luminosity), the user may want to adapt the user interface to her particular needs (e.g. changing contrast, zooming).

This encompasses the following operations:

• Making the user interface flexible to different user requirements
• Integrating with the accessibility services on the device

Sensitivity to context

The user installs some applications for their ability to help her in a given context: at a given location, a given time, or when a given event occurs.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Determining the context in which the user is
• Notifying the user of a context-relevant information

Personalization and privacy

Some applications benefit from gaining knowledge about the user (e.g. her contacts, her calendar) to adapt what they provide her.

The user on the other hand is often wary of sharing more of her private information than she is aware of.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Gaining access to private data
• Protecting user privacy

Immersivity and focus

On mobile device smaller screens, any part of the UI that distracts the user from her task is problematic. If the user needs focused attention on the app, interactions from or with other apps should be reduce-able to a minimum.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Managing the whole screen space
• Separating UI from other apps

Ease of returning to once launched

Some apps (e.g. social apps) attract the user’s attention frequently and the user expects to be able to re-access them easily.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Finding quickly the list of already launched apps
• Waiting for the app to be re-activated
• Getting the app back in the state it was left

Ease of obtaining additional features

Once a user starts using an app, she may want to obtain additional features the app provides as add-ons.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Paying for an add-on
• Downloading the add-on
• Authorizing the add-on for special privileges

Ease of maintaining

Once a user has acquired an app, she will want to keep it up to date. She may also want to retrieve some or all of the data that the app is creating and managing, either to share it, transfer it, or back it up. When she no longer needs the app or if she needs to recover space for others apps on the device, she will want to remove it. She may also want to reset whatever configuration or data a given app has stored on her device.

This encompasses the following operations:

• Updating an app
• Retrieving locally stored app data
• Removing an app
• Purging an app configuration and stored data

Ease of cross devices usage

Users have increasingly to manage multiple devices of various shapes, manufacturers and capabilities; a user is likely to want to find the apps she likes on as many of these devices as possible, and in some cases to have an app takes advantages of several devices at once (e.g. for second screen scenarios).

This encompasses the following operations:

• Locating a compatible version of the app on the various devices
• Acquiring (possibly with payment) the app on these devices
• Getting the content / configuration of the app synchronized across devices
• Making the app work on several devices at the same time

The critical factors that need to be optimized for a given app depend on the type of expected interactions. These factors are influenced by the service and content providers investment, but also (and sometimes primarily) by the chosen platform and its associated development approach.

3. Provider perspective

To make it sustainable to provide a given application, content and service providers need an environment that reduces as much as possible the costs of developing, deploying and maintaining a given application, and maximizes the expected outcome, which can be, but is not necessarily, of monetary nature.

The following parameters are taken into account to assess the costs:

Development cost

• Hiring / training developers
• Writing code
• Finding documentation and guidance
• Finding libraries
• Reporting platform bugs
• Debugging and diagnostics
• Testing

Deployment cost

• Getting authorization to deploy
• Uploading the app
• Advertising the app
• Protecting the app code

Maintenance cost

• Getting user input and feedback
• Keeping up to date with changes (in particular incompatible ones) in the platform
• Getting visibility into future evolutions of the platform

Expected outcomes

• Reaching out to as many users as possible
• Getting paid
• Getting recognition
• Enabling social change

Appendix: Review of application development approaches per category

One way to assess the particular challenges that mobile represent for browser-based apps is to look at which kind of applications have been traditionally browser-based on the desktop and are now primarily used via OS applications on mobile.

The only limit a priori to what browser-based applications can be used for is set by security considerations: access to features that would be hard or impossible for the browser to give without compromising the user’s security.

In practice, there are areas where the benefits of browser-based apps are more directly relevant than others, and where it would be more logical to close the gap in priority.