I spend a lot of time thinking about mobile applications — and in particular — the ones used by business. I’ve watched the rise and pre-mature death of “flappy” in amazement. Despite Flappy Bird being perhaps the most annoying, and also addictive, game in mobile, I think there are a few take-aways.

1. Beautiful UI is not important

Flappy bird was hardly beautiful (if perhaps a little retro-chic). In fact, most of the super popular mobile apps in the consumer space are arguably pretty bland/ugly. SnapChat is tacky looking. Twitter is very dull. Facebook, meh.

I’m not sure what it is with “enterprise mobile”, but there’s this addiction to the principle that business mobile apps need to be as beautiful as consumer apps. Why? I don’t value Uber because it’s pretty. I value it because it is super easy to use and the workflow is absolutely optimized for the thing I’m trying to do. Which leads me to…

2. Utility and purpose trump everything

Flappy bird did one thing really well. No complicated game play, no complex reward systems, it just worked. Same with SnapChat. You can also see Facebook constantly refactoring their product and breaking it down into separate apps: Feed, Messaging, Pages, etc.

Business apps need to have a clear purpose. I use this app to ____. If you can’t finish this sentence, in a single sentence, then expect your app to fail.

A lot of enterprise mobile apps attempt to stuff a lot of desktop functionality onto the device. However, it’s very clear that mobile has changed something very fundamental — it has changed “how” we do things. The things users do on the desktop are not the same things they do on their device. The workflow has changed — mainly because the device is contextually so much richer than a standard browser. The device knows where you are, knows where you’re meant to be, knows who you’re talking to, knows who you know and knows where you are in relation to those people. It has a camera, audio and video recording capabilities. The list goes on. With all of this information, the user expects the app to be intelligent and contextual — and the app can only be contextual if the app has a clear purpose!

3. Don’t over engineer

Flappy Bird was built by one developer in 2-3 days. Yup, that was it. 2-3 days and Dong Nguyen produced an app that hauled in $50k per day through in-app ad revenue.

Enterprise mobile apps are often heavily over engineered. The reason? Everything in enterprise is complicated. You need to connect to existing databases, you have your corporate identity management, etc. It’s easy to get so lost in complexity you can forget what you’re even doing!

However, it doesn’t need to be this way. Get the app built, get it in front of customers, and iterate. Mobile apps are not the same as desktop apps. Some will grow and evolve. Others will simply be around to support a short campaign or business need. Regardless, whatever you do, get the app done. If it feels like the app is becoming an engineering marvel, you’re probably wasting your time.