Rethinking mobile apps

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
- Sir Isaac Newton

I think we are starting to transition into what I will call Apps 2.0. Apps 1.0 was from the first iPhone till about now. Most apps during Apps 1.0 consisted of taking what existed on the web and stuffing the content onto a smaller screen.

This is still seen in most apps that exist today. Facebook is a great example of this. Their main mobile app is still trying to cram all the content from the web into smaller screen sizes. Navigation, menus, structure, etc. are all based on the web form.

This makes for a less than ideal experience. I don’t know about you but I hardly use anything on the Facebook app except to scroll through my feed every once in awhile. I would love to see Facebook’s data on this but I would guess it tells the same story, their mobile app usage is largely contained on one screen.

Mobile has given developers a whole new way of thinking about apps. Now that there is less screen real estate, apps need to be designed differently. Some of the most successful apps, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp, weren’t created with a web mentality. They were created with a mobile mentality.

Open up Snapchat and you’ll notice its layout is ideal for mobile. The first screen you get is the camera view. This creates an ideal experience, since the main action of the app is to send photos or videos to other people. I can still get to everything else in the app with a simple swipe.

Another trend that is starting to emerge in Apps 2.0 is the use of motion or gestures to launch apps. I saw this first in Shake and noticed a few more apps now are starting to use this feature. There are still a lot of questions about how multiple apps will be able to use these features on the same phone but it is a really interesting feature and something I am sure will be used more and more.

I think there is a whole lot more we will see in Apps 2.0. Artifical intelligence will begin to have more of an impact in the design of mobile apps. Instead of having to open an app and tell it what you want it to do, it will know what you want it to do and serve you that information only when you need it. This will create apps designed in ways where you never actually open the app and instead interact with it through notifications or other undiscovered ways.

The bigger apps are starting to see this change. I think that is why we see more and more unbundling of apps. On mobile, apps ideally serve one purpose and make it quick and easy to use.

The exciting part is we are still at the early stages of what’s possible.