The evolution of mobile applications

The idea of ​​the screen, filled with icons for launching applications, smartphones are obliged to "classic" desktop desktop. But despite the long way traversed by smartphones in recent years, the concept of icons, which are links to some independent applications, has not undergone any changes. Maybe it's time to revise this approach?

The ways in which we use content via mobile devices — laptops, smartphones, tablets, wearable gadgets — are changing significantly. The idea of ​​a separate application is becoming less and less significant; instead, the concept of an application as a tool for publishing content, with notifications also containing content and allowing for some actions, is brought to the fore. Most likely, this will lead to a change in the approach to the design of applications and product strategies of developers.

Without icons clogged desktops

Such a loud statement requires an explanation. So, it becomes increasingly meaningless the idea of ​​a heap of icons on the screen that refer to individual applications that need to be opened for use. Instead, it is now more logical to move on to the principle of applications running in the background and delivering content to a central aggregator. This may be something akin to the modern center (panel) of notifications, or Google Now, or it may even be something completely different.
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The main design scheme should be the use of cards. In this case, it is not a simple visual way of interacting with the content of the application. I call the card a container for content coming from an application. At first glance, the difference is not too great, but in reality it is not. To understand this, let's discuss two points.

1) Develop systems, not end products . Most developers today no longer create some final solutions. This approach, formerly dominant, is rapidly fading away today. In a gigantic ecosystem of mobile devices with all sorts of combinations of screen sizes and resolutions, it is necessary to split the content into small components in order to be able to display it on such different gadgets. For example, Facebook is not a website or an application. This is a whole system of objects-modules (people, photos, videos, comments, brands, etc.), collected according to different schemes for displaying various devices in news feeds and on screens. Facebook is a classic example of a system of objects and their relationships, and not a collection of dynamic pages or application screens.

2) Recent changes in the notification system of the two main mobile operating systems . With the release of Android KitKat and iOS 8, notifications have ceased to be simply pointers sending to other places. Now notifications launch specific applications, that is, transfer to the final product, the destination point.

But that's not all. Now in Android, you can perform certain actions directly in notifications. Sometimes for this user is thrown into the application, but often still it does not need to run.



In the next version of Android, the developers went even further, dividing the notifications into separate cards.



As you can see, we pretty quickly came from pointer notifications to containers (cards) with content on which you can perform different actions.

The next step is obvious: the emergence of an increasing number of cards that fully implement all the necessary functionality and independence (isolation) of the working processes within each card. Placing a comment in the social network, buying in an online store, checking the time of departure of the aircraft, sending interesting news to a friend, adding a reminder to the calendar, booking a restaurant table, commenting on the results of your workout, paying the bill, and so on and so forth.

Applications as services

This concept will require decomposition of the application into small modules that include content and actions. Such modules are not associated with the container of the application itself, and can be displayed on any device. As content changes, modules are simply reassembled, centrally aggregated or pushed to client devices.

Content can be reformatted, for the sake of optimizing the situation or facilitating certain user actions. For example, a friend sent me a text message, but I'm driving at this moment, so the smartphone or the clock just read the message on its own. After that, I slander the answer to a virtual assistant who translates it into text and sends it to my friend.

It is very likely that the primary interface for interacting with applications will not be an application in itself. As I mentioned at the beginning, applications will become, first and foremost, a tool for publishing. So the main way to interact with applications will be a layer of notifications, or an aggregated stream of cards that do not require the launch of the application itself.

In conditions of complete dominance of notifications as a way to receive and send content, you will not need to run the whole “old-fashioned” application. Let's take the same Facebook: why run its application assembled from modules, when it will be possible to receive and write messages using notification cards, at the OS level? It is possible that the screens with application icons in a few years will turn into a duplicate version of the UI, as there is now both a desktop and a tiled screen in Windows 8.

Concept design of the "card system"

Probably, all these arguments will seem to many to be too detached from reality. I do not exclude that it is difficult for someone to understand what is being said, so let me illustrate my point.

Imagine a vertically oriented stream of cards, personalized and sorted by subject, content, date, or some other criterion.



Cards can come from any sources that interest you or to whom you have given permission. The quantity will not be limited in any way. In part, it looks like Google Now on steroids, or a modern notification center. But at the same time, the cards not only inform about something, but also make it possible to carry out all sorts of actions right inside them. Say, write a message to the social network, like, share, save, etc. And all right in the ribbon, without opening any site or application.

Add another degree of freedom so that you can flip through the cards in the horizontal direction. For example, looking at different content from any one source.



Naturally, it can be implemented on all types of gadgets.



Go ahead. It will be possible to implement a hierarchy system, that is, make parent and child cards, as in the illustration below. Something like this, by the way, already exists on Twitter.



Similar attempts can be observed in Chinese applications Baidu and WeChat: there small applications are packed inside the main ones and appear only with certain user actions. For example, in Baidu Maps you can find a hotel and book a room.

But this is not the most interesting. More importantly, embedding cards (children in the parent) also means that you will not need to install the application at all to use the content from the child card. It will be enough to have on the device an application to which the parent card corresponds. And again, this idea is already being implemented on Twitter, their cards support Stripe payments inside. Imagine that this concept will be implemented everywhere, then developers will get a new powerful distribution channel.

Here's another idea: what if the cards will come from other things or devices ? For example, a coffee machine will offer you to pay for a purchase in this way? Or will the hotel send an invoice to pay for access to Wi-Fi or additional services?

Separate consideration is deserved and the mechanism of branching websites. Suppose a large news resource distributes cards with its content to many other sites (not for free, of course). Why then does this resource have a website at all?

I do not want to say that there will be “one continuous television”, that we will stop using “classical” applications that need to be launched. In any case, the tasks that require just such interaction with software will be preserved. For example, to combine content, to perform various specific or complex tasks.

Machine learning to the masses

As the user pays attention to some cards and ignores others, the system will learn and try to show exactly the content that may be of interest to the user. And it is not only about news resources and social networks, all kinds of applications can be sources of content. As a result, this may lead to a rethinking of the competition for the user's attention. Fighting for the interest of people will start products that do the same job , and not products from the same category . Prerequisites for this can be observed today: in the center of notifications of your smartphone, all kinds of notifications also, one might say, compete for your attention.

Developers will certainly face the fact that their products suddenly found quite unexpected competitors. For example, Twitter will, in fact, no longer compete with other social networks, but with entertainment applications that a priori do not require the user to devote them a lot of time. That is, Twitter can compete with news resources and casual games.

Three critical questions

Despite the large number of prerequisites for the future I am describing, there are quite a few issues on the agenda. For myself, I single out three that I cannot answer yet.

1) Will the card model be implemented at the level of:
• applications (as evolution of Google Now)
• notifications (as an evolution of a modern notification center)
• or operating system?

2) Will the cards be presented as one single stream, or will it be multiple streams? Suppose the flow of cards related to my friends, the news flow, the work flow, etc.

3) Will this model be implemented in a universal format, or will we face our own versions from the developers of operating systems? Or even open cross-platform systems (like the Internet) appear, like Wildcard and Citia being developed today?

New services and products

End users can get a lot of benefits from the transition to the "card system". This approach will solve the problem of a catastrophic increase in the amount of information we use. But for this you will need to control the number of the cards themselves, learn how to sort them, manage the tape (or tapes). But it will be much easier and easier to control the flow of information than within the framework of a modern ecosystem oriented towards “classical” applications.

Binding individual cards will allow you to concentrate only on important information and the necessary actions to work with it. Without being distracted by all sorts of sections, links, banners, etc.

Developers, in turn, will become much easier to distribute information about their products. Instead of relying on advertisements in app stores, it will be possible to embed cards with relevant content in users' tapes, including in the form of subsidiary cards. Moreover, they may contain both information about the application and its functionality.

Five key findings

1) The future of the web is on the cards, and the developers must design the systems, not the end products. And the ideas of cards and systems are already being realized.

2) Adaptive design is a good thing, but you need to move on. Content must be correctly displayed on an incredible number of devices and in equally diverse situations. This will require a transition to new design principles.

3) Increasingly important in the development of software will be a thorough study of the notifications and actions taken within them. This side of user interaction will need to pay more and more attention.

4) Think about where you can integrate your product. Over time, this will become an important part of the product strategy, the number of APIs and Webhook will increase many times, as well as the role of services like Zapier and IFTTT. Integration will allow you to do what you yourself could hardly have done. In particular, it will give you access to a much wider audience.

5) Do not limit yourself to any one class of devices, always try to keep abreast of the latest trends in the field of smartphones, tablets and wearable gadgets. After all, new trends can come from where you did not expect.

I must say that the idea of ​​cards is developed in YotaPhone. At the same time, he is deprived of the main drawback, due to which almost all wearable devices are born dead, since on wearable devices, when receiving a card, it is necessary to bring the basic user case to the end on the mobile device. It turns out that on a wearable device in the baseline scenario, they take more time (and distract them with unnecessary pushing, if they don’t know well), and do not solve the user's tasks, saving time.

Here is what Luke Wroblewski says about this: http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1943