Do Not Use Only A ”Mobile” Phone For Browsing Your ‘Mobile” App
Yes, the tag of word “mobile” before the word “app” is so common that we tend to ignore the flexibility an app offers to display on various types of devices. AppSheet , the versatile mobile app development platform enables the developer to build an app on various devices.
Mobile App on Mobile Phone
The blog discusses how to choose a device (mobile phone, tablet computer or desktop PC or combination of these) for their business app that gives the best user experience.
Why You Need to Plan For Display Devices for the App
Vast canvas of users for consumer Apps: In case of consumer apps, the case for an app to display on various devices is obvious. The users can use the app on virtually any device. Thus, the consumer app and / or website should be robust to display well on any device.
Business apps and many user categories: However, in case of a business apps, there can be different devices for different categories of users. Especially for the employees of your business, you can have better planning of devices the app will display better for maximising the ease of use.
Example of Service Technicians’ App
Service technicians’ app: The company uses the app to allocate and track service calls from the customers. The company has a field service technicians' team. The team services the equipment failure calls at customer locations.
Service Technician App
Different users’ categories: The three different users of this app are company’s service technicians, supervisors and customers. Customers log the service calls and track the progress. When the call is serviced, the customers rate the quality of service displayed.
Supervisors allocate the service calls to the service technicians and track till closure. Finally, the service technicians track and attend the calls allocated to them. They update the progress of the call till closure for customers’ and supervisors’ updates.
In the above case, each category of users is at different location. Each user also has different information and update needs.
View Mobile App on Tablet PC, Desktop/Laptop or Mobile Phone
Users’ Locations and their app view needs: Most probably, supervisors are at the company’s service office. Supervisors' needs is to get a summary view of data – number of calls received, number of calls closed, overall customer satisfaction, calls not getting serviced, number of calls allocated to each technician.
Dashboard Views on Tablet PCs or Desktop/Laptops
Thus it is practical that the supervisors have dashboard views in the app with trends, graphs etc. about the various service parameters. In this scenario, the supervisors better have a tablet or desktop PC. The supervisors are more likely to be at their work desk, so having a bigger browsing device helps.
Service technicians and customers are more likely to be on the move-traveling and at customer locations. It is practical that they use a handy mobile phone device for updates and quick browsing.
Amount of data displayed: Another case for bigger screen size is, if you have substantial data to show on the app screen. Sometimes, users need to view a table of data with a few columns, simultaneously on the screen.
Further the business need demands that users can sort that table view data based on displayed columns. A tablet or a desktop are the best options in this case.
Conclusion:
Plan Your App Devices Based on Users' Work Locations
When you plan to build an app for your business, you also plan for the devices the app will run on. Plan for the user scenarios -the conditions in which the app user will use the app.
These factors include the amount of data entry the users will make, the kind of views the app users need, the locations from where users browse/update the app. These factors will help in selecting the right device for various categories of your users.
Last but not the least, if your business’s customers are also going to use the app, then ensure that you design the app’s customers’ view to display well on any device. After all, in most cases, you cannot compel your customers to use the app only on specific devices. Customer is king is the first rule of any business.