Mobile Application Design and Development

Mobile Application Development is the set of processes and procedures involved in writing software for small, wireless computing devices. The development of mobile apps is the creation of software that is designed to run on mobile devices and to take advantage of the hardware and features they contain. Native apps, hybrid apps, and HTML5 apps are some of the types of mobile apps developers create.

Why is the mobile application development important?

Today we live in a world that has become so mobile that many people even struggle to keep up with it! People now use smartphones more often than their PCs or laptops just becomes it makes more sense. Existing businesses and startups, all know how important it has become to enter the mobile app market because every one of their competitor is doing it and they must keep up.

Mobile usage is growing exponentially every year around the world because of this is increased demand for mobile apps among the majority of firms & businesses. Mobile apps have shown to be effective, useful and important for business! They help businesses grow their profits, make their product more popular and just advance their business!!

According to Quora,

There are numerous benefits of having an app. with an , you can

Provide more value to customers
Build stronger bond
Connect with your customers fast & easy
Improve customer loyalty
Reach a higher customer engagement level
Utilize social media channels
Have an avenue for customer feedback

Today, most of the traffic online is powered by mobile devices , getting mobile apps for business puts you in right position to leverage this trend.

What is Native Mobile Application | Mobile Application Design and Development

A native mobile app is an application which is developed using platform-specific development tools. So these applications are developed individually for each of the three popular mobile operating systems. For example

iOS
Android
Windows.

So in here I am going to tech you, android operating system. Because Android is the most popular mobile operating system at present.

What is Android ? Path to Mobile Application Design and Development

Before familiar with Mobile Application Development you must knew what is Android? So we can say Android is a mobile operating system developed by google. It is a version of the Linux Kernel and other open source software. Rich Miner, Nick Sears, Andy Rubin and Chris White were the founders of Android operating system.

Let’s see Android Development Environments

For instance

Android Studio
Eclipse
Apache Cordova
Blue J
FlashDevelop
C++ Builder

You can learn Android Studio form zero to hero by clicking here.

What is Cross-platform Mobile Application Development ?

In this paragraph we are going to learn What is Cross-platform mobile application development. Cross-platform mobile application development refers to the development of mobile apps that can be used on multiple mobile platform. For example these are,

Easier Implementation
You can control cost
codes can be reused

Those are the advantages in cross-platform mobile application development. But there are bad things in here. In other word we can say disadvantages . So let’s discuss the disadvantages in cross-platform mobile application development. For example,

Loss of flexibility
Poor user experience
Diversity in user interaction
Problems in platform Integration

Let’s familiar with Mobile Application Development.

Fundamentals of Mobile Application Development

Choice of Technology

Android, “iOS” and Windows are evolving rapidly with updates. Because these are the most appearing platforms. So these platforms make it practically possible for developers to build attractive interfaces to deliver with the user experience.

Functionalities

User who use mobile application, like to explore interactive functionalities. Similarly It means GPS technology, videos, audios, messages sending , responsiveness, sensors like wise. So if you want to develop a mobile application, please be careful of these things.

Security and Speed

Most important thing in mobile application development is Security and the Speed. Because If not customers will become the end users of your app. So use reliable and secure process to build the app to ensure its highly secure.

Let’s discuss the benefits of Android

For example

Open source
Large community reach
The largest installed platform
Increased marketing ( more than 190 countries )
Rich Development environment
Offers unified development environment
Inter app integration and
Large development

Features of Android | Mobile Application Design and Development

For instance

Attractive User Interface
Storage
Messaging
Web browser
WiFi facilities
Multi Languages
Multi touch and
Connectivity

Android Architecture

Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on a modified version of the Linux kernel and other open source software. So first we discuss Linux Kernel.

Linux Kernel

This layer gives a level of abstraction between the hardware of the device and contains all the essential hardware drivers, such as the camera, keyboard, screen like wise. however Kernel handles networks and a wide range of device drivers, which eliminate interference with hardware peripherals.

Android Run-time

This part has two sections. One is “Core Libraries” and the other one is “Dalvik Virtual Machine”. In Core Libraries, these are enable to develop apps using Java. Virtual Machine enable the apps to run in its own process. It is kind of Java Virtual Machine.

Libraries

This is the layer operates on top of Linux Kernel including “SQLite database” , “SSL libraries” and other libraries to play audio and videos.

Application Framework

This include Activity Manager, Content Providers, Resource Manager and other systems. However This layer provides high level service to apps in the form of Java classes. So that they can reused by other applications.

User experience and user Interface, principles of mobile user Interface, principles of User Interface components, Mobile UI design frameworks and mobile Evaluation.

2. Mobile Interface design

In this “Mobile Application Design and Development” article, this is the main part. Because Interface design add meaning and attractive value to the application. So this is need when we are creating a mobile application. You know we create interfaces to software or computers or any other things. That is interface design. mobile interface design means designing interfaces to mobile applications.

User Experience and user Interface

Are these two words express the same idea?? No right!!

User Experience means enhancing user satisfaction of an application during the user’s idea and feelings before, during and after interaction with the app.
User Interface means everything that the user can see and interact with. Because the design of the user interface is no the appearance of a product. But we can say user looks how it works.

User experience and user Interface - Mobile Application Design and Development — User experience and user Interface-Mobile Application Design and Development

Why UX in mobile design and development ?? Because of a mobile application influences how user observe it. For example user can observe does the app provides them values? or Is the app easy to use? like wise.

Why UI in mobile design and development ?? Because the visual elements greatly impacts an emotional connection with the user. For example user can observe does the colors are attractive with the user? like wise.

Principles of Mobile User Interface

Familiarity – That means use universal concepts in design
Responsiveness
Confirmation
Consistency – Create a seamless experience across the application
Clarity – Manage the User Interface elements on screen
Keep navigation simple – It means design controls based on hand position or make interface elements clearly visible

Principles of User Interface Components – Mobile Application Design and Development

In here I am going to discuss User Interface components based on Android. Android provides a variety of User Interface components. Such as Layouts, Notifications, Menus, Dialog, Toasts, buttons, Text like wise.

Layouts – defines the structure for a user interface in your app. for examples Linear Layout, Relative, Constraint layouts.

Linear Layout - Mobile Application Design and Development — Linear Layout – Mobile Application Design and Development

Relative layout - Mobile Application Design and Development — Relative layout – Mobile Application Design and Development

Constraint layouts - Mobile Application Design and Development — Constraint layouts – Mobile Application Design and Development

Other available layouts – Grid view, Adapter View, Frame layout, Table layout
Notification – A message displays outside the app to provide reminders, Updates etc. User can tap the notification and open it from the app.
Dialog – Provide messages, questions or pop-up things using small window. That prompts the user to make a decision before they can proceed something. For example alert dialog box and Date Piker Dialog box
Menus – Common component that provide different selections or bars or lists. There are three menus. Such as Option menu, Context menu, Pop-up menu.

Menus - Mobile Application Design and Development — Menus – Mobile Application Design and Development

Toast – provide simple message for the user about an operation or something and automatically disappear after a timeout.

Mobile UI Design Framework – Mobile Application Design and Development

We can use Ionic, jQuery Mobile, Onsen, Kendo, Sencha Touch, Mobile Angular frameworks for design mobile user Interfaces. Developers can write once and create mobile applications that run on the main platforms without any additional effort. This frameworks are use for hybrid development . The hybrid development of app \s makes life easier for developers. Because of it’s user friendliness.

Mobile UI Evaluation – Mobile Application Design and Development

This is very important and it is compulsory to make sure the app meets the expectations. All the principles we discussed has to be tested in here.

Screen Orientation and Resolution
Touch Screen or Touch Performance

We must careful about overall color scheme , style and color of icons, menus and how they invoked like wise.

3. Data Handling in Mobile Application Development

you can learn persistence techniques in Android Applications and you can understand the database handling of mobile technology using SQLite as the database tool. Because in this article I am going to show you how to handle the databases using SQLite technology. Therefore In the next article I am going to show you how to handle the database using “Firebase”. Let’s start Data Handling in Mobile Application Development. Android Tutorial.

Persistence Techniques in Android Applications

There are several options to save app data. your solution depend on

Space your data requires
Internal or external
data types

So you should know how much space your data requires , you should know what kind of data types you are going to store and you must know data should be private to your application or public to other mobile applications.

Let’s learn file storage options ( Data Handling in Mobile Application Development )

Internal file storage – we can say private data storage for this. because this is a storage option to store app-private files on the device file system. The system provides a private directory on the file system for each file and when the user uninstall the application, internal store files are removed.
External file storage – Store files on the shared external file systems. Such as share photos or files.
Shared preferences – If you don’t need to store a lot of data and it doesn’t require structure, you can use this option. However There is a API option to allow you to read and write persistent data types. Such as int, float, and other data types.

Shared preferences example- Image from the internet

Last file storage option is Databases. Android provides full support for SQLite database. Another type is Firebase. Any dtabase you create using SQLIte is accessible only to your app. So let’s learn SQLite.

SQLite – Data Handling in Mobile Application Development

This is a software library that implements a self-contained and zero-configuration. This is a server-less ( It means does not require a server. So it’s a local database. ) and self-contained (It means no external dependencies ).

There is no setup or administration needed. Let’s see some advantages of SQLite.

Very small and light-weight
Open source code
cross platform file format

Disadvantages are

High concurrency
Database file can’t exceed file system

Let’s create a database – Data Handling in Mobile Application

Very firstly we need to import “SQLiteDatabase” and “SQLiteOpenHelper” libraries. Because those are required to create a database. Because they include necessary information for the database handling. Let’s import those libraries like this,

import android.databse.sqlite.sqliteDatabse;

import android.databse.sqlite.sqliteOpenHelper;

1. Create a java class with above libraries and extend SQLiteOpenHelper class. After that implement the necessary constructors and required onCreat() and onUpgrade() methods.

2. Create another class called “DBHandler” and extend the SQLiteOpenHelper. This is the java class to create a database.

3. Let’s say we are going to create a book mobile application. So create a another final class called “BookWormMaster” to define all tables for the databases and import “Basecolumns” library with a inner classes to define columns for each tables.

DBMaster class create in here I called bookwormMaster

Let’s see Insert, update, delete and read methods

you can refer Android Developer site to learn more about SQLite databases.

Insert data

Let's see Insert, update, delete and read methods - insert method — Let’s see Insert, update, delete and read methods – insert method

getWritableDatabase() means, we are going to write data in our database. So we assign that method. It is a default method. If we want to read data from the database, we can assign getReadableDatabase() method.