Important factors to consider when delivering a modern mobile app

Here are 5 interesting facts that you probably didn’t know:

38% of 2 year olds are using mobile devices
The television took 13 years to reach 50 million users but it took Angry birds only 35 days to attain the same audience.
The iPhone 5S is 40 x faster than the original iPhone.
From the beginning of recorded time until 2003, humans created five exabytes of data. In 2013 the same amount of information was created every two days.
Oxford University predates the Aztec Empire.

So, what do they all have in common? Nothing really – but apparently an estimated 8 out 10 people will actually read the whole of your article, if the opening is interesting! So hopefully you’re still with me, but If you’re really pressed for time, (very understandable) I’m going to give you a very short, well written and concice answer to the question.

“Whilst there are many important factors to consider whilst developing a modern app, such as big data and social features, the most important by far to take into account is context!”

Why context is the future and why by definition it is Google Now!

Context is defined as the total sum of a consumer’s mobile experiences. In other words, it’s the user’s location, preferences and usage pattern. If this still doesn’t mean much to you, I can go one step further and describe ‘context’ in two words: Google Now.

Just like Siri, Google Now can set reminders and answer basic questions with voice commands but its real power comes from preempting your desires. By capturing your location, continually learning about your preferences and constantly scanning your search history, it makes intelligent connections to give you real time information, before you even realise you need it.

If you take the train to work everyday, Google Now will alert you of any delays before you leave home. If you’re going to a concert, it will have your event ticket ready on your device when you arrive at the venue. It will even suggest restaurants to you, once it realises that you’re a foodie! Anyway Google explain it far better than me!

As you can see the list is endless and Google Now will only get more sophisticated because it aims to remain contextual and strives to change the way that we use smartphones. As such, it’s a good example of what the future of mobile development will look like.

Location Location Location – The key to keeping apps contextual

So now that we’ve defined ‘context’ what is the most important feature that keeps apps contextual? Location based services play a pivotal role here and they’ve come extremely far since they were announced as the ‘next big thing’ almost a decade ago. Your physical location can be accurately determined by using a combination of GPS satellites, cell towers and wireless access points. Today location services have succeeded in permeating the entire mobile space, with app developers and firms constantly finding new ways to use this rich location data to give users the best experience and the most contextually relevant information.

Some of the most innovative location based apps beyond foursquare and tripadvisor include Uber, which allows taxi drivers to easily locate you; Citymapper, which offers you live transport information based on your location and Rove, which creates an automatic journal by keeping track of your movement, photos and places.

Geocaching – Treasure hunting taken to the extreme

An extreme example includes “Zombies Run!” which has excelled in giving 800,000 users a unique experience by managing to make them scream, run and get an adrenaline rush at the same time. It uses geocaching to give users a simple quest of collecting items and prompts them at any moment to run by making them believe that Zombies are chasing them.

Geo-targeting – Replacing the Modern Day Salesman

Marketing experts on the other hand have concentrated on using location data to learn about people’s consumer behavior before targeting them with personalized advertising campaigns to get them into retail stores. Once they’ve got the user in the store, brands have started to make use of iBeacon technology, which guides users straight to the items they might want to purchase. In short, apps are going to be effectively replacing the role of a salesman: They will automatically intice you with special offers that you might be interested in, present you with the information about the product and take you directly to it.

Concerns – Security & Privacy at risk

However with great power comes great responsibility and users should be aware that there are grave security and privacy issues when they are passing their personal information to these apps. Popular dating app Tinder has over 100 million users and is meant to keep your location private. However a security company recently found that it had been exposing the users’ exact location for months and by using a simple algorithm managed to locate any user within 100 feet.

The Future – It’s bright!

So if location has been a big part of contextual information for the past decade – what’s next? It’s difficult to say but new technologies are already emerging to enhance or replace location services. These range from NFC’s which will pave way for easier payment solutions to barometers, which will use rich altitude data to navigate the user through different floors.

For now it looks like ‘context’ is here to stay, but if all this time you’ve been waiting to see one more interesting fact – well here’s the last one: