User Experience Influenced Model for Comparing Application Development Tools

Abstract: There are many possible tools to develop mobile applications with. Choosing a development tool is done by considering many different factors, and the choice is currently done, in many cases, arbitrarily. For this project, a decision model is designed to ease the process of choosing a development tool. A survey was conducted to examine how people using different smartphone platforms discover and download applications. 94 responses were collected, showing that approximately 50% of Android-users found mobile applications by using search engines or browsers. The corresponding number was approximately 30% for iOS-users. A usability test was conducted to discover the differences in user experience between Progressive Web Applications and native applications. 18 usability tests were conducted comparing the same product developed as a Progressive Web Application and a native application. A majority of the participants had a technical background. Both Android and iOS devices were included in the tests. The results indicated that end-users notice when an application is not natively developed. The effect on the user experience is combined with other technical differences and applied to the decision model. This model was designed to predict if a native application, a Progressive Web Application or a React Native application is the most favourable to develop for a specific scenario. The final model could, according to consultants at the stakeholder Slagkryssaren AB, with good accuracy predict when the different development tools should be used. The model could be used as a discussion tool in the first stages of the development process of an application.