The foundation of Android development is built on Java – both a blessing and a curse for companies looking to create an Android app. Java is the one of the most popular languages, and is often one of the first taught to developers in school. What this translates to is a sea of developers that all claim to understand and be proficient in Java. This volume makes it difficult to differentiate between merely competent and highly talented Android developers. The other complication, and what most companies don’t realize, is that the ability to write Java applications often translates poorly to writing Android apps, for example:

• Common Java application architecture has no place in the Android Framework. Android apps have to be fast – 60fps fast. The days of acceptable laggy interfaces are long gone in the mobile landscape. Getting that type of performance across the ~20,000 android devices in existence isn’t easy and requires an incredibly amount of attention to detail coupled with deep QA resources.
• Android apps need to be memory efficient. The early android devices gave 16MB to apps and it’s not uncommon to see devices today that only give 60MB to each individual app to run. If you ask the average Java developer what their last application’s memory footprint is they either will not know or it’ll be far above that.
• Android apps need to be able to close and open at any time and at any place in the app. Architecting for that isn’t something a traditional Java developer does day to day and it’s not something he or she will be able to flip on a dime and pick up right away.

Why Is Mobile Security Important? Exploitations and security issues hit national news frequently and have significant consequences for the companies involved. This IBM study calculated the average cost of a data leak to be $3.8 million for a company. The security of your app is should be absolutely critical to whoever your mobile partner is. Since opening our doors in 2007, our mobile application developers have worked on numerous projects where any security compromise, small or large, could result in significant loss of revenue, and even life. It’s our prerogative to get your app’s security right from the start. And we do, on every project for every client.

custom mobile security solutions

we pride ourselves on our ability to provide clients with apps that are high quality and secure, while maintaining flexibility to best support the unique security needs of each client’s product. both your company and your mobile have unique security needs. we’ll work with you to align your organization’s priorities with the level of security your product requires.

• internal security review
• risk / threat assessment
• code logic obfuscation and encryption
• adherence to language best practices
• secure application design
• security scans

Our analytics team works with you every step of the way through your project, helping you determine the best way to measure your app’s success so you can make informed, data-driven decisions around:

• Targeted Push Notifications
• A/B Testing
• e-Commerce
• Application Indexing
• Marketing Attribution

App Analytics: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Whether you need to incorporate an existing platform your company’s been using for years or you’re looking for analytics services recommendations, Modern Softwares analytics team can help. We can also work with you to audit your company’s existing analytics solution to test what’s working, and where we think improvements can be made.

When one company came to us with their app, we quickly noticed different development teams implemented the analytics on their existing iOS and Android apps. There was no easy way for them to diagnose the difference in usage patterns between platforms as a result. We put together a report detailing the points of inconsistency, calling out major features of their analytics tool they weren’t utilizing fully. After cleaning up the tagging and adding features such as demographic data collection and download source attribution, their marketing team was able to make much more meaningful and informed business decisions.

What’s Changed?

The modern web isn’t just for static websites and content consumption. It’s the most open, flexible, and immediately accessible application runtime available today, both via mobile and desktop browsers. Modern web applications use architectures that make them more like their native app counterparts on iOS and Android than apps of the web’s old guard. Business logic, instead of living on the server, now resides primarily in the browser. This change results in:

• Reuse of back-end systems and APIs across native and web platforms
• Faster development timelines
• Reductions in build and maintenance costs
• Increased flexibility
• Advanced user experiences (UX)

Over the past five years, the tools available to developers to help build these kinds of applications have proliferated and matured.

Our Web Applications team has deep experience with Backbone.js, a lightweight framework that we still use whenever its particular strengths are a good fit for the project at hand. We’ve launched dozens of apps that use Backbone, from high-profile media streaming applications to sophisticated HTML5 games.

We take a holistic approach to UX design. Modern Softwares designers work directly alongside our UX strategists, developers, and your team to iterate through new ideas and designs swiftly. On any given day, you can find them out in the field doing ride-alongs with client sales teams, interviewing customers in retail stores or restaurants, or walking factory floors to find ways to design more efficient systems for clients.

We become deeply immersed in our clients’ business and take a “roll up our sleeves” approach when it comes to UX design. We work hand-in-hand with our internal developers, and client development teams, to ensure what we design is cost-effective to build. Our collaborative process ensures the designs you take home are beautiful, feasible to engineer, and easy to deploy.

We continuously review the mobile design tool and resource marketplaces to give our team access to the industry-leading toolsets which our clients can then leverage. The UX lead on a given project then works closely with the client team to select a toolset and set up a design process that works most effectively for our clients’ organizations.

tools of the trade

• User Flow Diagrams
• Sketches & Wireframes
• Visual Designs
• Interaction Designs
• Prototypes
• Usability Testing