Context
A SaaS that let businesses build their own mobile app without writing code. From a website, customers picked the modules they wanted (an Instagram gallery, RSS news, embedded web content...) and gave each one its own title and purpose. An Instagram gallery, for example, could become the section showing a company’s latest projects.
My role
Technical lead and architect of the platform. Hands-on: I built and maintained the base Android app and around half of the web platform.
Decisions I made
- Native over hybrid. At the time, embedding HTML inside native apps was still immature, and speed was a priority, so we built native iOS and Android apps. We accepted maintaining two codebases in exchange for performance and a better user experience.
- Configuration-driven apps. The website generated a configuration that each app ingested to set itself up. Many changes made on the web after publication were applied on the app’s next launch, with no new release to the app stores.
- Content separated from design. I defined a custom markup language so that content and presentation lived apart, and the same content could be rendered with different designs.
- The data protocol between the web platform and the apps.
Outcome
Adopted by politicians and city councils. It gave them a mobile presence quickly and at a fraction of the cost of a custom app. City councils valued it most because it added no content work: they kept updating their social media as usual, and the app fed itself automatically from it.