The Impact of Mobile Apps

Seattle.
The next speaker at AoIR 2011 is Meghan Grosse. She begins by pointing out how mobile devices have changed how we function in public and private spaces – not least also with the rise of apps, which have enabled us to personalise our mobile experience. The road here has been long; mobile phones have gradually added functionality, and the explosion in the range of apps has been a recent development which now no longer relies on hardware changes, but software development.

With the emergence of these tools also came the presumption that people should take advantage of these. These apps enable people to stay in touch with work, friends and family, which can make otherwise dead time useful, but also creates new expectations for people to stay up-to-date with things happening in their fields of professional and personal interest.

Smart phones which provide apps speak to our interests and desires for customisation; we now have a range of tools available for our interactions with media content, for example, aggregated in a singular device. This aggregation and integration of functionality distinguishes mobile devices from hand-held tools previously available. Apps across a wide range of uses are being used by large numbers of users, for a variety of purposes.

Previously dead time and dead spaces are especially transformed by the availability of such apps. This is not solely driven by the hardware producers, but bounded by the available technological features; phone, text, and context functions are generally made available by these devices, and third-party developers and users approach them on this basis. Application producers also play an important role, of course, and users are also able to participate in these processes to some extent; personalised consumption is constructed in a social and cultural sense rather than in a technical sense alone.

Where no apps are available for an intended use, development tools are also increasingly readily available, and this democratises the production of apps; this is also subject to existing guidelines for app development imposed by the device manufacturers, however, which are often sensible but also limiting to some extent.

In this context, will apps remain, or is there going to be a shift back to mobile Websites? For now, apps seem to lead and Websites, however customised, cannot manage to provide the same functionality; apps are designed specifically for a technology and its particular limitations. Website development for mobile Websites is often simpler and cheaper, and can target multiple devices at the same time.

Through apps, users can remain connected and engaged at any time; mobile devices are no longer used only for interpersonal communication, but also for personalised consumption and a wide range of other uses – and there is no indication that this is likely to change any time soon.