Mobile Apps 101Key Patterns you need to know

April 19, 2012

Ed Anuff @edanuff

Greg Brail @gbrail

Tim Anglade @timanglade

@gbrail@edanuff @timanglade

groups.google.com/group/api-craft

youtube.com/apigee

IRC Channel

#api-craft

on freenode

New!

Use Case Design Pattern

Identity Social Graph

Show what’s happening Activity Stream

Show what’s nearby Location as context

Alert me! Push notifications

Share info or state across devices Multipoint sync

Access a service remotely The untrusted client

Identity

Identity

Pattern: the Social Graph

• Renting vs. owning

• Value & Risk in both approaches

– Management concerns

– Privacy concerns

– Reliance on third party services (& availability)

• Friend, friends of friendsfriends of friends of friends…

Show what’s happening

Show what’s happening

Pattern: Activity Streams

• Personalized

• Cross-references & Faceting

• Duplication

• Technical constraints are highly driven by UX

expectations

Show what’s nearby

Show what’s nearby

Pattern: Location as context

• Variant of Activity Streams?

• Privacy Concerns, loss of resolution

• Geocoding, reverse geocoding

• Geo queries

• Vectors & Ephemeral locations

Send me an alert!

Send me an alert!

Pattern: Push Notifications

• Stuff that can’t wait

• Urgency is relative

• Event not Content

• Not meant for archive & retrieval

• Wide vs. Precise

Share info or state across devices

Source: apple.com

Share info or state across devices

The pattern: Multipoint Sync

• Used to be manual

• Not easy

• Invisibility is key

• File or KV-based

• What you have to handle vs. what you can’t handle

Share info or state across devices

Also possible with Dropbox

Nice tutorial by Nanaimo Studio:

http://www.nanaimostudio.com/blog/2011/1/20/how-to-synchronize-your-app-

data-using-dropbox-api.html

Access service from remote

Access service from remote

Pattern: the Untrusted Client

• OAuth all the way

• Flows & options can be jarring to the developer

• Flows & options can be jarring to the user

• Revocation

THANK YOUQuestions and ideas to:

@edanuff

@gbrail

@timanglade