Why UK's Government Digital Service Decided To Ditch Apps (govinsider.asia) 96
In a world where there's an app for nearly every product and service, the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) still rely on its website to serve its customers. "But why?" You ask. Ben Terrett, former head of design at GDS outlined some of the reasons in a recent interview. He said the problem with mobiles apps is that they require a lot of commitment and resources. Apps are "very expensive to produce, and they're very very expensive to maintain because you have to keep updating them when there are software changes." He concludes that government services are much better off with responsive websites (websites whose layout and design adapt in accordance with the device it's being accessed on). "If you believe in the open internet that will always win," Terrett said, adding that responsive websites are also much cheaper to build and maintain. Another benefit of responsive websites is, he adds, that when you want to push an update, only one platform needs to get updated. From the report: Key to the GDS' approach is designing for user needs, not organizational requirements, Terrett says. "That is how good digital services designed and built these days. That is how everyone does it, whether that's Google or Facebook or British Airways or whoever." The problem is that public sector agencies tend not to design with citizens in mind. "Things are just designed to suit the very silos that the project sits in, and the user gets lost in there," Terrett adds.According to estimates, the move to go the responsive website way has saved them $8.2B in four years.
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Re:$8.20? (Score:5, Informative)
£5.6B is hardly chickenfeed in anyone's terms.
It's about 4-5% of our National Health Service budget, for starters.
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The US population is a little larger than that of the UK
That's right. The UK no longer has an empire. Silly me. Meh...
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Also $2 Billion a year is about 20% of Apples R&D budget (a little over $9 Billion last year) so they are claiming making apps from this would have been that much?
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It's $8.20B (billion). Still pocket change for most governments.
I can think of better ways to spend that pocket change. I do not understand why you would do an app when a good website will do either. It seems like a design decision based on intended services and use cases, not an industry trend or even that newsworthy.
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Yes, it's bullshit.
I've seen the process they use to build web services at first hand and it is unbelievably inefficient. It might be $8.2 billion cheaper than designing applications for mobile devices, but nobody ever asked for mobile apps.
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I am sure someone thinks it's trendy and the right thing to do at this particular second.
Wow, someone gets it (Score:5, Insightful)
I am literally so tired of visiting a website and having it pop up a download notification for another new app.
Re:Wow, someone gets it (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. If I can do it from a desktop or laptop via browser, why do I need to install an app on the phone/tablet to do it?
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The app can track your location and report back what files you have in storage.
Re:Wow, someone gets it (Score:4, Insightful)
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With Android Marshmallow, I can deny access to contacts yet still allow the app to run.
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"Why ask why?"
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I am literally so tired of visiting a website and having it pop up a download notification for another new app.
Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com]
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The ALT text is even funnier.
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s/funnier/more accurate/
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Yes, it's exhausting trying to figure out how to dismiss the stupid notification without it opening the App/Play store. (Hint: clicking the 'x' doesn't always dismiss it.) And every time you visit the stupid site it asks again and again. I don't visit some sites now because of this.
Re:Wow, someone gets it (Score:4, Insightful)
the design team removes all unnecessary design. For example, the pages on Gov.UK – the central portal – don’t have any pictures on them. This is because they distract from the information on the page, and user research showed that they reduced the clarity.
...
“It’d be nice if they like it, don’t get me wrong, but liking is not really a useful metric.” Instead his team looked to see if users have completed an online transaction, or stopped halfway through. Equally, did they find the information they needed and leave a webpage, or did they have to search for more information?
As opposed to having graphical designers design web sites.
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I'm just going to leave this here . . . . [tumblr.com]
That's what I've been saying all along (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of our customers insist on having "an app" for their brand. All the app does is embed their website in an embedded browser and provide some navigation buttons to get to different web pages!!! What a waste. I've always thought a responsive website is the way to go unless you have a good reason to create a native app that might work offline. For example, an alarm clock app, a compass app, etc.
Re:That's what I've been saying all along (Score:5, Interesting)
Apps are about marketing; not technology. Having an icon on your device that shows [insert brand here] keeps it in your head.
Also, EVERY ONE of them wants to send you notifications. Why? So that they can splash their crap on your screen. "On SALE!" or "Check out our new content!" - while sending more ad revenue our way. And you take notice of it before swiping it away thnking it might be email. Now, of course many of us don't allow such nonsense but someone who's hooked on say shoes, LOVES the Zappos notifications! I bet their app has sold more shoes than any of their web page ads.
Mobile devices have become the best targeted advertising platform ever!
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Want your icon on the device? Use http://realfavicongenerator.ne... [realfavicongenerator.net]
Re:That's what I've been saying all along (Score:4, Insightful)
Hell, that's what Apple said in the beginning when they released the first iPhone with no app store and told everyone that web apps were the proper way to do things, going forward. But everyone flipped their shit, castigated Apple over it, started jailbreaking their iPhones to run Cydia's app store, and generally demanding the ability to produce native apps, not web apps. Who knows whether Apple relented and changed course; or if apps were the plan all along but just weren't ready at the first iPhone's release.
I've no sympathy at all for the people who are now whining about apps. They asked for... demanded even... them. They got them. Live with your choices, people.
Re:That's what I've been saying all along (Score:4, Insightful)
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Agreed. I have an app for Deutsche Bahn. The UI is better (waaaaay better) than their website, and notably, I can buy tickets on their website and they appear on my phone and the guy on the train can scan the phone screen. I like that. It is also useful when I am offline, which happens quite often on a train. The ticket is still there.
I also run a weather app on my ipad. This app has a handy rain radar. Now it DOES have a web version, but that is full of ads and I have to log in every time (and since I clea
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Modern "apps" also require an intermediary between the developer and the customer that doesn't exist with "full blown applications" or websites. A certain degree of control is taken away from both the developer and the end user.
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Responsive websites are all crap too. Browsers naturally layout the page to fit into the browser window. If you design the website properly, you don't need a bunch of JS to mess with the layout. There already is a layout engine, everyone please stop making your own slower ones. This latest fad is taking existing functionality from the browser and moving it to each individual web page. Their marketing team really did a good job of selling this bullshit.
The purpose of a browser. HTML isn't PDF (Score:5, Informative)
> Browsers naturally layout the page to fit into the browser window. If you design the website properly, you don't need a bunch of JS to mess with the layout. There already is a layout engine, everyone please stop making your own slower ones.
Exactly. This is the difference between PDF and HTML - the entire job of a browser is to render the page appropriately for the size of the window, the user's preferred font size, etc. 80% of what a web designer needs to do is simply don't set the width of anything. The browser knows how wide a word is. Then learn the CSS for what yiu actually want, frequently margin and padding. You add margin above something by setting the MARGIN, NOT by moving it down by 60 pixels. Try 1em margin as a starting point.
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Uhm, the whole point of responsive web design is to NOT use JS to run a layout engine and only use CSS to cover the tricky cases by...leveraging the layout engine.
And since this is very hard (and CSS is waaaay behind the curve) sometimes you do need JS.
In addition, browser layout engines can't handle quite a few cases where Apple's iOS constraint system works very well, which is another plus for apps.
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I have a web app [transsee.ca]. The first frequently asked question I get from uses, is do I have an app in the app store. I'm not sure why.
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ppk, the god of mobile web design thinks blocking zoom should be a criminal offense. He knows about a cases where an emergency durgeon almost could not reach a patient because of zoom-blocking thing.
Web app vs app (Score:5, Informative)
There are many advantages to use a web app, you can serve all platforms, past, present and future with one program, you can push updates immediately, without waiting for anyone's approval.
There are disadvantages, like they don't work without internet access, but there are many cases where internet access is needed anyway.
Another disadvantages is that uses can block ads on web apps, not generally not regular apps, which is probably be biggest reason many companies push apps, but that also doesn't apply here.
Re:Web app vs app (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, if you write the web app correctly with the offline.manifest file, you can make much of the site work offline. I've implemented a Cordova application that uses the offline manifest and local storage to enable a user to interact with the system and then sync back to the main server once the network connection is reestablished. You just have to cache a lot of the "driving" data and make sure that you don't exceed local storage. But it works.
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ServiceWorkers are the new tech for enabling offline Web apps. Much better than the old HTML5 offline manifest.
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>> (web apps) don't work without internet access
Check out what HTML5 does and get back to us.
>> uses can block ads on web apps, not generally not regular apps, which is probably be biggest reason many companies push apps
Yes, and that native apps can easily scour your information and upload it to the mothership. (Though it doesn't make sense for "brand" apps - it's the entertainment apps that benefit from higher-vie
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The design and engineering issues haven't changed really. People like to think that the new shiny shiny is all that but it's probably just a 3rd generation rehash of something from before you were born.
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One more disadvantage - the need to temporarily store your data, or risk user frustration. A lot of mobile web browsers don't cache web pages, and the only page actually loaded in memory is the currently active one. Switch to another tab or page or whatever, and that tab loads up fresh, while the old tab is usually discarded.
This can be problematic if you have a multi-stage form because as the user fills it in, they may need to reference other data. But when they do, they lose the current page and all the d
Re: Web app vs app (Score:2)
What I love most about web pages is you can "open link in new tab" (often) to make up for Poor ui or slow internet, or just to stack up a bunch of things to do in turn.
Almost no apps allow for this.
This is better (Score:1)
Half of company apps are just crippled versions of their mobile website anyway.
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Which makes them doubly crippled as the mobile website is almost never as fully functioned as the desktop one, even though modern smart phones really can handle all of it.
I'm sick of fighting with websites trying to figure out how to get the "real" site on my phone, I NEVER, EVER want to see a "mobile" version of any website. 100% of the time the mobile site is less functional on my phone than the desktop version. ... Slashdot are you listening?...
ironic given the first iPhone (Score:3)
the first iPhone relied on the web it didnt have "apps"
it was only after the terrible web pages did they resort to containerised web pages... That game developers abused and we have the situation today...
now with the need to support android + iPhone + iPad + windows + Mac are people finally understanding that Marked up Text is much healthier and CHEAPER
its called a website and there are standards (shocking)
if your spending the peoples money (government depts) create a website that is useable
(if you must create a branded app I understand there are tools for that, they will allow you to package a website)
regards
John Jones
Apps (Score:5, Insightful)
An app is an application. It does something. It transforms and processes some kind of data.
Most of the time, you do NOT want an app to process or transform data, you just want it to send and receive data to a service, and most of the time you just want it to receive.
A website is therefore much better suited to this. And unless you intend to calculate your tax return on a smartphone, you really have little need for "apps" at all for government services. Given that browsers can upload video, camera images, microphone sound etc. nowadays if you really want, the usage of an actual app is rare.
An "app" is something like a game, or a web browser itself, or an office suite, or a calculator. It ISN'T a list of symptoms for NHS online healthchecks (or even a questionnaire), or information on how to renew your driving licence, or a list of laws and their effects. That's a not an app.
People have blurred the definition but the distinction still stands. All the "apps" that are really websites in fancy containers - even offline websites - aren't actually any good as "apps". An app actually DOES something on the client device. Creates documents, organises a raw database, syncs your files or lets you read your email.
Good (Score:3)
Even if you make apps, you need to make them for a number of platforms and then some of them have dropped support for older devices. And you need to maintain a website anyway on top of that.
Excellent decision, Mr. Terrett.
Finally coming back around (Score:3)
Everything goes in cycles. Apps originally came out because the iPhone didn't have Flash capability in its browser. Now, companies need to write apps for Android, iOS and (maybe) Windows Phone. Each is built on a completely different SDK, with different coding methods, and each one needs to be updated any time the web site introduces a breaking change. Not to mention, you need to squash bugs in different ecosystems too.
I can see, for example, banking or transit apps. Those require a native interface optimized for the phone or tablet they're running on. But if I'm unemployed, I'm not going to download and use the state Department of Labor App to collect unemployment, or the US State Department's app to apply for a passport renewal. Basic services should stick to a web interface that's easily skinned for mobile.
Re: Finally coming back around (Score:1)
Nobody needs to write for Windows phone.
With a couple of exceptions in specific countries , it has no significant market share (i.e. Less than 1%)
So it's really iOS + Android presentation layers. How expensive that is depends on how broad a target you want to hit on the Android side.
But the subtext of the original GDS thesis is really - a good user centric web site is better than a series of bad (aka undercresourced) Apps for certain kinds of use-cases.
The same thinking will lead you clearly to IF an App is
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Websites are perfectly capable of taking advantage of GPS. don't need an app for that.
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Why can you see banking apps? My bank's app is just a re-packaged version of their website. what reason does it have to be an app?
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cashing a cheque is done simply by uploading a photo of the cheque, when did websites stop having the ability to accept file transfers?
Additionally... Cheque?? what backwards country are you in where anyone still uses those?
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Lol,
I find internal marketting is a big reason for this.
My old firm had a web app. It was maintainable and slow.
Nothing to do with the nature of web apps or anything.
The front end requirements were pretty basic (text boxes, lists....)
But the internal marketing became:
We need Native. Native is faster. Native is better.
Basically, the failure to write a good web app was blamed on the technology.
So a whole new division was formed for Android and IOS apps, writing everything native.
Of course, this was hugely cos
Shhh...you're going to kill off an industry! (Score:2)
Apps!</snark>
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Fortunately you can disable apps the phone company will not allow you to remove.
One too many adds popped up in church with humiliating results.
Ads that start out-loud "I am committed to Sex!" Can't mute it, sit on it until it's done then kill it with fire.
(App)le Just Pooped A Little (Score:2, Troll)
Concur. (Score:2)
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You haven't needed to manually type in an URL since the first search engine was created. That's pretty much the dawn of time for this particular discussion.
OTOH, you still have to type things in order to install some platform specific binary. Chances are that you will have to navigate to the same website in the process. So the app install process will always be a superset of bookmarking the website.
Lame. (Score:1)
What he failed to point out is that the whole reorganisation under gov.uk involves removal of information, removal of services, and writing that generally reads like it's aimed at a 5 year old. Nobody asked for it except the pigs at the trough / contractors who got paid to build it.
Saying, "We didn't ALSO use apps!" is like saying of the Iraq war, "At least we didn't use nukes on them!" Give yourself a gold star, you useless cunt.
UK gov did not get the memo (Score:2)
Very common for "Apps" to be nothing more than software firing up a browser control to display a website while running malware at your expense in the background.
The reason UK government is confused is because they look at this and immediately recognize it to be redundant, pointless and dumb... which while technically true is besides the point.
The reason you create an "App" on someone's device is because you then get to do things and exfiltrate all kinds of information no sane browser would dream of enablin
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Very common for "Apps" to be nothing more than software firing up a browser control to display a website while running malware at your expense in the background.
The reason UK government is confused is because they look at this and immediately recognize it to be redundant, pointless and dumb... which while technically true is besides the point.
The reason you create an "App" on someone's device is because you then get to do things and exfiltrate all kinds of information no sane browser would dream of enabling access to by default. This was never about saving money or perusing a logical course of action. It for the most part is simply about p0wning your audience because fucking people over because you can get away with it is the way this industry rolls these days.
It isn't the govt that has missed the point, it is you. Yes, I agree, the point of an app is all about "p0wning your audience" and "fucking people over" by getting lots of data by the back door, but the government already has all that, they already p0wn you, they are fucking you over anyway.
What would an app give the government? Your location (you're using a cellphone - already got it), your call history (got it), your salary, your tax details, your medical records, your bank details, your browsing histor