It is the foundation of a custom mobile application development. If it lacks any essential parts, it can threaten the project's overall success.
It will depend on how large the application is. The complexity of creating high-quality architecture will also depend on the type of architecture being used. Using the correct architecture will save time and cost, as different models work well in different situations.
First, you must understand that mobile app architecture can be divided into layers. Understanding the layers helps mobile app developers to better understand how architectures work.
Let's take a look at layers, which are the components of mobile app architecture that include:
- Presentation Layer: Components for user interface (UI) and components for user processes
- Business Layer: Application facade, components, business entities, and business workflows
- Service Layer: Service interfaces and message types
- Data Access Layer: Data access components, data helpers/utilities, and service agents
- Presentation Layer
The presentation layer describes how the application will look to users. When creating this layer, mobile app developers need to identify and process the UI components based on client needs. It is important to consider the client's requirements regarding deployment, such as which device types will be supported. Tablet, phone, desktop etc.
A second critical requirement is to choose the right data format and use powerful data validation safeguards to protect all apps against invalid data entry.
UX considerations can help reduce the need for presentation layer safeguards. Consider using a data picker widget instead of a text box in which the user enters the date. The security concerns behind the "powerful validation safeguards" are then in place to protect the app from being misused or attacked.
This is because a good architecture allows the presentation layer to be easily replaced or updated without requiring changes to the data format. For example, a view model should not be tied to a particular screen.
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Business Layer
The business layer contains the definitions of data used by the app, the resourcing of data (loading from databases or networks) and data processing for display in the presentation layer. It also contains the business logic, which is the type of processing the app needs to perform on the data to make it meaningful for the user.
The business layer can be described as the "under-the-hood" of an app. The business layer comprises business processes, business entities, components, and two sub-layers called the domain model or service layers.
Data Access Layer
This layer is crucial for securing data transactions. Mobile app developers must consider the maintenance side of data and ensure that business needs can easily modify the data layer.
Data access layers include data-specific components like access components, utilities, and service agents.
This layer contains a hidden gem, which can be divided into two subheads.
- Persistence Layer: This layer provides simplified data access and is stored in the mobile application backend architecture. This is where the decision about the data format that the other layers should work with is made. The data layer deals with the format of the data source. You can use a Restful API or Firebase API, such as a real-time database. A persistence layer of an application must store data (or the state of objects) in permanent storage. It also has to guarantee that the data can be retrieved, or object state, whenever required. The persistence layer can use the cloud to permit multiple devices to access the same persistent data and to make the data more durable.
- Network Layer: This layer allows for networking calls and is responsible for providing the path for network communication. The network layer is responsible for setting up logical connections, routing, data forwarding, and reporting on delivery errors.
Service Layer
This component is newer and less commonly used in mobile architecture. It resides between data access and presentation layers. This layer specifies the service interface, enforces it and provides translator components to translate data between the business layer and external data contracts. The service layer is intended to separate the presentation from the business logic/data model details. This allows multiple presentation layers (web, mobile, or VR) to be used with the same service layer. Furthermore, the business logic/data model can be updated without affecting any presentation layer.
These components make up the service layer:
- Service Interfaces
- Types of Message
Communication
How you create the infrastructure to communicate with each application component is an important and supporting factor in the design of your application. All support components should communicate with one another.
Take, for example:
This is when the user adds or updates data to the application. These data may need to remain permanently stored. You may need to update the data store via the data layer.
You can count on communication between components located on the same physical level.
Suppose you deploy components and layers on different servers or client machines. In that case, it is important to consider how components within the layers will interact reliably. This is true for any mobile device, although the communication methods may differ due to smaller hardware.
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What is the importance of architecture for a successful app development project?
Developers can work faster and more efficiently with a clear mobile app architecture. Developers have greater control over the data flow and work of their applications. Clear and well-defined architectures make testing easier and increase the quality of applications by reducing defect rates.
A successful app architecture helps users complete their functions. The app architecture is what guides an app's navigation. The great architecture will ensure that the app landscape is reliable and scalable. It will be easier to add or modify features if your business needs to change.
Before developing your mobile app architecture, you must consider the following important factors and elements.
- You should consider these important elements and factors before designing your app architecture.
- Device Types: Which devices does your app need to run on? This information is essential to ensure you choose your devices' best mobile app dimensions.
- Bandwidth scenarios: Will your app work with different bandwidth situations? This is crucial because it will help you understand how your app will work with different internet connections.
- Navigation Methods: How can users navigate the app?
- User Interface (UI). How will your app interact with your target audience, and what will it look like?
- Real-Time updates vs push notifications: How will the app engage users consistently?
Types of devices
- You need to think about the different types of devices.
- How your app will perform on each screen (size, DPI).
- How your app will work on different devices (tablets, smartphones and other smartphone models)
- How compatible is the app with the processor (CPU)?
- What amount of RAM will your app require (RAM)
Your app development process will be more reliable and stable if you pay close attention to hardware and software details.
This section will remind you of one thing: You want to deliver the same amazing quality on all platforms.
Bandwidth Scenarios
Next, consider whether your mobile app is compatible with any internet connection. This is particularly important if your goal is to reach rural audiences.
The availability of the internet will vary widely around the globe. Some countries may have 5G, while others still use 3G.
This is why it is important to ensure your mobile product provides a pleasant experience for all users, no matter where they are.
Navigation methods
Navigation allows users to navigate through apps. It is a tug-of-war between app restrictions and user expectations. Navigation is simply moving from one screen to another in an app to accomplish tasks.
These are some of the most popular navigation types that you can include in your mobile phone:
- The Hamburger Menu: This button, also known as the hamburger icon or the hamburger menu, opens into a navigation drawer or side menu. It usually has three lines. Although this button is available in many apps, it is most commonly used by mobile-first websites.
- Navigation Bars (Top and Bottom): This row of navigation buttons can be found at the bottom of your app screen. Users can easily navigate between the top-level views by simply tapping. This feature is active in apps such as Instagram, LinkedIn, and Spotify at the bottom of your screen.
- Cards: Cards are a collection of content and actions related to a single topic. They can be used as "containers" and can hold nearly anything. Cards can be used with different types of content, so they're great for mobile apps with a lot of content. They also help users navigate the app's various sections.
- Tabs organize content across multiple screens, data sets, and other interactions. This is what apps like Facebook use.
- Gesture-Based Navigation: Gesture-based navigation allows users to quickly swipe in the direction they want to navigate through an application or perform a specific action. This feature is found in popular dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble. It is almost always used during the setup section of a user's new app.
- Floating Action Button (FAB): A floating button (FAB) is the primary action on a screen. A floating action button (FAB) performs the screen's primary or most common action. This button is used by Twitter, Gmail, and Google Photos.
- Navigation Drawer: These navigation drawers allow you to access destinations within your app. Gmail and Facebook both use the navigation drawer.
- Navigation Rail: Navigation rails allow easy movement between apps' primary destinations.
Listen to your customers. While some styles are more user-friendly, others may make users feel lost or confused. You can use the data from feedback and user responses to determine which design is best for you.
Design of User Interface (UI).
Beautiful UI will make the app market swoon. This essential feature should be taken seriously and treated with care.
It is built on top of the app's presentation layer and becomes your users' centre point of interaction. This is how you can ensure customer satisfaction.
Real-Time Updates vs Push notifications
When applied correctly to your outreach strategy, push notifications can have a huge impact on application engagement. Notifications remind the customer about the existence of the application. This strategic tool is theoretically fully proofed when the user returns to it.
However, push notifications can be misused to cause customers to delete their applications or generate negative publicity.
Recent statistics show that 10% of users can disable push notifications weekly, while 6% can disable apps. Users don't find push notifications useful, 31% do not find them helpful, and only 18% find them useful.
You can create a perfect communication channel closer to your customer by providing fresh content and real-time updates. The application is a journey, and the user will want to join you on your journey.
What information does the user need? How often should I inform them about a promotion? These questions should be considered when deciding on a push notifications strategy.
A mobile push message sent in real-time to customers creates urgency. This message can be targeted at customers and trigger an impulse purchase. It is not guaranteed that the user will take the desired action or use the app actively at the time.
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An illustration of a Mobile App Architecture
A high-quality mobile app architecture makes it easy to develop and maintain a mobile application.
It must also be flexible and able to expand, change and expand.
Clean architecture, for example, is an ideal fit for large-scale projects that have huge budgets.
This architecture allows for easy installation of plug-ins as well as efficient troubleshooting. It shouldn't be built using frameworks. The program code must be creating an app from scratch.
Here's an example of clean mobile app architecture.
Each layer in a mobile app is distinct from other programs and components. You will be able to access a key fragment containing the logic of your application and important objects.
The dependency rule connects all layers. It states that dependencies can only exist within the source code.
Simply stated, a code from an inner circle cannot be used to mention anything from the outer circle. This is true for functions, variables, and any other entity.
Android Mobile App Architecture
Custom Android application development are complex and can contain many components, such as activities, fragments and content providers.
Android apps are often made up of multiple components. Users also interact with many apps at once, so apps must adapt to various user-driven workflows.
Additionally, the user or operating system can launch app components separately or out of order. These events are not under your control. You should ensure that your components don't contain any app data or state. Your app components also shouldn't be dependent on each other.
How should your app design look if you don't want to use app components to store state and data?
- The principles that should guide your actions are:
- Separation of Concerns
- Drive UI from a Model
iOS Mobile App Architecture
You can easily divide the standard iOS app architecture into four layers, starting at the bottom and ending at the top.
- The Core OS Layer (Kernel).
- The Core Services Layer
- The Media Layer
- Cocoa Touch Layer (Interface).
Enterprise Mobile App Architecture
Many companies use corporate apps to make it easy for clients and employees to communicate with them. This allows them to run their businesses smoothly. Within an application, purchases, communication and filtering of products and services from the company are all possible.
Modern businesses must strategically use IT technologies to achieve competitive advantages in the market.
Similar to the enterprise mobile app architecture, there are often known discrepancies between IT infrastructure and business requirements. This is due to unpredictable and rapid market changes.
This scenario is most common because of insufficient speed, low scalability, reliability, and the complexity of maintaining and updating software as needed.
Best Practices for Mobile Application Architecture
These are the best practices to follow when developing and designing your mobile app architecture:
- Separation Of Concerns: You can break down your mobile app into separate sections that address a different concern.
- Single Responsibility Principle: Each component or module should only be responsible for a single feature or functionality.
- The Law of Demeter: Also known as the Principle of Least Information, the Law of Demeter is a design guideline that guides software developers in developing software applications. It states that objects should not know the inner details of other objects.
- Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY). Only one component should provide a particular functionality. The functionality should not be repeated in any other components. Software development principles such as Don't Repeat Yourself aim to reduce repetition by replacing software patterns with abstractions and using data normalization to avoid redundancy.
- Do not do BDUF (Big Design Up Front). If you have an MVP application and the requirements are unclear, or you think there might be a chance that the design will evolve, don't make a huge design effort too soon.
- Composition over Inheritance: When reusing functionality is possible, choose composition over inheritance. Because inheritance increases dependency between parent classes and child classes, it limits the use of child classes.
Mobile Application Architecture Checklist
All applications require a well-designed architecture, no matter how complex or simple. The proper architecture is important for mobile applications. It will save you time and money.
Do you want to find out if the mobile architecture of an app project you are currently working on is solid?
Here's a list of questions that you should ask:
Efficiency: Can the app perform all the tasks and functions under any conditions? Does the app work well?
Flexibility: Can the chosen solution be changed quickly and without any errors? Dynamically, is it possible for one element to change without affecting or influencing other elements negatively?
Extensibility: You can add as many functions to the application as you like.
Scalability: Does it reduce the time required to develop and update? Is its solid architecture able to allow parallel development?
Testability: Can your mobile app's architecture be easily tested? This means that bugs and glitches will be discovered and fixed more frequently.
Understanding: Does your code make it easy for all developers to comprehend? Notes or logs can be helpful if many people are working on the application. Good architecture will allow beginners to quickly understand the project.
Here are the Key Steps to Selecting the Right Architecture for Your Mobile App
Do user research
A wide variety of methods and practices can be used in user research. This can include conducting ethnographic interviews with a specific target group to a classic usability study.
It is important to remember that all user research, no matter how it is done, places people at the centre of your design process and product line. User research can be used to inspire future designs.
It is common to divide user research into quantitative and qualitative methods.
- Quantitative research tools include surveys and traditional market research. Quantitative user research methods measure user behaviour in a way that can be quantified and used to analyze current and future statistics.
- Qualitative research tools include interviews and usability tests. These tools are more hands-on and open-ended and can be used to gain a deeper understanding of the lives and experiences of users.
Each research method has its advantages and disadvantages. Each method can be used to achieve your goals.
The method you choose will depend on your goals and help you guide your app's UX/UI decisions.
Other factors and practical considerations will also be important, as you would expect. For example, what type of project are you currently working on? This decision can also be affected by your budget and time constraints. Let's look at other reasons why users should be involved in your design process.
Create MVP Feature Sets
MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product.
What does this mean?
Any company involved in developing mobile apps must be open to new ideas to keep up with its competitors.
MVP is an indispensable and useful tool that determines the likely reaction of the audience to the app's launch. This process can provide valuable data that could be used to enhance the app.
MVP's greatest feature is the freedom to release your app to a limited number of customers or launch it directly into the market. This allows you to evaluate the effectiveness and engagement of your app with a small audience or large group of people.
Polish Key Functionality
After you've completed the preparations and reality check, it is possible to start working closely with certain platforms or offline functions. Considering all technical aspects and the advantages and disadvantages of various architectural models and techniques is important.
Check out our comparison of different app development options, including web vs Native vs Hybrid.
QA Test App
This solution will provide intuitive functionality and smoother operation for your project.
You can use your information about the users to create a solution that will meet the customer's needs and solve any debugging problems.
Cross-platform development is possible if your users use different platforms for their daily tasks than Android or iOS.
These two platforms are sufficient to make native app development a viable option.
Once you have made that decision, the core functionality can be developed. You can create the perfect environment for your customers. A user-friendly navigation system is essential for anyone who wants to work offline or find interesting content on a feed.
Last but not least, make sure to ask your users if they enjoy the app. Proper architecture is directly linked to the ability of your app to reach your target audience.
Customers are looking for convenience at the end of each day. This includes the availability of the home menu, lightning-fast load times, stored contents, engaging notifications, eye candy widgets, and stored content.
Ensure that your app meets these requirements for audience-specific reasons and general preferences.
Optimize Budget
After you have gathered all the information you need about your customer and created a list of potential enhanced features, you can calculate the cost.
Successful mobile application architecture always balances key requirements and company funds.
To better understand future planning, you can also review all maintenance and support costs. If necessary, consider the decision to push to multiple platforms or native apps. Remember to consider the return on investment when deciding on the mobile app architecture.
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Principles of Mobile Application Architecture
This guide is intended to be used as a reference and a cheat sheet. It also contains the essential principles that every mobile application architecture must follow. Your application's launch and life will be a success if you follow the correct guidelines.
- Portability: The system's ability to respond to environmental changes.
- Maintainability: This is the ability to adapt to changing environments. Mobile applications require maintenance because of the changing market or the ease at wh
- ich a component can correct faults, improve performance or other attributes.
- Manageability refers to how easily and efficiently a software system can be monitored and maintained to maintain its performance, security, and smooth operation.
- Reusability: This refers to the reusability and protocol of components and protocols. It allows for faster application development and a structured approach to development.
- Testability: Each component must be tested separately. The mobile app must undergo a testing process to verify consistency under different conditions.
- Security: Customer data and security are an application's most important non-functional requirements. The application architecture should be strong enough to fully secure the data used and consumed by the application.
- Performance: Users expect quick responses from mobile applications, especially when compared to desktop/web apps. Users will uninstall the app if the application takes too long to display their intent.
