Mobile & Touchscreen Apps

Mobile apps are ubiquitous and immensely useful, and for a lot of people, the best way to connect people to an idea or organization. Touchscreen kiosks are more localized, great for helping people access data from libraries, museums, building lobbies and the like. Context is key in well-designed tech, and Byte builds smart, well-designed mobile apps and kiosks.

Mobile apps are everywhere and are easily understood by almost everyone. They can be big global platforms, but they can also be targeted tools that help people achieve a goal or connect with a community. And creating an app these days doesn't require the budget it used to, using hybrid app technologies, we can build apps in a matter of weeks and keep the costs low.

Touchscreen kiosks are a great way to let people explore much larger sets of data in an easy and immediate fashion. People won't use their smart phones to explore a collection or dig into a complex set of data, the data is too far and the screens are too small. Touchscreens can be immersive, and help people understand scale and depth. They also have new tools and platforms that allow us to create for specific devices, making them speedy and very user responsive.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are ubiquitous, and the competition is fierce. There are close to 9 million apps and counting, so building an app will require more than a great app, it will require a strategy to get people to the app. As well, if the app is slow, has limited function or is otherwise a subpar experience, people will delete an app in a hot second.

Creating a quality mobile app is a multi-disciplinary effort, and involves user experience, content strategy, information architecture, and database design, with each part speaking to the business objectives of the app. We have experience with hundreds of applications for the mobile experience, and we've build many fully mobile only apps using hybrid approaches.

We create iOS apps and Android apps through a hybrid development process that feels fully native to each OS, uses native hardware tools like GPS, photos and push notifications. The real advantage is that the hybrid approach relies on one code base to make updates and changes easy. 

Mobile apps have their own challenges. Because of the small screens and the actual variety of sizes, we have to spend extra time planning out and wireframing using UX tools to ensure using the app is easy, intuitive and fun. App design is notoriously visually stagnant, and we need to find ways to express brand and personality that don't get in the way. And mobile apps are more of a published product, as there's app store approvals and timeframes associated with submitting an app. There's lots of small details that take extra time, like programming portrait versus landscape modes and designing for the gamut of app store collateral sizes.

We love the challenges, and we find ourselves to be better programmers because of the constraints. At the same time, we love the products that we build because we make time to make sure they work seamlessly and fit wonderfully into someone's pocket.

Our mobile app services include:

• Mobile app strategy
• Mobile web / content integration
• Mobile app usability (UX) and interface design
• iPhone and iPad app development
• Android app development, including phone and tablet development
• Hybrid Android & iPhone/iPad app development
• Data caching and progressive syncing for slow or offline use
• Mobile Content Management Systems
• App store and release management

Touchscreen Kiosks

As people who love design and love experiential interfaces, we love immersive kiosks. A good kiosk is fast, connects the visitor to the world of data and gives a sense of the beauty and workings underneath a set of data.

As the same time, most library and museum kiosks are missing great opportunities. We're not big fans of screens that look like televisions, it deadens the fun and makes the interaction feel like work. We're not big fans of a search system that doesn't involve a deeper discovery interface, and filters that so commonly leave people with no results. And so many kiosks we've seen don't have great UX, so even poking around isn't pleasing in so many cases. Loading search results from a server far away is no fun, either. These are all design, coding and hardware decisions that can be solved, and we're up for the challenge.

The ability to connect a kiosk to sensors, be it switches, cameras, dials, a Kinect, microphone, etc. opens the door to a more fun and interactive connection. The sheer size of a touchscreen can also blend the screen into a space and make a session joyful and deep.

Add more pictures of internal testing or image of the screens at the library.

Our touchscreen and kiosk services include:

• Kiosk strategy, research
• Touch interface wireframing, UX and accessibility design
• Touch interface design, custom drag / interactive events
• Kiosk content integration, content management and APIs
• Kiosk caching and progressive syncing for slow or offline use
• Local device IIIF, ContentDM data server
• Local device connections, including switches, sensors, Kinects
• Touchscreen and computer procurement
• Kiosk architectural design, accessibility
• Installation

The Byte difference

Unlike a lot of mobile app and touchscreen kiosk developers, we're not a build-it-and-run studio, instead we value our relationships. Relationships matter because a successful app will have a version 1.1, 1.5 and someday a 2.0. and the best way to build quality is to be responsible for the quality we put out there. So we don't cut corners or skip steps for profit because that doesn't create a successful mobile app or kiosk. We also build apps inhouse, avoiding the numerous pitfalls of offshore development.

We're picky about the mobile app and touchscreen kiosk projects we choose because we want to build quality iPhone and Android apps or immersive touchscreen apps and we want projects that make a better world.