Mobile on ODC
Portfolio
2.2
Mobile development is a whole new ball game. To the basic building blocks of data and UI, you have to add unique device capabilities. Your choice of tech stack—hybrid or native—entails an entirely new range of pros and cons, especially for the end-user experience. Furthermore, the job isn't done when a new revision of code reaches production; it's only done when a new package version is created, or when a submission is finally approved by the app stores—and don't get me started on store rules.
The complexity of this project was inversely proportional to how simply it could be defined. You could describe it in a single sentence: design the full software development life cycle (SDLC) management system for mobile apps. But bringing it to life was one of the most challenging, fulfilling, and fun projects of my career.
The process
This project came about in the context of the release of a totally new version of our product, and as such there was an opportunity to start from as much of a blank slate as possible in software design. In the older version of the OutSystems product (O11), the mobile SDLC journey was scattered across three different consoles, each with its own dedicated web space and login experience. We also lacked a mature design system to unify the look and feel, and the content itself occasionally felt disconnected.
Our goal was to create a unified, integrated journey — from mobile app development to package creation — that would allow any user, regardless of their technical expertise, to navigate the full SDLC process in just a few minutes.
Before building any journey maps, we started with an object-oriented UX (OOUX) approach to map out the main objects and actions across the mobile lifecycle. This became the basis of our conceptual framework, heavily guiding our terminology and overall content strategy.
To design the simplest journey possible without compromising value for the developer, we conducted dozens of interviews with professional mobile developers throughout the design process. This allowed us to clearly define user needs at the outset, and confidently validate and iterate on our design proposals in the later stages.
This mobile SDLC journey was also crucial in shaping the design system for the OutSystems Developer Cloud (ODC), spearheading some of its most compelling use cases and unique UI patterns.
Results
The mobile offering of this new product version (ODC) is used by approximately half of our customer base. Many of these customers rely on the mobile SDLC journey to build and manage B2C applications that reach millions of users every day.
The new mobile SDLC journey (ODC) was unanimously regarded as a massive step up from the previous version (O11).