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Why UK's Government Digital Service Decided To Ditch Apps (govinsider.asia)
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.
I am literally so tired of visiting a website and having it pop up a download notification for another new app.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
£5.6B is hardly chickenfeed in anyone's terms.
It's about 4-5% of our National Health Service budget, for starters.
I'm on a small government-ish entity's dev team (I'm ~0.3 of the team) and I wholeheartedly agree with this guy. Our apps are always, always web-only. We simply cannot afford to re-build (and maintain) things for various devices. And why would you, when all these devices have browsers, which are essentially interpreters for remote applications. Not that native apps in are a bad idea in every scenario, but blindly building them because trendy is stupid. Long live the webapp.
> 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.