1.2 Document Outline
This paper has a structure composed of 6 main
sections and is organized as follows. Section 2
includes an overview of the background investigated.
Section 3 describes the requirements of the solution.
Section 4 presents the implementation of the solution.
Section 5 provides an overview of the evaluation
performed and the results reached. Section 6 presents
the conclusions and research future work.
2 BACKGROUND
This section is composed of the subsections that show
the research and analysis performed for gaining
knowledge to reach the solution definition. In
subsection 2.1 it is reviewed the available
frameworks to develop the solution. In subsection 2.2
it is presented the basis of mobile marketing. In
subsection 2.3, a set of guidelines to develop the
interface and experience are stablished. In subsection
2.4 it is analysed and compared current medical
appointment booking applications.
2.1 Mobile Development Frameworks
The goal for the MedClick mobile application is to be
available in the two most popular mobile operating
systems in the world, iOS and Android (StatCounter
2018). One way to make this possible would be to
code natively for both operating systems. However,
this would be very time consuming because it is the
same as creating two different applications in two
different programming languages and with two
different frameworks (e.g., XCode for iOS and
Android Studio for Android), for the same purpose.
Another way to develop the solution is to use a cross-
platform development framework.
Cross-platform mobile application development
frameworks have emerged with the goal of simplify
the development of cross-platform mobile
applications, reduce the development, maintenance
costs and the time-to-market of the applications
(Martinez and Lecomte, 2017). With these
frameworks, the developer is able to share the code
between the platforms, achieving the principle of
“code once, deploy everywhere”.
2.2 Mobile Marketing
“Mobile marketing refers to the two or multi-way
communication and promotion of an offer between a
firm and its customers using a mobile medium, de-
vice, or technology” (Leppaniemi, 2008). This is a
different way of communicating with the customers,
not just waiting for the customer to interact with the
company mobile application for example, but giving
incentives to use it. Mobile marketing can provide
customers with time, location sensitive (Gana,
Thomas, and Kashif, 2017) and personalized
information that promotes goods, services and ideas
(Shankar and Balasubramanian 2009).
2.3 User Interface (UI) and User
Experience (UX)
When developing a mobile application, one of the
most important aspects of it is the user interface and
user experience. What the user sees and feels when
using the application can determine the success of it.
The application might do what a user needs but if it
does it in a very unintuitive way, slowly or
confusingly, users will stop using it. (Dirin, and Laine
2018).
2.3.1 User Testing
User testing should be performed on every project
because even the best product designer cannot predict
every possible action and interaction of the user. The
best way to ensure a good User Experience is to have
insights from the users themselves. It allows the
designers to identify resistance and flaws in the user
experience they are designing. This way, that design
flaw can be addressed before entering in production
or being deployed (Aranyi, and Schaik, 2016).
Besides metrics like the time users spend on each
screen of the application, users can also give their
opinion about the experience using the application.
Usually, the sooner the user testing starts, the better it
is to find problems with the solution proposed and
solve them with less work required.
2.3.2 Mobile Applications User Experience
Design
There is no single definition of a good user
experience. A good user experience is one that meets
a particular user’s needs in the specific context of
using the product. However, there are some overall
principles to ensure that a mobile application has a
good experience.
First of all, when designing native platforms, the
designer should respect the platform and consistently
refer to the native operating system design guidelines.
Popular mobile operating systems are now providing
usability guidelines which focus mainly on