Paper Reading #17: Mobia Modeler: easing the creation process of mobile applications for non-technical users

Reference Information:

Title: Mobia Modeler: Easing the Creation Process of Mobile Applications for Non-Technical Users

Authors: Florence Balagtas-Fernandez, Max Tafelmayer, Heinrich Hussmann

Conference: IUI '10 Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces

Summary:

In this paper, the authors talk about the tools that they developed called the Mobia Modeler. This tool is aimed at the users without technical background or programming expertise. It facilitates these users to develop mobile phone apps.

The development of mobile applications has now extended from mobile network providers into the hands of ordinary people as organizations and companies encourage people to come up with their own software masterpieces by opening up SDKs, APIs and other development tools.

However, as of the moment, these APIs and tools are only usable by people with programming skills. There is a scarcity of tools that enable users without programming experience to easily build customized mobile applications.

The paper talks about Platform Independent Model and Platform Specific Model. The users create apps using the graphical user interface and the program translates the graphical model to the code taking into consideration the relationship between different modules.

In this paper, the authors present a tool and framework that would enable non-technical people to create their own domain-specific mobile applications. The tool features a simple user-interface that features configurable components to easily create mobile applications. As a proof of concept, they focus on the creation of applications in the domain of mobile health monitoring.

Discussion:

I don't think this program can be used to develop complex applications, however, it can be very easily used to develop simple apps designed to solve simple tasks. I am currently developing a phone app and the process is indeed time-consuming. I can see how this program will generate a huge inflow of app developers and an exponential increase in the number of apps available in the app market.