Do You Know? About The Software Product Interfaces

Product interfaces means all the possible hardware devices which are used to access or present any software products in the form of desktop, mobile web, mobile apps. Whether it’s iOS or Android. The following are the all the possible product interfaces

1. Desktop
2. Laptop
3. Tablet
4. Mobile
5. Android App
6. iOS App

These are 6 types of majorly used product interfaces. We can easily understand all the product interfaces by the help of the following diagram.

1. Desktop — We all know about desktop interfaces. This is one the first and oldest product interfaces which is widely used in all organizations, companies, homes and everywhere. We can’t take it from one place to another easily so it’s a static kind of product interface. We can say that normally this product interface is widely used in government organizations like schools, colleges, hospitals, railway stations and airports etc. Mostly this is used by graphics design teams in companies. Because the design teams need a good and wide screen to see the product properly.
2. Laptop — After the desktop this is the second widely used interface which is mostly used in private organizations and companies. Every private organization mostly uses this product interface for their employees. Although, companies still use desktops too but this is one of the favorite product interfaces which is used mostly. The major benefit of this product interface is that this can be taken from one place to another place easily. So, this is the reason that this is used by most of the companies for their employees. So that in case of urgency employees could work from home whenever it’s needed. Mostly this product interface is used by all the departments like in engineering team for development, in design teams for creating design, in product team for product development in form of wireframes and BRDs and PRDs etc.
3. Tablet — This is one of the product interfaces which is mostly used for some demo purposes within the teams. Although, this is used at receptions in companies as well but not widely. This is used by the QA team to test the product in tablet view. The QA team used all the product interfaces to test the product in all resolutions so this is one of them.
4. Mobile — This is mostly used product interface. Most of the traffic comes from this interface because everyone has smartphones nowadays. The people who are not aware about apps but mobile phones are used everywhere by everyone. Anything can be accessible nowadays from everywhere using mobile phones. So, that’s the reason this is the most widely used product interface. If anyone can not afford app development for their product but the product could be reached in the form of a website and could be accessible to everyone’s phone which is actually called a mobile site.
5. Android Apps — This is also an important and widely used product interface for android users. The Android Apps support the android operating systems and are developed for android devices only. These are platform dependent applications which are used to develop in a specific language(Kotlin or Java) and used by only the smartphone or devices which use only android operating systems. But as these are native apps and accessed fast and smoothly compared to mobile web. All the android features can be used in android native apps.
6. iOS App — This is also an important and widely used product interface for iPhone users. Similarly, the iOS apps developed for the iPhone users. These apps run only on the iOS platform. These are also platform dependent apps and developed in a specific language like swift or objective — c

Why do we need Android and iOS apps while we already have a mobile web interface in place?

I know those who have a programming background know the answer but those who are not from programming background would be curious about the answer. This is a genuine question for those people. The mobile web applications are accessible directly through the internet via mobile web browsers while mobile apps are directly installed on phones. There is no need for mobile browsers to access mobile applications. Some of them could be run offline without an internet connection but that depends on the nature of the product. This is called mobile app development. We can divide the mobile app development in two parts as

1. Native — The native mobile apps run on specific operating systems and are able to use all the smartphone features like GPS, location, contacts etc. So, that’s the reason the Android apps are developed only for android phones. Similarly, iOS apps are developed only for iPhone.

2. Hybrid — As the name suggests its a combination of mobile web and native apps. The hybrid apps that are similarly installed are the same as native apps but for some features used from native apps and some features are used directly from web browsers using mobile web applications. So, that is the reason it’s called hybrid app development.

Mobile web, android and iOS interfaces are widely used these days. Any business can be started with mobile web but as the business grows android and iOS product interfaces are much required.

Conclusion

Finally, there are 6 types of software product interfaces which are used to access, show or present any product via internet. Anything which is accessible through internet via our mobile web, mobile app, laptop or desktop is called a software product. All these are software product interfaces.