No-Code · SaaS
One Mobile Studio — a no-code enterprise app builder
Mobile app development at enterprise scale was slow, expensive and duplicative. The CoE needed a toolchain that let non-engineers compose native Android and iOS apps without writing platform code.
- Role
- User Experience Designer
- Duration
- 1 year
- Year
- 2014
- Company
- Cognizant Mobile Center of Excellence
- Domain
- Enterprise · Low-code / No-code · Mobility
01
The problem
Mobile app development at enterprise scale was slow, expensive and duplicative. The CoE needed a toolchain that let non-engineers compose native Android and iOS apps without writing platform code.
02
The approach
Design the IA, builder canvas and component model for a drag-and-drop studio that lets business teams ship native mobile apps — with research grounded in how non-developers actually think about app structure.
Behavioural research
Ran contextual interviews with would-be builders — business analysts, ops leads and junior developers — to understand the mental models they already had for 'an app'.
Findings shaped the component taxonomy and the way the canvas reveals structure (screens, data, navigation) progressively.
Moderating an in-house hackathon
Moderated an internal hackathon to stress-test the builder against real briefs. Watched first-time users assemble flows, captured friction points, then folded them into the next sprint.
Market research and prototypes
Benchmarked against existing low-code players, mapped the gaps, and produced clickable prototypes for the canvas, component library and preview/runtime flow.
03
The outcomes
- Builder UX lives or dies on the first 10 minutes — if a first-time user can't get a screen onto a device, they never come back.
- Constraints are a feature: a smaller, opinionated component set shipped faster apps than a 'do anything' canvas.
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