We recently sat down with JourneyApps Founder and CEO, Conrad Hofmeyr, to discuss simplifying the process of building mobile apps. Along with a glimpse into the importance of making app design more accessible, the Product Talk episode delves into customer focus and how that can drive mobile product creation.
JourneyApps Founder and CEO, Conrad Hofmeyr and Product Talk host, Adam O’Donnell, sat down to talk about the inspiration behind JourneyApps. They also discussed simplifying the app-building process and taking a customer-driven approach to developing mobile products. You can listen to the full episode of Product Talk above. A few highlights of the episode are available to you below.
On Simplifying Mobile Products
There was a time when only highly-skilled engineers understood the complexities of coding mobile products. With JourneyApps, Conrad and his cofounder contemplated how to simplify the process without hindering completed mobile products.
“Traditional professional development is just too complex, too slow, too expensive to build these ambitious, sophisticated apps. So we realized that a big challenge was to try and get the best of both worlds. The question was, ‘could you have the speed and efficiency of low code app development and the flexibility and power of so-called broker development in a single development platform?'”
On Who Benefits from User-Friendly Mobile Products
With the question posed and JourneyApps serving as the answer, the next step was determining who could make us of the simplified process and increase efficiency.
“We eventually identified industrial segments of the economy as the best fit. So, we’re talking about industries such as energy, mining, metals, chemicals, utilities, supply chain construction, high-tech manufacturing. Those companies very often have field workers that have to go out to remote locations and conduct complex work processes involving complex data, which is exactly what our technology was built for.”
On the Future of the Simplification of App Creation
Creating a user-friendly application was just the first step for Conrad and JourneyApps. There is always something new on the horizon, especially when trying to appeal to a broader scope of companies.
“We’re now releasing a completely new development environment for our platform called Oxide, which is kind of the latest pinnacle of our innovation and in pursuit of that product vision that we originally had.”
“We believe it’ll be a game-changer for custom enterprise app development. And it will especially resonate with companies who have tried liquid app development platforms and feel like they hit a wall as they tried to build more sophisticated and ambitious apps but at the same time, found that traditional broker development approaches would be too costly for them to use across the business.”
On Predictability and Risk
Risks are a standard part of any venture. This is specially true with mobile products. However, JourneyApps provides an outlet that helps reduce the probability of running into them.
“I would say it increases the predictability of custom software development. So predictability is kind of inversely proportional to risk. The more risk there is, the less predictability you have in a software project. Teams that develop on JourneyApps can scope very large projects very accurately.”
On the Importance of Customer Journey Thinking
When pressed for what makes great mobile products, Conrad dove into the journey of the customer.
“In my opinion, the most underrated skill in product management, which I think leads to the best products, is what I would describe as ‘customer journey thinking,’ which is a concept a lot of people are familiar with.”
“I believe that that kind of thinking is what allowed, for example, you know, Steve Jobs and Apple to usher in a new era upgrading such amazing products starting in 2001 with the iPod and the iPhone and the iPad.”
So, how do product managers prevent their product from growing stale? According to Conrad, it’s still all about the customer.
“By keeping your focus on the customer journey and the perfect user experience around that, you’re able to keep improving a product without running the wheels of it.”
On What Makes a Great Product Manager
For Conrad and JourneyApps, it really is about the customer and their journey.
“Going back to what I said earlier, the heart of customer journey thinking, is not just something that you can delegate to the UI UX designer and the engineers to implement that. I think that is a culture and a mindset that a great product manager grants across the whole team.”
About the speaker
Conrad Hofmeyr is the Founder and CEO of JourneyApps where he drives the vision, strategy and product roadmap. He has led JourneyApps towards being a strategic digital transformation partner for large enterprises around the globe. Conrad has been architecting and building cutting-edge real-time mobile and web applications for 15 years and has a background in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. He’s an expert in leveraging mobile technology to transform organizations' business processes.