Mobile cross-platform application

RES is a Leuven based company that supports the local economy through their own currency, the RES coin. RES connects over 5000 local merchants with one another, allowing them to purchase products or services from each other. All RES currency stays within the same ecosystem, boosting the strength of the RES coin with each purchase.

The RES app

The reason a lot of merchants chose RES is because it allows them to easily connect with other merchants and customers. Originally this happened through the RES website. The website displays all connected merchants on the map and allows you to search for specific merchants via a wide selection of filters and parameters.

Together with this website, a mobile app was developed in Xamarin (iOS and Android) as a student project. This application served the same basic functionality of the website but was mostly considered an afterthought at the time. As the company grew, they realized that the app didn’t meet their rising standards. Looking to rework their existing application, RES reached out to PegusDigital.

Nativescript, a cross-platform challenge

Our challenge seemed simple. Rework an existing application using an existing API by creating a new design and improving the user experience based on the feedback RES received over the years. Since the app needed to run smoothly on both iOS and Android, we decided to use Nativescript.

Nativescript is relatively new and allows you to build a mobile application for both iOS and Android using a single codebase. The difference with other cross-platform software is that Nativescript actually allows you to use platform specific UI elements and APIs either directly or indirectly. Development can be done in either Angular, Vue.js, Typescript or Javascript and the UI is setup in CSS.

UI elements are automatically converted into their platform specific counterparts. For example, a button would be a ‘UIButton’-object on iOS and a ‘Button’-object on Android. This ensures us that the UI of the app immediately feels natural on both platforms even without platform specific finetuning.

The most important lesson to learn: even though Nativescript does a lot to bridge the gap between cross-platform and truly native mobile apps, it’s not always that simple. Platform specific adjustments still need to be made sometimes to ensure the app works as intended on both iOS and Android. In the end, we created a slick application that users really enjoy using. Currently the RES app is installed by almost 5.000 users on Android and 3.000 on iOS.