Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire
On Show 2020
Chris Keaveney

A progressive web app is has been defined by the company Ionic as a web application that uses modern web capabilities to provide an “app-like” experience for users. They were described by author & developer Tal Ater as being able to “leverage the latest web capabilities to deliver an
experience that combines the unique features of native mobile apps with the advantages of the web”. For my project, I had undertaken the development & design of the web application ‘Mix Hub’. For the purpose of this project, ‘MixHub’ was further developed into a progressive web app using various methods through Google Audits and a native mobile application using React-Native. A comprehensive comparison between these two secondary applications using the original web app as a basis is the essence of this project. MixHub is an online database that allows users to create an account and trade vinyl records in real-time in the form of an online marketplace.

The MixHub application itself can be run as a desktop application or on either Android or iOS devices.The features of this application for the user include: Create an account / List records the user would like to sell / Buy records (contact the seller & organise a payment method) / Manage virtual record collection (using CRUD functionality) / Find nearby record stores using google maps / Image uploading & camera access / Discover music artists using Last FM APIs

Many tests, research and a detailed analysis of both the progressive web app and native mobile version of MixHub were also carried out and discussed in the project thesis.