Frontend Architecture and How to Improve its Design
Learn how to enhance frontend architecture and improve its design in this informative blog.
Tejas Kaneriya
February 10, 2023
8 mins read
Last Updated May 10, 2023
When Airbnb introduced two new features, Experiences and Places, it considered redesigning its frontend architecture.
The goal here was to create a free-flowing navigational experience that would enable guests to expertly move between pages on the web apps. And what better way to accomplish this than switching to React? In addition to this, it developed a Design Language System (DLS) to speed up the iteration lifecycle and Airshots to access thousands of screen permutations instantly. Ultimately, the team was able to manage tech stack reconfiguration, client-side routing, code splitting, and lazy loading.
Mobile app testing challenges
For the best possible performance and user experience across a range of devices with different screen sizes, carrier settings, operating systems, and form factors, device fragmentation must be addressed. When putting a mobile app test plan into practice, it might be quite difficult to ignore device fragmentation.
Take into account the following fixes to help lessen this problem:
Use emulator and simulator testing: To replicate various device setups and situations, thoroughly test mobile apps utilizing emulator and simulator tools.
Purchase a restricted quantity of devices: Invest in a limited quantity of devices that showcase a variety of screen sizes, operating systems, and other significant factors. In order to meet budgetary restrictions and cover a wide range of user scenarios, thoroughly test your app on various devices.
Create an internal device lab: Provided resources allow, create an internal device lab equipped with a wide range of devices. This methodology enables thorough testing on a range of platforms, screen sizes, and settings, guaranteeing thorough coverage and top-notch app performance.
Changing user requirements
The constant challenge for developers is adding new functionality to mobile applications as user needs change over time. New features do, however, carry the risk of bringing with them problems or mistakes. To properly handle these difficulties, the QA team must stay up to date on every update and perform thorough regression testing on mobile apps.
These difficulties emphasize how crucial it is to put best practices for mobile app testing into practice. We'll go over a number of methods and approaches in the next blog post section that can help you beyond these obstacles and guarantee the success of mobile application testing.
Process
Step 1: Gathering Test Cases
A thorough list of test cases that need to be run should be compiled before the testing process starts. This entails describing each test scenario, along with its goals and anticipated results. Creating a well-defined plan based on these test scenarios is essential to successful testing.
Step 2: Selecting Between Automated and Manual Testing
Choosing whether to use automated testing services or carry out manual testing comes next once the test cases have been assembled. To ensure you make the right choice, take into account these factors:
When is automation testing preferable? Test cases must be run often.
The test case has a predictable result.
It is required to test for fragmentation of devices.
Small test cases can generally be automated to increase efficiency, but complicated scenarios or sequential testing of several systems are better suited for manual testing.
Fitcom's Adoption of Test Automation: A Case Study
Fitcom, a platform for health and fitness companies, had to deal with the difficulty of releasing several apps every week, which rendered manual testing unfeasible. 500 test cases were scripted for parallel testing as part of our assistance to Fitcom in implementing test automation. This strategy shortened time to market and gave the company a competitive advantage by facilitating functional, performance, and user interface testing.
Step 3: Creating Test Cases for Various Functionalities
There are two methods for preparing test cases:
Testing according to requirements: Evaluating how well-performing particular software features work.
Testing that is based on business needs: Assessing system performance from a business standpoint.
It is possible to classify test cases into:
Unit testing, integration testing, system testing, interface testing, regression testing, and beta testing are all included in functional testing.
Non-functional Testing: This includes API testing, security testing, load testing, stress testing, volume testing, performance testing, reliability testing, and usability testing.
Step 4: Carrying out the manual testing
Although many people prefer automated testing, agile development benefits greatly from a combination of automated and human testing. Since manual testing is relatively inexpensive up front, it ought to be the first method used. Simultaneous manual testing can be accomplished by assembling a team of testers.
Step 5: Automated Testing Implementation
Prioritize automated testing after a number of iterations of manual testing, taking into account the lessons learned during the process. Especially for repetitive test cases, automated testing increases efficiency and streamlines the testing process. To guarantee efficacy and compatibility, carefully select the automated testing instruments you use.
Step 6: Beta testing and usability
Testing for usability yields important information about user preferences and feature acceptance. Before the official launch, beta testing enables the gathering of customer feedback to ensure product compatibility and user happiness.
Step 7: Evaluation of Performance
Performance testing, which includes error analysis, load testing, and stress testing, assesses the overall performance of the program. Throughout the testing framework, performance testing is carried out to obtain early insights into the efficiency of the application.
Step 8: Testing for Compliance and Security
Through certification testing, make sure that security standards like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, FFIEC, and GDPR are being followed. Maintaining user confidence and getting app store clearance require adhering to these guidelines.
Step 9: Release of the Final Version
To confirm that the application works and is compatible with back-end servers, run one last round of testing. Release the software on the Google Play Store or software Store after all bugs and errors have been fixed.
Benefits of frontend architecture
Optimizing web application performance and improving user experience are directly related to frontend architecture. Apart from enhancing the maintainability, scalability, and reusability of code, a well-organized and modular frontend architecture has numerous other advantages:
1. Modularity: It is easier to reuse and maintain code when complex frontend functionality is divided into reusable components.
2. Separation of Concerns: Development teams work together more effectively and organize code more effectively when presentation and business logic are kept apart.
3. Technology Independence: Innovation and flexibility are fostered by adopting different technologies for different application sectors.
4. Faster Development: Project deadlines are accelerated by a streamlined development approach made possible by separate component development.
5. Targeted Testing: Comprehensive quality assurance and improved overall application reliability are ensured by focused and streamlined testing of specific components.
Steps to improve your frontend architecture design
It's like upgrading your web application to a superhero level with frontend architecture design! It all comes down to building a web application that is organized and simple to update. The following actions can be performed to enhance frontend architectural design:
Refactor the code: By doing so, you can make complicated and rigid code more readable and lower the project's total technical debt. Tight deadlines are often the cause of this kind of complexity, however refactoring can help the code become better and more maintainable.
Leverage "micro frontends" to implement domain-driven design. Use micro frontend architecture to create smaller, more connected elements within your application. Using micro frontends in conjunction with a domain-driven design makes complicated systems easier to use, promotes effective data and event interaction, speeds up deployment, and
upgrade
Use frontend engineering with component-based architecture: React and Angular are two well-known frameworks that use component-based architecture, which encapsulates a feature so that it may be shared by several modules. It also allows modules to share features and facilitates animations in contemporary apps. It provides enhanced reliability, reduced maintenance costs, quicker development, and better control.
Make CD/CI function for you: Use our turbocharged and parallel builds to maximize the performance of your CI/CD. As you lead the build and run stages, take charge of your development environment and see the magic happen. Use the Design Language System to bring engineering and product teams together, fostering smooth communication and productive outcomes.
Conclusion
Every frontend system starts with a strong architectural design.
Applications can integrate functionalities more quickly when frontend architecture is redesigned with code reuse, maintainability, and standard principles in mind. End customers gain from this strategy by receiving apps that are more functional and easily accessible as well as quicker updates with the newest features. This is best demonstrated by Pinterest's conversion to a Progressive Web App (PWA), which resulted in a notable increase in revenue because of better user experiences.
At Simform, we work with different businesses to evaluate their frontend architectural needs and we hire elite architects to bring a creative touch to their product designs.
Get in touch with us to receive a thorough assessment of your frontend architecture and to learn about the best ways to improve the application experience.
