Desktop-First: Because The Future Of Remote Work Starts With The Desktop

The pandemic has taught businesses that they do not need offices. All they need is the internet and computers.

Millions of information economy workers work from home with their desktops. Though their smartphones could enhance productivity, they do their jobs on laptops and desktop computers.

Remote work depends on the power and productivity of desktop devices like virtual desktops, more screen space, more processors, ample storage, and precision input devices.

The heated debate among developers and designers on whether to develop applications desktop-first vs. mobile-first will never end.

But the choice depends on the target users and the analytics data.

A Gartner survey found that desktop computers are the most popular corporate devices. While over 50% of businesses issue company-owned desktops, only 23% issue smartphones to employees for work.

The desktop-first approach is perfect for building business systems for employees. Businesses thrive on utilizing the desktop’s rich functionalities and resources to manage their systems.

A Desktop-first approach means creating your application for desktop users while keeping smartphone users in mind.

After creating a functional desktop app, you can scale it down to a mobile version.

That’s why high-quality development tools like RAD Studio have built-in deployment support for both the Microsoft Store and mobile app stores.

With one high-performance responsive codebase, you can deploy that projects’ resulting application packages to all operating systems.

Keep reading to understand why the future of remote work starts with the desktop.

What Would Remote Work be Without Virtual Desktops?

With virtual desktops, nothing changes in the shift from office to remote working. The employees log on and work in whichever location they choose with their desktop devices.

Technologies like desktop-as-a-service depend on a functional desktop application.

The possibility of desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) allows employees to work remotely without wasting time learning a new system, reconfiguring their devices, or resolving security breaches.

For example, through DaaS technology, Kreston Reeves restructured their working model from 50 remote workers to 600 overnight.

But that’s because the UK-based financial services firm was already using virtual desktops before the pandemic.

As the Forrester Research analyst, Andrew Hewitt, told SHRM, most organizations are bound to implement DaaS technology amid the pandemic and beyond.

The 2020 Gartner Group’s survey on financial leaders found that 74% of businesses intend to shift some of their workers to permanent remote positions, even after COVID-19.

Besides desktop-as-a-service, various work from home models, like desktop virtualization (e.g., Amazon Workspaces and Microsoft Azure), Thinfinity Remote Desktop, and issuing corporate laptops, are the future of remote work. To take full advantage of these virtual desktops, you need a desktop-first application.

Ready to learn more about a desktop-first strategy from industry leaders? Join industry experts at the Desktop UX Summit. Book a free ticket now!

Why Not Utilize the Desktop’s Hardware Power?

Desktops have more processing (CPU) power, multiple GPU support, better cooling, and high storage capacity compared to mobile devices. With the desktop-first approach, you utilize the desktop's resources to perform all the business functionalities that could be required rather than a subset honed down to meet the constraints of a mobile device.

As businesses shift some of their operations to remote positions, they continue to demand resource-heavy applications to meet their requirements. Such heavy demands require the resources provided by desktops and laptops.

Developing mobile-first demands minimalism. That's because mobile devices have limited battery, storage, graphics rendering power, and processing power.

But when a business needs video conferencing support with multiple users in a meeting on screen all at the same time or significant data processing, a mobile-first design will restrict the business’s productivity.

Today’s top-of-the-line desktops ship with 8, 16, 32, and even 64 cores. For mission-critical business applications, this means you have the power you need to process data FAST.

When you develop applications desktop-first, you generally don’t need to focus on functionality impacting loading speed or device overheating when running simultaneous processes in the background. Though one cannot completely dismiss these concerns, the focus is on achieving all the business requirements with much greater freedom from hardware constraints.

If all the users access the application with their laptops, a mobile version may be altogether unnecessary.

But suppose some employees use their smartphones and tablets to access the application. In that case, you will have to keep responsiveness (adaptation of the application to differing physical hardware properties such as the size and ratio of screen dimensions) in mind throughout the development process.

After serving the desktop users’ needs, you can optimize the application for mobile devices with less effort. RAD Studio makes this process easy.

RAD Studio’s multi-device designer is enhanced with a live preview that helps you create one responsive codebase then deploy it to Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and macOS devices.

Who Wants to Tap on a Small Screen for Hours?

Desktop screens have higher resolution and more space to display numerous tools without impacting the user experience. An employee can be in a virtual meeting in one window while researching in another window.

With a mobile device, it’s only possible to display a limited amount of information simultaneously. When the user opens a popup window, it covers the entire screen.

On a desktop application, you can, for example, have the navigation bar showing all menu items, divide the screen into three columns, each displaying different information, and a static chatbot at the bottom of the screen.

The desktop allows you to give the users a complete and uncompromised experience.

Additionally, the typical separate keyboard and mouse as part of a desktop are far easier and less fatiguing to work with than tapping on a smaller mobile screen for hours.

Are Spreadsheets Desktop First?

The small screen and lack of mouse control in mobile devices make it challenging to use spreadsheets. When scrolling through long sheets, most spreadsheet apps do not display the corresponding header label. It is a major usability issue when working with spreadsheets on mobile phones. Since most spreadsheets were created desktop-first, their desktop versions are fully functional, easy to use, and satisfactory.

One study evaluated the visibility, navigation, interaction, and convenience of using Google Drive, OfficeSuite Viewer 6, ThinkFree Online, and Documents To Go.

The study found that when using spreadsheets, most people care about the capacity to handle rows and columns (inserting, deleting, sorting, functions and formulas) more than other spreadsheets features.

While the apps generally fared well with zoomability, simplicity, scrolling, and glanceability, the study found significant dissatisfaction with feedback and referencing data cells to their corresponding headers.

Users struggle to know their position in the spreadsheet without seeing header labels when they scroll through pages.

Conversely, these usability issues are fully addressed in desktop spreadsheets that have all possible functionalities.

Mobile spreadsheets need more improvements to address all remote workers’ needs.

Why Build Applications Desktop-first?

The desktop-first approach is perfect for B2B systems. It allows you to utilize the rich desktop functionalities and resources. It’s also cheaper and easier to make rapid iterations on native applications. It is easier to scale down from desktop to mobile than scaling up.

The desktop-first approach does not mean that you ignore how an application looks on mobile devices. Crafting the optimal mobile user experience is still essential.

But desktop-first means crafting the optimal user experience for desktop applications and not just re-using a sub-optimal mobile interface.

What can happen in a mobile-first design is the full power and productivity offered on a desktop device with a large screen is lost.

All of the functionality on a mobile device might be hidden behind a single button.

In contrast, there is plenty of screen space on a desktop device to make all of the important buttons accessible with a single click.

Desktop applications offer all kinds of minor productivity enhancements that have been honed over the decades, like mouseover hints and hotkeys that can really speed up your work.

With a mobile-first design, these productivity enhancements can be easily overlooked.

Is it Easier to Scale Down an Application?

When scaling down from a desktop version, you simplify the features by removing sections, compressing images, replacing sliders with static images, distilling the essential and appropriate elements. This is much easier than adding complex features to a simple mobile design.

The Desktop-first approach allows you to create a system with all the possible functionalities available. You have the big picture of the system before downsizing to a mobile version.

With a mouse pointer, you also have more screen real estate, powerful accessibility features, and precision control. All of these things combined create a more productive experience on the desktop.

With RAD Studio, you easily downsize the application as you view the changes on the mobile version in real-time. After editing, the IDE easily facilitates the deployment to various operating systems.

How Can I Get Started with the Desktop-first Approach?

The future of remote work starts with the power and productivity of desktop devices and virtual desktops, more screen space, more processors, ample storage, and an easier way to work with spreadsheets.

The desktop-first approach is perfect for building business-employee systems. Businesses thrive on utilizing the rich desktop functionalities and resources to manage their systems.

Desktop-first allows you to utilize rich desktop functionalities and resources. It’s also cheaper and easier to make rapid iterations on desktop applications.

Embarcadero RAD Studio (which combines Delphi and C++Builder) provides the flexibility to build desktop-first applications and then scale them down for mobile in a responsive way to maximize productivity.

Get your free ticket to the 2021 Desktop First UX Summit to learn how to build stunning desktop first user interfaces and provide the best user experience.