Mobile apps
For high-value digital touchpoints
We specialise in designing and building high-value mobile apps for organisations. Think apps that meet an essential need for your customers or solve an important business problem for your team.
Trusting Smudge with their mobile apps
Improve the experience your organisation offers
Streamline an essential task
You’ve identified a high-value process people repeat regularly. It’s a critical part of your business, so you want to make the experience as easy and efficient as you can.
Fill an important gap
Your business processes work well, but you’ve identified a gap. We can help you work out what you need and tailor an app to fill that gap.
Mobile app developers for business and government
You value excellence and quality digital design
An app creates a specialised experience to help your team or customers achieve an important task. They’re high-use touchpoints within your organisation, so it’s essential they’re a great reflection of your brand.
Your mandate is usability and accessibility
Government departments are mandated to serve the public, so your apps have to be highly accessible and work in a wide range of situations. Building and rolling out successful apps for the government requires unique consultative skills and patience to succeed.
“The Digital Notebook app we created with Smudge is a game changer. Using it can make situations less dangerous, you can avoid taking your eyes off the person, and it’s easier to put away if the situation changes.”
Solving businesses challenges with mobile apps
Mobile sales tools designed for FMCG reps
We’ve built bespoke mobile sales apps for Coca-Cola, Cookie Time, and Independent Liquor. Off-the-shelf sales tools didn’t work the way they wanted, so we spent time with the reps, understood the way they worked, and built exactly what they needed to support their business goals.
Mobile interfaces for hardware
From appliances to sports equipment, hardware needs seamless digital interfaces. While hardware manufacturers excel in engineering, they often lack expertise in apps and connectivity. That’s where we come in. We specialise in integrating hardware with iOS and Android, guiding user-centric interface design, and collaborating closely with your engineers.
Collecting accurate data in the field
Capturing accurate data in the field can be challenging, especially for teams like police, medical crews, or insurance assessors working in unpredictable situations. Linear solutions fall short, so we create flexible mobile apps that adapt to real-world needs. Designed to include offline connectivity, they ensure reliable data capture anywhere, with instant sharing when back online.
Consumer brand experience apps
Apps like Sky TV or Stuff News are the main portal customers use to engage with a brand. You need control over these key experiences, and the ability to pivot fast. But they’re also big and complex, and you may not have the skills to build them internally. We can design and build exactly what you need, get you started, and hand over the reins.
“In recent years, technology has played an increasingly important role in enabling the success of our global sales team, and Smudge has been a key partner on that journey.”
The mobile app development process
Phase1: Scoping
To solve your business challenges, we first need to understand your world—your structure, processes, communication, and existing digital tools. How does it all fit together? The depth of our research depends on the problem’s complexity. For frontline police, this meant months of immersion. For a medical simulator, half a day with doctors sufficed.
Our research can result in market insights, user personas, or detailed reports—whatever equips us to design the right solution for you.
Sometimes, once we get to know your context, we discover the situation isn’t what we initially thought. We want to make sure we’ve understood your needs, and everyone agrees on the problem we’re solving. So, we summarise what we’ve discovered, to confirm we’re all on the same page.
In almost every project, there are things we’re unsure about and things we know will be hard. So, we start by finding answers to your unknowns. This can take a few hours or a few weeks, and depending on the scope of this investigation, we may quote for this initial exploratory work.
Before we move into development, we test our approach with wireframes and / or prototypes. This gives us valuable feedback and the basis to prepare you a detailed proposal for the mobile app development phase.
Phase 2: Development
Every custom software project is unique, and so is our approach to development. Sometimes, we’ll collaborate daily. Other times, we’ll handle the work independently and check in every few weeks.
Generally, the more technical the project phase, the less input we need from you. But when it comes to user experience or business processes, your insights are essential.
Our process is built to support your team, not the other way around. We’re flexible and experienced, adapting how we work to suit your needs. Together, we’ll align on key decisions and set meaningful, achievable deadlines to deliver exactly what you need.
Our goal for your first release is to deliver something valuable to users—quickly.
Mobile apps are rarely perfect in one go. Instead, we start small, launching an initial version that kickstarts the next development cycle. Working with your team and real user feedback, we refine functionality, align on key decisions, and prioritise new features and achievable deadlines until your app delivers exactly what you need.
Your mobile app investment
We usually quote for designing and building mobile apps in two phases.
Phase 1: Scoping
This covers time familiarising ourselves with your context, conducting user research, refining intent, exploring unknowns, and prototyping.
We need to know how we’re going to solve any tricky problems. We don’t want to start development before we’re confident we can deliver. We also need to know the full scope of your project to give you an educated estimate.
At this stage, we may be able to give you an approximate development price based on similar size and types of projects we’ve completed before.
Phase 2: Development
Development is where we do the heavy lifting, building, testing, and refining your mobile app. Most app projects range from the low hundreds of thousands to multi-million engagements, however, we don’t rule out smaller projects, so please get in touch regardless of what you have in mind.
“The BIG X app existed in our heads for a while. We needed a partner who would listen to us, challenge us, and work with us to build something great. Smudge has done all three.”
Our Approach
The beauty of balance
To help businesses transform, we solve problems using Intention-Based Design. Supporting this methodology are three overlapping sets of considerations: human, business and technical.
Collaborating with your team and other digital partners
We’re also very flexible about who does what. If you’ve people in your team who have the capability and capacity for certain tasks, or another digital agency you enjoy working with, we're happy to share our knowledge and skills. We make handovers easy, so people can pick up our work and run with it.
A suite of software services
At Smudge, we design and build digital tools that tackle tough, high-impact business challenges. Think of them as the precise puzzle pieces your digital ecosystem needs. With a diverse team of specialists, we bring a blend of skills and expertise to solve your problems with custom software.
Desktop apps
Tools that are hard to use gather dust, while tools people enjoy using deliver value that far exceeds their cost. We focus on your app's user experience to ensure your investment pays off.
Custom Software Development
If the right tool doesn’t exist for your particular business problem, custom software could be the answer. We can help you understand your needs, explore ideas, and build you a tool if custom software is the right fit.
Research for software projects
Research is at the heart of all great software projects. It helps you define your software vision, understand what success looks like, and work out how to balance your competing needs.
Product management for software
Big software tools can take years to build and they evolve to fit the changing needs of your business. Product management helps you develop a detailed roadmap to move you towards your vision in an efficient way.
“Our mobile app ecosystem has revolutionised frontline policing in New Zealand through empathetic and considered design. It has improved public safety for all New Zealanders and is a world leading program that we are all very proud of.”
Success factors for mobile app design
The average phone has 80+ apps, people use 9 apps daily and 30 each month. They know what good looks like. When they install an app, they’ve expectations. It’s important your app developer understands what those are.
Good apps are an exercise in simplicity. You have a tiny space to work with. Be disciplined. Don’t try to cram too much into one tool. Focus on the problem you’re trying to solve, decide what’s important, and do that really well.
People expect search to be top right so that’s where it should be. Make functionality as predictable as possible, and meet your users’ expectations so seamlessly it becomes invisible. Sometimes, the expected is better.
If you want people to use a feature, invest in making it easy to use. Apple excel at simplifying power user features, so they become accessible for all. When a feature's accessible, it becomes more relevant.
When you build an app, you create a hotline to your users, and often users start telling you what they want. Be prepared to change your business from your product mix, to how you sell in response to customer feedback.
A high-value app can be a powerful catalyst for change. We encourage involving everyone who understands your users—across all levels of your organisation, from the CEO to the frontlines.
“Since we've deployed the OnDuty app we've seen over 36 million queries. That means we've freed up time in our communications centres, allowing them to focus on their demand picture.”
Tell us about your mobile app project
We can help you understand your needs, explore ideas, and build you a mobile app your users enjoy so much they come back for more.
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Mobile app development FAQs
Will this be a digital tool people use regularly, at least once a month?
There’s the odd situation where you might still need an app, even if people use the tool less frequently – hardware integrations are an example – but typically if there's no reason for someone to use a tool more than once a month, put it on your website and make it easy to find.
If you’re not sure if a mobile app is the right tool for the job, get in touch, and we can help you decide.
Work out what your user is trying to do. Do those tasks cluster together naturally or are they occupying different parts of your user's day?
And how does your user see the tasks? Would they expect to do them together, or do they see them as different things?
Would it optimise your user’s experience to have all these functions in a single app, or would that be an odd experience for them?
If you’re not sure how many apps you need to build, get in touch. We can help.
App stores typically take a percentage of revenue from subscriptions, but it varies whether your app is consumer or enterprise-focused. We can advise on the different pricing and commission models for subscription apps. If you’re considering launching a pay-to-play app and need help with your business model, get in touch.