Designing for Disconnection- The Mental Model of Offline Apps
summary
Argues that online and offline are a single latency spectrum and proposes a local first architecture that writes to on-device storage and relies on a background sync component to observe local changes, watch network state, and coordinate push/pull reconciliation; notes typical low-latency online responses are under one second. Describes practical problems like the 2ID problem (local vs server IDs) and conflict strategies such as last write wins, client/server wins, or manual merge, and lists principles: seed returning users, avoid flows you can’t finish, surface async errors, and synchronize reliably.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction to offline apps
- 1:48What it means to be offline
- 4:16Online is offline mentality
- 7:25Local first approach explained
- 9:32Local first app architecture
- 12:46The 2ID problem challenge
- 17:06Conflict resolution strategies
- 19:10Principles of good offline design
- 22:22Synchronizing data effectively
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