Intro
Although PWA implementation on Firefox Android is pretty solid, there are further improvements to be made. A recent push for PWA improvements was only for desktop. I'm a UX Designer so I'll try to point out my reasoning for these changes and why I feel they would be valuable, but I'm always open to be challenged.
The Problem
PWA's on Android are missing some basic features that will enhance the web app experience and polish it up. Some examples that I've noticed after using Firefox on Android for a while now are:
1. App icons have a small Firefox icon in the bottom right corner. Certainly not a big deal, but it does break the seamlessness of the app experience and makes it feel like a full app and more like an extension from Firefox.
-Chrome has been doing this for a while and I believe they use something called Trusted Web Activities (TWA), but I'm not a developer and I've only researched it lightly.
2. Firefox web apps feel second-class compared to apps downloaded from an APK or app store. This is due to things like notifications not working well (which I'll post about separately) and not appearing in the app drawer or other locations where other apps might.
-This suggestion leans into a UX Principle called Jakob's Law, which states that "users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all other sites they already know." The difference here is that the principle can also be applied to apps and how people spend most of their time using apps downloaded from app stores and will expect a web app to behave the same, otherwise, why download it to their device? They can already access websites in a browser.
Expected Behavior
When I download an app from the web I expect it to look and function as closely (if not the same) to apps downloaded from other sources. I'd like it to feel like a true app and not an extension of my web browser.
Outro
There might be other things I missed and I'll add them here if I think of anything. Also, anyone else that has improvements to Android PWA's, please share the things you'd like to see. I understand that some of these things might be larger issues with web apps as a whole instead of being something Firefox alone can fix. They might require deeper coordination and changes to the "system" of web apps, I'm simply calling attention to the issues I see with the current web app experience and hoping that it can help make things better. I'm even happy to help further if there's anything I can do as a UX Designer. Thanks for the consideration!
Disclaimer: I haven't found this idea posted already, but if it is please merge.
