"Microservices" has become a real buzz word in the software development community during the last couple of years. Most developers are familiar with the architectural concept which solves the problem of systems growing to large monoliths too complex to handle. This architecture has however mostly been used in backend development, even though many companies are struggling with large, monolithic frontend codebases. This is where micro frontends come in, an architectural as well as organisational approach to developing applications all the way from presentation to data layer. The micro frontends approach is relatively new, and even though there is some talk about it in the software community, many companies are unfamiliar with it, and there is very limited scientific work performed on the topic. The aim of this study was to investigate strengths of and challenges with micro frontends, and specifically how the modifiability of a web application is affected by developing it as a micro frontends project. The method for fulfilling the aim consisted of several parts. During one part, two frontend prototypes of a web application were implemented, one using a Single Page Application technique and one using a micro frontends technique. Another part consisted of interviewing practitioners in the software field with relevant backgrounds to gain their perspective on micro frontends. The results were also used to evaluate which prototype would be most suitable for the specific web application. During the last part of the method, measurements on the implemented prototypes were performed to be used to estimate the modifiability of the prototypes using a mathematical model of modifiability called SQMMA. Based on the results, this report provides an extensive summary of strengths of micro frontends, among other things that there are both beneficial and disadvantageous aspects of micro frontends when it comes to modifiability, risks that should be considered when adopting micro frontends, and a discussion on when to use it and not.

There is currently a clear boundary between web UX design and frontend development and thispaper explores the possibility of bridging said gap with the help of WYSIWYG (What You See IsWhat You Get) tools. In such a situation, WYSIWYG tools would generate markup code fromprototypes created by UX designers that could be directly handed over to frontend developers –saving time and decreasing misunderstandings between the two roles. However, despite thesetools dating back more than two decades, the tools are not actually commonly used for thispurpose. The aim of this paper is therefore to find out why, as well as explore what is necessaryfor these tools to bridge the web UX design-frontend gap. In order to do so, two studies wereconducted – first an evaluation study in which two WYSIWYG tools were methodically testedusing a software quality framework, whereas the second study consisted of two interviews withUX designers and web developers. It was ultimately discovered that the tools – apart fromconstraining its users within the tools’ own technical limitations – produced markup code thatwas neither human-readable, semantically correct nor easy to maintain. Thus, it was concludedthat a reformation was necessary for the web UX design and frontend development gap to bebridged with the help of these tools. The paper also theorises on the possibilities of using artificialintelligence to solve some of the tools’ most critical issues.

Implementing new technology into a complex software developing environment comes with many challenges in terms of code, user interface design, and developer experience. It is well-established that the pressing demand for security and regulations within financial technology makes it even more essential to implement new technologies with care and minimised risks. This work aims to determine the effectiveness of such implementations. Specifically, it evaluates the effectiveness of implementing a UI library in a FinTech application to find the most suitable approach. In this context, a UI library defines as a robust set of user interface components available in one place and a FinTech application as an application in financial technology with complex developing infrastructure. In order to successfully evaluate the effectiveness of implementing a UI library in a FinTech application, a thorough literature survey was performed to identify decisive factors relating to code quality, user interface, and developer experience. In a case study in which a FinTech company served as an example, a solution consisting of their product and UI library was developed. The solution was tested by collecting data from code evaluation, questionnaires, and interviews. The result shows that the solution has higher code quality, fulfils the FinTech UI requirements, and perceived as an improvement of the development infrastructure.  On this basis, the utilised methodology and the recognised factors in this work should be taken into account to identify the most suitable approach when implementing a UI library in a FinTech application.

This master thesis investigates how an Agile User Centered approach can be used when designing and implementing the frontend for a web-based on-demand video streaming platform. Agile and User Experience (UX) are currently two very popular concepts that are frequently discussed in the software development community. Recently there have been a lot of discussions about how to combine Agile development methodologies and UX activities, and it has proven to be a difficult task in practice. This Master Thesis aims at solving this issue by researching methodologies that take both the Agile aspect as well as UX in consideration. Dual-track Scrum, an Agile/User Centered methodology considering UX, was used as development methodology and throughout the development process it was investigated how this methodology, as well as adding UX activities, affected the UX of the streaming platform. The conclusion from this thesis is that even though the combination of Agile and User Centered processes is difficult, it can be achieved with good results. The thesis presents guidelines for how to successfully combine the two processes as well as what the most important UX activities are and how they can be used in an Agile development project. The thesis also concludes that using a frontend framework, development tools and HTML5 video is very useful for developing the frontend for the streaming platform.