Offline-First Field App Lab: Sync When the Network Betrays You

Many users do serious work on weak Wi-Fi, mobile data, or interrupted connections. In this lab, participants design a small field-reporting app that can save drafts, queue changes, detect conflicts, and explain sync state without confusing the user.

We will test offline entry, duplicate submissions, reconnect storms, server conflicts, and user-visible recovery messages. The focus is not building a huge mobile app; it is learning the product and engineering decisions that make unreliable networks survivable.