Two design patterns, one app, the same data. One of them put interface elements on screen faster.
Design patterns usually get discussed as a matter of code hygiene. Cleaner structure, easier testing, fewer surprises later. A study from Universitas Brawijaya adds a harder number to that conversation. The pattern you pick also changes how quickly your interface appears on screen.
The team built the same Android application twice, once with MVC and once with MVVM, and measured how long each version took to render its interface. The app was a public transport route navigation tool for Malang, drawing routes from a starting point to a destination using latitude and longitude coordinates.
Both versions were tested under identical conditions: the same testing technique, the same three scenarios, and the same point data. That matters, because rendering time is easy to skew if one build is asked to draw more than the other.
The result favoured MVVM. Its interface rendered faster across the scenarios. The authors credit how well MVVM isolates business logic, which cuts down the delays that appear while a screen waits for data to be ready.
Rendering time is what users actually feel. A screen that appears a moment later than it should feels heavy, especially on the mid-range devices most people carry. The paper does not argue that MVVM is universally better. It argues that the choice carries a measurable cost, and that it belongs on the list of things worth testing.
Paramadani, Akbar, and Pinandito (2023). User Interface Rendering Time in Android Applications: Revealing the Effects of Design Patterns. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Sustainable Information Engineering and Technology.
