Category: Product Development

Top 6 Benefits Of Xamarin Over Other Platforms

As the usage of smartphones has increased among customers, application development has been growing at a rapid pace. In terms of global market share, Android tops the list. The next in line is Apple’s iOS and Windows, respectively. As a mobile app developer or a business owner, it gets confusing at times to choose the best platform for developing an application, other than its native platform. 

Learning a new language, knowing the API’s, etc. is not only tedious but also a time-taking process. In that case, Xamarin will come to your rescue. With Xamarin, you can build cross-platform mobile applications to facilitate similar functions like platform native apps. You can directly develop apps for Android, iOS, and Windows apps from the Visual Studio itself.

Benefits of Xamarin Over Other Platforms

We bring you some of the profound benefits of Xamarin has over other technologies –

Reusable Code

All of the Xamarin apps can be entirely built in Visual Studio. Xamarin takes the help of C# integrated with a.Net framework for creating apps for a mobile platform. Thus, you get to reuse about 96% of source code leading to a speedy production of the application. cycle.

As Good as Native Platform

The performance of Xamarin also meets the standards of native application development. With Xamarin, a cross-platform app can still get classified as a native app. The performance metrics can be easily compared with those of Java for Android and even Objective- C, or Swift to create a native app for iOS.

 Visual Studio provides a total option to build, test, and track the performance of an app.

Native User Experience

With Xamarin, you can create a superb experience with the help of platform-specific UI elements. A lot of simple apps for iOS, Android, and Windows get designed with the help of Xamarin. The use of Xamarin with the Forms tool brings about a significant increase in the pace of application development. With such a speedy process of development, it becomes a fantastic option for business-oriented projects.

Hardware Support

Xamarin provides your solution with native-level app functions. The tool eliminates every hardware compatibility issue through plugins and particular API’s. This allows Xamarin to work with conventional device functionality across all platforms.

With access to platform specific API’s, Xamarin provides the function of linking native libraries. It gives a better degree of customization and a native-level functionality with just a little added cost.

Strong Corporate Support

When Microsoft acquired Xamarin in the year 2016, the licensing policies underwent quite a lot of significant changes. Xamarin SDK, with runtime, command line tools, and libraries have all become open sourced and available as per MIT license through Visual Studio.

The cost of license tends to be a significant barrier, and by eliminating this, Microsoft opened up the doors to further development of this platform

Ease in Maintenance

Because of its cross-platform ability, Xamarin makes maintenance and providing updates easier. Developers can deploy the changes or updates to the source file itself. These updates then automatically get applied to both the iOS and Android applications.

It is important to note that this only works for the applications running on Xamarin. In short, with Xamarin, you save a lot of time and money spent on keeping your apps up to date.

Conclusion

GoodWorkLabs is one of the renowned company in Bangalore that uses Xamarin for mobile app development. The feature-rich layout and subsequent benefits make Xamarin an almost perfect option for cross-platform development. We at GoodWorkLabs have highly skilled developers who’ve delivered critical solutions based applications, for enterprises from different domains.

Shoot us an email at contact@goodworklabs.com to discuss your requirements.

What makes iOS Applications More Secure Than Others?

Smartphone applications have become a part of peoples’ daily life. Security isn’t the first thing we think of while purchasing an application, but it is a matter of concern. iOS users stand at an advantage here. Though Android also has the required security protocols in place, but it is iOS that has the upper hand in terms of security. iOS applications mitigate the risk of data leakage and security harms. The apps developed in iOS are much more secure than the Android application. 

 

So are you thinking, what makes iOS applications so secure?

 

Here are the top features that make iOS applications so secure – 

 

Data Protection API: All versions of iOS, after iOS 4, have an inbuilt security feature of Data Protection. The feature allows the iOS app to encrypt and decrypt its files automatically. This feature is by default activated in iOS apps, but you can configure it as per your need. 

 

KeyChain API: Keychain is a hardware-oriented secure data storage that stores small data such as passwords, certificates, and credentials. The iOS has its own dedicated space in the Keychain that does not allow access to other apps. This way, the system provides you the highest level of security.

 

CloudKit: The CloudKit allows you to store data in Apple’s iCloud by using your Apple ID. It enables the security feature by which your app and the server’s commutation can be done using Apple’s client-side CloudKit framework. 

 

Verifying Signature: iOS applications use verified signatures. Before sending a message, you need a private or public key pair. This signature is then sent together with the receiver’s actual data, using the public key to validate the signature.

 

Encrypted Data Transfer: The airdrop got introduced with IOS 7. It allows you to share files with just a tap. The files are encrypted, but this service lets you be visible only to your contacts by default. If you require, you can change the settings. 

 

Highly Secure Authentication: iOS is known for its authentication feature. Face Recognition, fingerprint authentication, and eye recognition are some of the features that iOS bought it first in the industry. 

 

HTTPs: iOS launched a new feature called App Transport Security (ATS) that improves the security of the connecting network by blocking HTTP connections. Otherwise, HTTP connections are not that firm.  

 

Why iOS?

Nowadays, many entrepreneurs and businesses are investing in iOS app development for a secure and reliable mobile application. The primary reason being the security features. But there are much more benefits of the iPhone Operating System. With every new launch of iOS versions and updates, its security features are becoming more sturdy. Leading the way with innovation, iOS focuses to make data encrypt and firm. Though the iOS devices come with high prices than other operating systems, their users know its value and are ready to pay for it. 

Creating a reliable, secure, and powerful iOS is not an easy process. Data security is the highest priority & iOS always tries to perform in terms of safety. 

 

Choose GoodWorkLabs

If you are looking for an iOS app development company, GoodWorkLabs is an eminent iOS app development company in Bangalore. We build iOS apps with complete safety and security to give your business a dynamic application. Want to know more details?
Shoot an email & talk to our team, here – contact@goodworklabs.com 

 

Important Factors to Consider While Developing Your Mobile Application

So, you are on your way to having a dedicated mobile application for your business? A customized mobile app will addon to your brand’s value and give credibility. But there are some factors you must consider while developing your app. The points mentioned below are often ignored, but they are crucial for the success of your application. GoodWorkLabs, a renowned app development company in Bangalore, follows these to develop next-gen applications with all the vital factors in mind. Read the tips below to understand –

 

High-Speed Navigation 

 

You must make sure that your mobile application isn’t slow to navigate or reload. Rather, it should be rapid and responsive with a high response time. It is a crucial factor on which the overall success of your application will depend, as a slow application that makes people wait around, resonates with none. 

 

Hassle-Free Sign Up


You have a limited time to make any user stick to your application.  Make every moment count! Do not let the user struggle to register, sign up, or fill out forms. Try to make the sign-in experience short and crisp & eliminate every possible click from the design to make it quick and easy. Ask for as little information as possible(keeping in mind the security concerns).

 

Alternate Logins


Along with the usual login/sign-up process, you should also allow users to log in through their social media accounts such as Facebook Connect or their email accounts. Along with it, also dont forget to give a hassle-free way to retrieve their user name/password.  

 

Feedback system


Your new application must take feedback from its actual users to further enhance and debug the whole application. Tell your app development company to add a way in the app, to take feedback. It will provide you with suggestions on areas to improve and make the app more user-friendly.  Even users will appreciate that you consider their feedback. 

 

Easy Usability


The mobile application should feature an user interface that focuses more on usability. You can follow the usual application flows of other similar widely-used apps to get an idea for your own mobile app development. A neat and simple interface will speak for itself!

 

Simple UI/UX


Adding lots of features to your application will not make it attractive rather confuse the users. Let the few basic things be clear for users to do what they want in less time than searching for features and getting lost in them. Delivering a richer experience compactly and effectively, with simple UI/UX, is the key here!

 

Similar web & mobile version


If you are converting a web-based system to a mobile app, or vice-versa, make sure not to omit any features. The web-based or mobile application should be completely similar in all aspects. What’s even better? Connect with GoodWorkLabs, the Google certified agency in Bangalore that provides Flutter application development services. Flutter uses the same codebase for both web and mobile-based applications, hence the chances of errors are omitted.

   

Include analytics


One key element that your app development partner should include in your mobile app is analytics. Using the data gathered from analytics, you will be able to track and identify users’ responses, experiences, and actions. This will further help to make better decisions and encourage better updates.  

 

Include Offline capabilities


Adding something in the application that works even without the internet is not a bad idea! It can be a jigsaw puzzle, or a simple game, or pieces of information. Check with your app development agency, what can be added to make the app more interactive even without any signal. 

 

GoodWorkLabs, your App Development Partner


Whether you are looking ahead to have an Android or iOS app for your business, keeping the above points in mind will make your app more engaging for users. Want to have an amazing business app? Connect with GoodWorkLabs, a mobile app development company in Bangalore that specializes in Android and iOS applications. The team of developers in GoodWorkLabs is well-versed with the on-going market trends and making the app engaging for users. 

Tell us more about your idea and we will develop a high-end application for you!
Send us a message here – https://www.goodworklabs.com/contact-us/

6 Automation Software Testing Tools for your Business

Best Automation Testing Tools

Automation testing means evaluating the software programs and running execution of test cases automatically, thus producing test results without any human intervention. It is one step ahead of man-made testing. It saves physical efforts and helps in saving time up to a great extent and it also leaves no or very less scope for errors in testing.

Once set for running, automated tests can be run any number of times to test the same application, thus minimizing redundant physical work of humans.

Automation testing tools

In this post, we have outlined 6 automation software testing tools that can greatly increase your productivity.

 The most popular automation testing tools are:

1. Selenium

Selenium is an automation source tool which is used for automating the tests for business carried out on web browsers. Since Selenium is open-source and is free, there is no licensing cost involved, which is a major advantage over other testing tools. 

 Other reasons behind Selenium’s ever-growing popularity are:

  1. In any programming language, its script can be written: JavaPythonC#PHPRubyPerl &.Net.
  2. Tests can be solved on any of these OS: WindowsMac or Linux.
  3. Tests can be solved using any browser: Mozilla FirefoxInternet ExplorerGoogle ChromeSafari or Opera.
  4. It can be used to test a web application.
  5. There is no reporting facility in selenium but we can overcome this problem by integrating it with frameworks like TestNG or JUnit.

2. Test Complete

Test Complete is a functional automated testing platform developed by Smart Bear. The software completely gives testers the ability to create automated tests. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Web, Android (Operating system), and iOS applications. Tests can be recorded, solved and manually created with keyword-driven operations and used for automated playback and error logging.

Test Complete contains three modules:

  1. Desktop
  2. Web
  3. Mobile

Each of the above modules contains functionality for creating automated tests on that specialized platform. Test Complete is used for testing different applications, different types of computer tools including Web, Windows, Android, iOS, WPF, HTML5, Flash, Flex, Silverlight, .NET, VCL and JAVA. It performs functional testing and back-end testing like database testing.

It helps in creating, executing and making automated text across the desktop, web, and mobile applications easy, speedy, and cost-effective.  Some of the key features of it are:-

  1. Industry-leading object recognition.
  2. Support of 7 different scripting languages.
  3. The ability to record robust-automated tests without scripting knowledge.

 

3. QMetry Automation Studio

QMetry Automation Studio leverages an open-source test automation framework like Selenium and Opium to bring structure, efficiency, and reliability to your automated testing efforts. This studio enables advanced automation with coded automation and allows manual testers to transition into automated testing easily with script-less automation.

The management supports typical testing scenarios like mobile barcode scanning, touch ID, location spoofing and many more. As a result, QMetry Automation Studio is well-suited for micro-services type application with various complex components for automated testing.

QMetry is tailor-made for agile testing and develops teams to deliver better quality software faster, with confidence. It simplifies the creation, maintenance, and management of test libraries and seamlessly integrates with major platforms.

 

 

4. Testim.io

Testim.io leverages machine learning for the authoring, execution, and maintenance of automated test business cases. They use dynamic locators and learn with every execution. The result is very fast authoring and through constant tests, the platform learns and eliminates the need to continually maintain tests with every code change.

Testis, a Heavy bit portfolio company, has dual offices in San Francisco and Israel (R&D) and is backed by Spider Capital (A purify, Pager Duty), Foundation Capital and other U.S. based investors.

Testim.io effectively removes the falseness of the automation suites and is committed to helping engineering teams in making application testing autonomous and integrative to their agile development cycle.

Testis’ self-learning tests adapt to code changes, eliminating a big portion of maintenance overhead. Organizations which are using it spend more of their efforts on developing new functionality as opposed to testing, without compromising quality.

 


5. Cypress

Cypress tests are used to test anything that runs in a browser. The Cypress test runner is formed to handle modern JavaScript frameworks as well. We have hundreds of projects using the latest frameworks like React, Angular, etc. It also works equally well on server-applied applications. It records test-runs in continuous relation so that you can understand failures and share results with your team.

 

Cypress has one of the best design principles which include packaging and bundling everything together to make the entire end-to-end testing experience really pleasant and simple for developers. It is open source with paid features. This test runner is everything that we can do on our local computers. It takes a different approach since it’s actually executed in the same run loop as our applications. This will let you natively access every single object without having to deal with object serialization or over-the-wire products.

 

6. HP Quality Center Enterprise (QC)

Integrated quality management software is one which helps you to standardize testing, engineer for enhancement, and fixes problems to improve quality. It delivers applications fast with confidence and courage. It provides a comprehensive, unified, and extensible software quality platform.

You can implement your entire quality and logistic testing and establish consistent, repeatable processes for managing all aspects of software quality. This extraordinary, unified platform helps you possess a complete IT quality management infrastructure, establish consistent, repeatable processes and applies the best practices for all business applications.

Assets sharing and reusability allowed HP quality center enterprise to deliver bug-free and reliable applications. It helps to maintain consistent QA procedures across the application lifecycle by standardizing testing. Thus, the integrated approach of HP quality center helps to monitor performance, fix defects, and reduce making costs.

Thus these are some very powerful and reliable automation testing software tools that you can use for your business applications. Aim for shorter development cycles with automated testing.

Understanding IBM Bluemix

IBM Bluemix – A Mix Of Amazing Things

IBM Bluemix is a cloud platform as a Service based on open standards such as Cloudfoundry, Docker & Openstack. Bluemix comes in 3 deployment models – Public , Dedicated & Local. Bluemix Public is a multi-tenant where as Dedicated & Local are single tenant environments. Dedicated resides on IBMs Softlayer datacenter and Local resides behind your firewall. You have choice of deployment models which may not be available with Amazon or google.

Many enterprises have hybrid cloud requirements so Bluemix and other IBM Cloud offerings would be able to offer end to end solutions.

Watson based cognitive services, integrated DevOps , range of mobile backend services , database & analytics services makes IBM Bluemix a very rich platform. There are over 150+ services on the Bluemix platform.

Its very difficult to compare pricing as most of the public PaaS offerings are never easy to compare. For example, the cost of Bluemix Services are based on API calls (& storage) and there are no charges for data traffic. Many vendors may charge you for the data going out of their datacenter.

Recently IoT became has become a big tech to invest in. It is far easy to use BlueMix with Arduino or Raspberry Pi than anything else. Number of projects on Github, documentation, community help on Stackoverflow are enormous.

Advantages Of IBM Bluemix

 

1. Simplicity and speed: By focusing on the DevOps model, Bluemix can reduce the downtime of redeploying applications. Continuous delivery is one way this can be provided. The integrated environment provided by Bluemix allows developers to automatically deliver code without the hassle of building and debugging installation scripts. This reduces the time needed to manage code delivery and puts it in the hands of the testers and user community faster. The application can be deployed to multiple spaces which allow segregation of environments for development, testing and production. Automatically delivering code keeps developers focused on coding, not installation.

2. Agility: Bluemix allows developers to focus on delivering business value, rather than on maintaining the development environment, by scaling environments elastically based on business demand. Instead of manually deploying workloads, Bluemix will automatically redeploy workloads to other virtual machines (VMs) if there is an outage. To provide continuous availability, Bluemix abstracts the underlying architecture and keeps the manageability of services and applications at an easily understood level. Users are able to stop or start applications and define how much memory is associated with each application while Bluemix manages the rest.

3. Tools: With Bluemix, developers have the freedom to choose the development tools that work best for them. Developers don’t always want to work with the same tool sets and Bluemix provides several options, including the following:

  • Command line: The Cloud Foundry (CF) command line provides integration for developers that prefer coding without an integrated development environment (IDE). This is also helpful for developing automation scripts with Bluemix. The CF application programming interfaces (APIs) can be integrated with multiple languages, frameworks and services.
  • Eclipse: Since Eclipse is widely used by developers, they can continue to use the tools with which they are comfortable. The Cloud Foundry integration can be installed from the Eclipse Marketplace. This provides integration with Bluemix from the Eclipse client.
  • Web IDE: Developers can work with the Web IDE directly in Bluemix. This allows modification of the application without any development environment installed on the developers’ laptops.

4. Source control: Bluemix also comes with integration to several source control management (SCM) systems. These include Git, GitHub and Jazz SCM. These environments can be configured to deliver application changes continuously. Open source Cloud Foundry applications can be forked and loaded to Bluemix. This provides a great place to start development of a new project.

5. Services marketplace: Services leverage APIs and software development kits (SDKs) that can quickly and easily be incorporated with Bluemix applications. Although IBM provides many services, Bluemix offers an open and flexible ecosystem which allows other companies to provide services that can be integrated into applications. Companies can be both providers and users of services. Two types of services are available:

The “Managed Service Offering” is not available in the beta, but will be available soon. Services in the marketplace can be at no charge or have a pay as you go (PAYG) pricing model. These services are available to all Bluemix customers.

“User Provided Services” can be added so that organizations can share services within their organization. This promotes more reuse and standardization of services within the company.

 

Understanding Amazon Web Services

The Revolution Called AWS

 

Let’s switch back to the old ages.

Imagine you are heading overseas for your travel endeavors.

You have options to go anywhere but wherever you go, you need a place to stay.

 

Traditionally, you would have to build your own shelter upon arrival. You would cut wood for the walls, collect leaves to build shade, and segregate compartment for rooms as required. You would then build a kitchen, toilets, and bed as additional features in the house. At the finest day, your activities will be cooking, sleeping, drinking and showering.

Before you realize it, your holiday has finished and it’s time to come back to reality.

Soon, many great builders arise because of the huge demand for shelters. When you go for a holiday, you could pay to have someone build a house for you. However this is very expensive unless you decide to live at that new place for a long time. And keep in mind disasters do happen. Your floor sinks and your builder runs away with your money, the house is not what you ordered for and now you are in a complete dilemma in an unknown land.

Soon, a service known as ‘hotel’ is created. It provides shelter at locations of your liking, different pricing models based on number of guests, nights, and your preferred exclusivity. In addition, housekeeping service are there to ensure your tenacity in the hotel is at its best. So you always get clean bed sheets, bathroom with toiletries, and alcohol in the fridge for your disposal. Now here comes the hardest choice, pick one.

The great thing about this is, you do not need to know how to build a wall, start a fire, do cooking and so on. The amount you pay is proportional to your chosen preferences and exclusivity. Best of all, you focus on enjoying your holiday.

With this model, it is very obvious that your risks are mitigated, you spend only what is required, and are able to focus on your holiday. Honestly, hotel services are a great innovation!

AWS stack is the hotel service provider in the virtual world, only more powerful. They have expertise in developing and managing a large scale “physical” infrastructures, eg: EC2 (walls, shade, pipes), skillful in providing “features” platform services like VPC, Lambda, RDS, Auto-Scaling and Load Balancing (kitchen, toilet, bedroom, garden). You focus on your main business, they focus on theirs; there is no huge upfront cost; people can build fast, fail fast with minimal cost, and to top it all, it is an extremely powerful component for innovation to happen.

 

“Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a secure cloud services platform, offering compute power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow.”

 

Services Offered By AWS

 

Let us have a look at the various services offered by AWS and their brief descriptions.

 

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Allows renting a server per hour (from small to huge.)

Amazon Elastic MapReduce

Allows renting a couple of servers per hour as an hadoop cluster (to crunch a lot of data.)

Auto Scaling

Allows renting just enough servers as necessary (using more with a lot of work, using less with less work.)

Amazon CloudFront

Facilitates something like Akamai services (CDN, content distribution network) but at much cheaper rates.

Amazon SimpleDB

Allows noSQL for key-value store, store huge lists of items consisting of attributes that are quickly searchable.

 

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

MySQL as a Service is one of the best services of AWS at this moment which kills redundant data and provides complete data superiority. 

 

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Allows infrastructure automation for java applications. works with tomcat, uses services like autoscaling. (turn-key solution, perfect for getting familiar with several AWS services.)

 

AWS CloudFormation

Allows infrastructure orchestration. write recipes for different services you want to use, and how, and CloudFormation will do the rest.

 

Amazon Fulfillment Web Service (FWS)

Have a shop? You can have Amazon manage your fulfillment. your suppliers ship to Amazon, and they ship to your customers.

 

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

The one of a kind ‘first in, first out’ (in nature) messaging, perfect for jobs that should be processed asynchronously, more or less in order of arrival. think of video rendering or thumbnail generation.

 

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

Publish/subscribe mechanism, you create topics interested parties can subscribe to, sending a message to a topic, sends the message to all subscribers (like a mailing list, but for software systems.)

 

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)

A service for sending mail. You have to earn your quota with a good behaviour. An interesting way of minimizing spam.

 

Amazon CloudWatch

Alows monitoring of many AWS assets, like instances (servers) and load balancers.

 

Amazon Route 53

DNS  facilities with amazing flexibility.

 

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Allows extension of your private network with ‘some cloud’.

 

Elastic Load Balancing

Allows distributing traffic over one or more instances (servers).

 

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

The most revolutionary service in AWS. unlimited storage.

 

Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)

The network disks for AWS, attaches a volume to an instance of your choice. You can’t share the disk between multiple instances.

 

AWS Import/Export

Allows moving large data in and out of S3.

 

Alexa Top Sites

Display top sites from Alexa.com in your application.

 

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Lets you provision users within your AWS account and grant them access to different services and resources.

 

At GoodWorkLabs, we understand Amazon Web Services in & out. We understand the intricacies involved and the minute details that make the implementation process hassle free.

Contact us today for world class AWS services.

 

Product Designers v/s UX Designers

Understanding The Basic Difference

 

A product designer in the Internet space is someone who’s a hybrid between a visual/interaction designer and a web/frontend programmer. This person ideally designs in code. Primarily works around transactional products.

UX designer ideally should be solving for everything that comes under the UX umbrella, including branding, user research, semiotics, information architecture, interaction design. More often than not, this role is equalled to wire-framing jockey or interaction designer.

ProductDesignersVersusUX Designers

The difference between “product designer” and “UX designer” are based on semantics mostly, rather than a crisp and widely understood definition. Many product designers consider themselves to be designers who design experiences. Many companies do not differentiate between services and products also as such.

A UX designer is a broader term since you could use it to describe someone who designs experiences that aren’t products, for example, like a check-in experience at a hospital. But “product” these days is a fairly broad term as well, as many people who are “product designers” actually spend their time designing end to end services as well.

A Product Designer is responsible for the following:

  • Understand the customer requirements from the Requirements Specification document and start building user interface mockups

  • Iterate with the Product Manager and in turn customers to arrive at an interface that is acceptable and deemed most user friendly

  • Develop the interface using code (in case of a software product) or create CAD designs (in case of a physical/mechanical product)

  • Participate in the development process and monitor if the final outcome matches user accepted designs

 

A UX Designer is responsible for the following:

  • Look at the overall end user’s requirement from an end user’s point of view

  • Evaluate what kind of thoughts, feelings and emotions that users go through when using the intended product

  • Provide guidelines or suggestion to PM, designers and developers on what could be changed so that the end user feels positive about the experience of using the product

  • Work with the Product Manager to understand the customer touch points after delivery and help design the after sales experience for customers

 

The Definition of Product Designer and UX Designer

 

The product designer handles the overall function and working process of the product. They are the guardians of user needs. UX designers are responsible for the function of the user interface and user-friendly experience.

 

Tools for Product Designer

Mind mapping tools: Xmind. It is easy to use and has a concise interface. There is no learning cost.

Sketch tools: paper and pen. It’s simple, efficient, easy to modify, low cost.

Low-fidelity prototyping tool: Mockplus. It is easy to use and quick to interact. It can quickly build low -fidelity prototypes.

High-fidelity prototyping tool: Sketch. It can make rough wireframe more standardized and has good visual effects.

Tools for UX Designer

Wireframe design tools: Wireframe.cc . It has no complicated icons and toolbar. Both of interface style and operation are the minimalist.

Interactive design tools: Adobe XD. It positions itself with a lightweight vector and prototype software. You can freely switch interface design and prototype interaction.

Prototype design tools: Axure Rp. It supports high fidelity and low fidelity. It has good documentation support. The plug-in library of it can be customized.

So, let’s put it forward in a broader perspective: 

Product Designer is yet another term that dances around the Product Management and UX roles.  The title is meaningless without knowing about the context of the product and the complementary roles. Is there a Product Owner? A Customer Researcher? A Visual Designer? Someone from Product Marketing?

As always, start with definitions of what’s needed to deliver successful products, the whole chain from customer discovery and value definition to the business model definition to building the product to launching it to market. Note, many of the implied activities need to happen in parallel, so don’t assume that an extremely talented and broadly experienced person can do everything. Then understand who owns or contributes to which part of the delivery chain. Roles will emerge from there. The titles are secondary.

11 Famous Apps Built On Node.js

The Famous Node.js Apps

Node.js is a JavaScript runtime that runs on top of Google’s open-source JavaScript engine called V8. Pairing JavaScript’s naturally event-driven, asynchronous coding style with non-blocking I/O libraries makes Node.js fast, lightweight, and efficient.

It’s built to handle asynchronous I/O from the ground up and is a good match to a lot of common web- and network-development problems.  In addition to fast JavaScript execution, the real magic behind Node.js is called the Event Loop. To scale to large volumes of clients, all I/O intensive operations in Node.js are performed asynchronously.

11 Node.JSApps That Made It Big

In addition to it’s innate capabilities, Node.js has a thriving open source community which has produced many excellent modules to add additional capabilities to Node.js applications. One of the most famous is  Socket.io, a module to manage persistent connections between client and server, enabling the server to push real-time updates to clients. Socket.io abstracts the technology used to maintain these connections away from the developer, automatically using the best technology available for a particular client.

It is the pivotal tool for many big giants, and has helped them build a huge business.

Let us have at a few web apps that used Node.js

 

Paypal

PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American company operating a worldwide online payments system that supports online money transfers and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods like checks and money orders. PayPal is one of the world’s largest Internet payment companies.

Paypal-Node.js-Goodworklabs

Linkedin

LinkedIn is a business- and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their resumes. As of 2015, most of the company’s revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters and sales professionals.

LinkedIn-Node.js-Goodworklabs

Yahoo

Yahoo! is a web services provider, wholly owned by Verizon Communications through Oath Inc. and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Yahoo was one of the pioneers of the early Internet era in the 1990s.

Yahoo-Node.js-Goodworklabs

Mozilla

Mozilla is a free software community created in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, with only minor exceptions.

Mozilla-Node.js-Goodworklabs

Netflix

Netflix is an American entertainment company founded by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California. It specializes in  providing video streaming online and DVD by mail. In 2013, Netflix expanded into film and television, as well as online distribution.

NetFlix-Node.js-GoodWorkLabs

Uber

Uber Technologies Inc. is an American company headquartered in San Francisco, operating in 633 cities worldwide. It develops, markets and operates the Uber car transportation and food delivery mobile apps. Uber drivers use their own cars, although drivers can rent a car to drive with Uber.

Uber-Node.js-GoodWorkLabs

Groupon

Groupon is an American worldwide online marketplace connecting subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods and services in more than 28 countries. By the end of March 2015, Groupon served more than 500 cities worldwide, nearly 48.1 million active customers and featured more than 425,000 active deals globally.

Grouon-Node.js-Goodworklabs

 

GoDaddy

GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company. As of May 2017, GoDaddy has served approximately 17 million customers and had over 6000 employees worldwide. The company is known for its advertising.

GoDaddy-Node.js-Goodworklabs

Ebay

Ebay is a multinational e-commerce corporation, facilitating online consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales. It is headquartered in California. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, and became a notable success story of the dot-com bubble.

Ebay-Node.js-Goodworklabs

 

Walmart

Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue, approximately $480 billion according to the Fortune Global 500 list in 2016, as well as the largest private employer in the world with 2.3 million employees. It is a family-owned business, as the company is controlled by the Walton family.

Walmart-Node.js-GoodWorkLabs

 

Medium

Medium is an online platform developed by Twitter co-founder Evan William, and was launched in August 2012. It is owned by  Medium Corporation. The platform is an example of social, having a hybrid collection of amateur and professional people and publications.

Medium-Node.js-Goodworklabs
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The Importance Of Product Thinking In UX Design

Whether it’s a website or a product, users are the most crucial success drivers. They are the key factors determining a product’s usability and performance. While designing a product, even developers think about the use and application it’s going to have in users’ life. That speaks a lot about the significance of UX or User Experience design. Irrespective of what the product does or can do, it’s the benefits reaped by the users that matter the most!

The importance of Product Thinking in UX designs

So, what’s the general notion or thought process in this regard? Whenever we think of a product and its UX, we imagine a particular set of features that can make things easy and smooth for users. However, that’s just a part of the entire story. It is imperative to think about aspects within products which will lead to the identification of its true purpose.

That’s exactly what ‘Product Thinking’ means – identifying a product’s purpose

What does ‘product thinking’ mean?

Every developer has some objectives and goals in mind while creating a product or application. Say, for instance, the main purpose or objective behind creating the biggest cab service, Uber, is to reduce traveling hassles for commuters.

It’s here that product thinking comes into the picture. Every application or product has a core UX and its here that developers need to think when developing the products.

Why is ‘product thinking’ important?

What do you see when you book a taxi on Uber? You get real-time updates on the arrival of the vehicle along with the approximate time. These arrival updates or time schedules aren’t a part of the core UX. They are just additional features which enhance and improve the User Experience. What we get as the inference is that a product and its features share an interrelationship. The former supports the latter which is incomplete without the product.

Quite naturally, that compels developers to change their thought processes and development ideas. You need to think about the usability of a product and how it adds to the User Experience.

Here are some effective ways to strike a balance between the two:

UX designs

How to engage in product thinking?

If you want to identify the importance of product thinking in UX designs, you will have to uncover the goals of the product. Try finding out its goals or the job it is expected to do. Every product meets users’ demands or fulfills a certain requirement. In other words, a product solves the user’s problems. If it fails to do so, the product loses its usability. For unmatched User Experience, developers will need to identify a product’s objectives and the problems solved by it.

1.     Identifying your target audience

Does your product cater to a particular group of people? Most of the products have their target audiences, and developers should know these audience groups. That will give you an idea of the purpose of your product.

2.     Strategy and vision

Always try to have a vision while working on product development. That will help you create and devise the right strategies. Once you achieve successful strategizing, it’s time for effective implementation.

Signing off

If you wish to improve the core UX, thinking in products will be of paramount significance. These tips will make your job a lot easier!

Are Chat Bots Going To Be Bigger Than Mobile Apps?

Chat Bots – the next big thing?

With the dramatic surge in the number of apps and ever-decreasing screen sizes, users have arrived at a crucial point of technology evolution. It’s the age of ‘OS + Apps’ paradigm, where downloading, installing, and managing applications have become tougher than ever.

 

Chat Bots - The next Big thing-

 

In such a challenging situation, what other forms of customer interaction can replace your traditional mobile app based support system? With the saturation reached by mobile apps, which other form of communication can keep the engagement alive and yet be a cost effective solution for your company?

The answer is – Chat Bots residing within messaging applications

Messaging apps and chat bots are substituting the mobile OS big time, thus bringing a new change in the app development arena.

 

Chat Bots are the latest technology trend

Chat bots replacing mobile-app technologies isn’t a new affair. The tech arena has always undergone crucial transformations, and this happens to be one of them. Trends began right from the 90’s when browsers came as alternatives to desktop OS. Websites substituted client applications, and today we come across bots replacing mobile app OS.

It’s here that users witness the emergence of innumerable applications such as Line, WeChat, Telegram, Slack, and Facebook. You can interact with 3rd party services from within the application interface.

Developers have the opportunity to create messaging bots, which lay the foundation for a new and innovative trend.

 

How Chat Bots are like Humans:

With the ever-increasing popularity of messaging bots, users have quite a few crucial questions popping up in their minds.

What makes Chat bots so important? Let’s take a look!

  • Bots can replicate human actions while writing, reading, and receiving messages
  • Users can program a bot to perform automated functions
  • From initiating actions to sending responses, bots can execute critical functions
  • From automating functions and workflows to operations, bots can perform numerous functions.

Messaging bots have revolutionized various sectors. While e-commerce bots help you make purchases, food bots help you order food, you will also receive relevant content pieces from content bots. In a nutshell, chat bots bring us to a new age of integrated and automated operations.

They replicate human actions, and that’s what makes them special.

 

Chat Bots lead to effective messaging architecture:

Bots are finding applications in diverse operations. Quite naturally, this diversity in use cases leads to effective messaging architecture. Depending on the situations and requirements, messages should be re-structured. The NLP feature or Natural-Language-Processing capability of bots ensures successful human interactions.

 

Benefits offered by chat bots:

With the exceptional, innovative, and highly functional features of messaging bots, customer support mobile apps seem to be heading towards a farewell. Users will now have functional and interactive bots enabling effective communications and interactions.

Bots also have the opportunity to track user responses by creating customized messages. Whether it’s a simple workflow or critical transactions, bots can ensure successful mapping of these operations onto the framework.

 

Our final verdict!

There’s no denying the benefits offered by messaging bots. Apart from ensuring integrated operations, these Chat Bots de-clutter and revolutionize mobile experiences. Whether it’s knowing information or responding to something, bots will prove to be the best alternative to mobile app OS!

Ready to start building your next technology project?