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.

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!

There are a lot of options these days for companies to engage with various audiences through mobile technology. As they seek to stand out from the masses, these companies are continually looking for innovative solutions that go beyond the norm, or expected, to drive interest and engagement.

That’s where GoodWorkLabs comes in. GoodWorkLabs is a leading new-age software and design lab that delivers cutting-edge products and solutions for a growing list of global clients. The firm specializes in outsourced product development, high-end mobile/gaming apps and custom software development.

Mobile app development is highly in demand these days, and many companies are emerging to meet that demand. So many, that it can be challenging for businesses to determine which offer the best, and most reliable app developers. That’s where Clutch comes in. Clutch is a Washington, DC-based analyst firm that identifies top services providers in mobile and web development. Using a proprietary framework, the Leaders Matrix, Clutch maps firms’ focus areas and ability to deliver on client expectations.

Clutch is committed to identifying the leaders in a variety of industries, such as software development, advertising and marketing, web and mobile app development and IT consulting. GoodWorkLabs is on their radar screen. The firm has been selected by Clutch as a company to provide as a “firm that delivers.”

Our profile offers potential customers a thorough summary of our services, including detailed charts showing prospective clients which industries we serve, a list of some of our clients, and a sense of what it’s like to work with us. As we move forward our profile will be augmented by the inclusion of customer testimonials to offer an even more realistic feel for what we can do.

Our name says it all: we’re GoodWorkLabs and we do good work! But don’t just take our word for it. One of the most important features of our profile is the client reviews section. What’s unique about the reviews is that Clutch actually reaches out and interviews our clients over the phone. This allows our clients to give unbiased feedback about our products and services. While this feat might make some business owners nervous, we welcome the unbiased reviews, as it’s the only way we can truly know how we’re doing. We want to constantly be evaluating and improving our services, and these interviews allow us to do that. As of right now, we have a 4.8-star rating, so we’re feeling pretty confident about our ability to meet our clients’ needs.

The client testimonials which accompany the review section are crucial in giving potential clients a glimpse into what it’s like to work with us. One of our valued clients, the CEO of Audetemi, a mobile development company said: “GoodWorkLabs did a good job of designing the user experience…I would say their attention to detail is what sets them aside. They insisted on coming up with a design of their own before discussing my ideas.”

Another client, the founder of ID Verify Wizard, a fraud prevention company, said: “One of the things that stood out for me was their level of service and approach to the customer’s need. GoodWorkLabs is focused on what has to be done.”

We couldn’t be more pleased with our profile, and our relationship with Clutch. If you haven’t already, we invite you to check out our Clutch profile, and let us know your thoughts!

The award-winning UX Design Studio at GoodWorkLabs kickstarted the internship program in 2015, where in we take few bright and innovative design students to take up interesting projects, solve real life problems and build beautiful & usable products. Megha Chawra, a B.Des student from MIT, Pune, successfully completed her internship of 5 months.

Our HR team asked about her experience working with our team and how useful was her stint here at GoodWorkLabs. Let’s read her experience penned down and shared by her.

“Goodworklabs is one of the fast UIUX growing company in Bangalore. I was a UI/UX intern for 5 months and in these months I had the great experience in learning the whole system of a Mobile and web applications from research to development and testing process.

The company follows a structured process of User experience called Lean UX. Starting from understanding the needs of the client’s product, we nail down towards research module particularly in user personas, comparing other similar apps etc. Coming up with the key priorities, we start developing the information architecture and wireframes keeping the end user in the mind. Then, while doing the visual design I learnt to explore in color schemes, layout and interaction styles, right usage of fonts.

Once the designs are done, the very most important technicalities which I learnt was to understand the requirements, challenges and work structure at the development side of the app i.e asset creation, spec infos, device and resolution sizes of both iOS and Android which we generally tend to ignore while making the visuals.

Overall, It’s a great place to learn and improvise the skills. Have developed the capability of patiently managing the needs of the clients and the developers. People over here are very friendly, supportive and fun to work with. Working here have built my confidence in digital designs.” – Megha Chawra, B. Des final year student, MIT Pune, India.

To apply for internship program at GoodWorkLabs, send in your application along with your profile and work to contact@goodworklabs.com

Just five months after loading the ‘instant article’ feature into its news feed, the format is progressing into iPhones. According to Chris Cox, Facebook will now be able to publish several thousands of articles every day. The format will also be tested in Android devices and the same would be available by the end of 2015. Aptly called as ‘the package of journalism’ Instant articles will allow many readers across the globe will now be able to read stories inside the realms of the social networks instead of following links that lead to websites. Since May, Facebook has been able to come up with more than a dozen publications of instant articles. The new feature however would be available only for mobile users.

So what would be the implications?

To start off, there would be huge decline in traffic that publishing websites received from Facebook. However, on the other side, it also gives businesses an opportunity to connect with targeted users (even a larger audience base) via their Instant Articles news feed. To top that, Facebook is also collaborating with comScore to develop analytics into the number of people that read a particular article. The traffic will be credited to the publisher. For Facebook, this feature will enhance the social networking experience by keeping the users inside the platform. TR Viswanath, a Facebook engineer says that the technology powering Instant Articles will allow content (both text and video) to load faster on mobile apps that it would have been the case with website links. Interactive maps, embedded audio, tilt to pan photos and auto-play video are other features that will engage more number of audiences.

Instant Articles will not necessarily show up on every iOS user’s new feed immediately. Though a timeline hasn’t been confirmed, the company suggests that the feature will be available to around 12.5% of iOS device users and this number will gradually rise. However, this incredible feature has also become one of the most discussed media issues. Media organizations will now have to give up a chunk of their revenues to Facebook for the targeted readership. This would be a big problem for small publications but brands like BuzzFeed, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Slate, Vox Media and the Atlantic have already tied up for the platform.

How it impacts businesses?

Facebook aptly believes that users will be more interested to share news and articles that load instantly (10 times faster as promised) and this will enable the publisher to get a higher rank in the social networking site. Publishers across the globe are already scrambling to change the content management systems to compete with Facebook’s efficiency. The faster loading pages are achieved by stripping down the tracking codes and advertisements that normally run on web page links. However, Instant Articles are also made more interactive where users can tilt down their phones to browse photos and also seek 3D maps to seek out more information about the business. Basically, instant articles will be a “Facebook version of your website promotion”

The Ruby community is amazing and there is a lot of positive energy, enthusiasm to support every developer associated with it. This has kept the demand for Ruby and Rails on part of the developers quite high since the platform was first launched. However, Ruby and Rails are quite different aspects of the language and it is important to know how each work to create a successful product.

Ruby on Rails officially stepped into the web space on July 2004 when David Heinemeier created the Basecamp web application – a project management tool. However, the language got its first impetus when Apple recognized the potential and decided to ship it with its Mac OS X v.10.5 “Leopard” on August 2006. Through a series of regular updates and upgrades, Ruby and Rails is believed to be one of the most elegant programming languages today.

Similar to any other web application framework, Ruby on Rails uses Model View Controller (MVC) for its architecture. It brings in tools that make it a whole lot easier to create development functions for websites and applications. Rails, as of today, have been in the news for more than a decade now and for Ruby, the development experience is double. Both languages have created their specific territories. Here we look at the technical and existential challenges and opportunities that each face.

The changing programming environment

The main aim behind Ruby and Rails was to make work easier for the programmer. The simple, easy to use, constantly updated and highly supported frameworks have weaved a success story for both. With Rails, prototyping web apps are a matter of seconds and a striking example of the same can be seen with the Twitter bootstrap module. Several other sites including Hulu and GitHub work on the same principle. Rails, thus remains one of the broadest of practical applications. Even the high demand for Ruby somehow revolves around Rails. Ruby expertise goes hand in hand with JavaScript skills in the job market today.

The above points hint that Rails has been the driving factor for the Ruby business. With more performance improvements coming in, there is certainly a long way to go.

Libraries and scripting

Ruby, like Python, has been highly useful to automate tasks and stitch together various functionalities from across the web. The “Gems” package from Ruby is easy to install and so are third party applications and SDKs. However, Python gets an edge with its specialized computing features, specifically related to maths and science. Ruby addresses the gap with features like SciRuby and both languages bring forward a healthy competition.

However, Libraries and Scripting from Ruby and Rails still have alternatives and this lowers its competitiveness.

Speed, scale and asynchronicity

This is where Ruby and Rails could be said to be on the losing end. Several legacy projects done with Rails are suffering for their poor performance scale. At the same time, the programs are being re-written in competing languages like Go and Node.js. A glaring example of this failure has been Parse, a mobile application outfit that switched from Ruby to Go to achieve better scale. Similarly, Twitter, which was originally a Ruby project, was replaced with Scala and a custom Java-based solution.

While it has been a great experience with Ruby, it needs to be maintained and preserved to continue existing as opposed to bringing/building new tools.

The average user hardly thinks of the technologies used in developing websites and several online services that they access and use. These are basically applications residing on remote servers that are accessed by users from their PCs through the web. They are much more than regular web pages! These programs can be run inside various web browsers without any hassle.

Growing popularity and usage of Web Application Development services

With time, a lot of companies are opting for web application services. When developed as per specs to meet a specific set of business objectives, it can be quite beneficial for both the companies and end users. Some of the advantages offered by web app development include:

• A single web application will work well on various OSes and platforms seamlessly
• Reaching out to millions of users and businesses becomes simpler and effective
• No need for updates, installation or downloads, it means less hassles for the users
• Accessible from anywhere, anytime, even without PC

Uses of web application development services

Web application services are predominantly used for:

• Social networking sites
• Online banking
• e-Commerce sites
• Online polls
• Chat services
• Webmail

Trends in Web Application Development services

Like each aspect of technology and computing, the trends in web app development keep changing over time. App development is offering more rich feature and thereby offering end users more possibilities.

• Native video resource- It is no longer mandatory to render video in a web application using a third party service like Vimeo or YouTube. Using HTML5 video technologies in web app development, it is now possible to provide the video natively and control its playback. More and more companies are opting for the newer method of video content distribution over the older.
• Fewer plug-ins- Compatibility is a key issue when you target web users to promote any service. This is also true of any web app development service. Depending on third party plug-ins hinder prospects and reach of such services to the end users. Not all browsers can handle flash content natively, to begin with. Then you have to reach out to users who use mobile device specific browsers. Deployment of WebRTC technologies is gaining ground. Brands want to give users more ways to avail real time communication for using their services online.
• Design changes- Responsive design in website development is not new anymore. Even the same has become true of web app development trend. With more people accessing web services and apps through mobile devices, developers are facing the task to make apps with ‘one thing fits all’ motto. They have to keep the UI interesting yet user friendly. Emergence of newer mobile devices like smart watch and smart appliances can lead to further design changes in this sector.
• Simplicity and ease of use- With users of varying acumen accessing web development services, the developers are focusing more on ease of use and simplicity. There are those college going tech savvy users accessing the services as well as grandparents who are strangers to touch screens! Functionality is now more important than sheer aesthetic appeal and sleekness in web app development services.

Let us know if you notice any other trend worth knowing about in the field of web app development.

Few would have expected the amount of tweaks and updates announced at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) currently underway in San Francisco. What has unraveled so far is a big list of updates across the board – technology, software and hardware. The new versions of OS X, watchOS and iOS were just a few of them.

Here are some of highly exciting details that hogged the limelight at the annual conference –

• Improved version of OS X– An interesting update was the release of OS X 10.11. Here the focus was on polishing the existing firmware for better user experience and improved efficiency. For instance, in Safari ‘pinning sites’ allow you to load them faster. Also audio can be muted from the tab itself rather than going to the actual webpage. Spotlight ensures better search capabilities, while Metal optimization tool will look at boosting performance on Apple devices.

• iPad split screen – What was present for last 3 years on Samsung and other Android devices has now come to iPad. Yes, iPad now has support for multiple apps on a single screen. iPad Air 2, Air, mini 3 and mini 2 users can now access multiple apps at the same time on the screen either in 50:50 or 70:30 ratio.

• Release of iOS 9– The release of iOS 9 was a surprise to many Apple aficionados. It sees more refinements to existing functionalities and UI from iOS 7 and 8, rather than wholesale updates. It comes with a reduced setup size and adds 3 extra hours to battery time with its ‘low power mode’. While the beta release is scheduled for July, it will be released publicly by the fall season.

• News App– Taking on Google Newsstand and Flipboard, Apple announced its own News app that presents highly customized news feeds and content to users (i.e. provide only from those sources that the user selects), but in a visually appealing presentation format. 

• Transit directions in Maps– When Apple announced that Apple Maps is used 3.5x more than other similar maps apps, it made sure there was something for this app too. Now users can access transit direction to nearby places on Apple Maps. It also provides Location cards in case the destination store or restaurant is featured on iOS app store.

• Software upgrade for Apple Watch – Its been just 60 odd days to the Apple Watch launch but its already getting a major software update in the form of watchOS 2. It now gets third party app support, which means a radical explosion of possibilities to which the watch can now be put to use.

• Music Subscription– A big update, the Apple Music transforms iTunes and for a $10 monthly subscription of streaming music, unleash a host of exciting features on the subscriber; all this in a bid to win over defectors to Pandora and Spotify.

• Siri gets an update– Just like Google Now, Apple’s proactive assistant, Siri, will check data in your calendar, contacts, emails, and schedules to provide contextual information or reminders. For users wary of privacy, Apple is promising security of the data residing wholly on the cloud.

Liked any other update that you might have heard or seen of? Do write in with your comments and let us know.

Most of you might already know about the latest version of Android OS, i.e. Lollipop. Also referred to as Android L, this version has turned out to be quite popular for one crucial reason – Material Design. Though there is a sustained interest in this design philosophy, there are very few pieces of published content that actually touch upon a holistic perspective of this radical new design thinking. Today, let’s check out some vital factors of Android L.

Why Material Design?

If you closely analyze the elements of Lollipop, you would find some significant differences when compared to the conventional Android aesthetic. The new design would seem more similar to a pastel and paper adaptation of the Metro theme from Microsoft. In the past four versions of Android, a lot of variations were seen mainly due to the branding done by the different carriers. In the previous versions of Android OS, the user interface lacked consistency. The elements in the previous versions were so inconsistent that they used to react differently in different situations, even though they were a part of the same OS. Similarly, there were few more negative aspects in the last four versions of Android that led to the inception of Lollipop.

What Lollipop’s Material Design Has to Offer?

One of the prime objectives of the Material Design is to strengthen the trust between the software and the user. The strict rules mentioned in the Material Design add more consistency to the way the user handles or interacts with the OS. This new design allows the user to drag objects more swiftly, add and destroy items, and choose the type of interaction to occur on UI elements. In other words, through the Material Design, Google has made an attempt to make the OS react in a way that the users expect. In this way, users will not come across any hiccups or unpleasant surprises.

Smart Paper- It would not be wrong to say that Smart Paper has been the core symbol of Material Design. Smart Paper can be defined as a concept that involves a fictional element, which is able to move and alter shape, accompanied with depth. I would definitely say that the Smart Paper concept can be compared to a magical notepad having layers of papers or cards. The respective cards come into action as you tap on them, and you can even drag and rearrange them. Meaning, the cards are quite flexible in nature, however predictable.

Virtual Physics- Yes, this time Google has gone a step ahead to improve the UI. Virtual physics concepts have been used in a detailed way to decide how the elements should move, how fast should they accelerate, how they should spring back, etc. Getting the elements off the screen and changing their size has become easier now.

The Appearance and Feel- The Material Design gives a lot of emphasis on the use of consistent graphic design, mainly across the OS and apps components. Numerous color palettes have been incorporated into the design, and the fonts have been standardized to give a better feel to the users. The level of contrast related to the texts has also been optimized for better reading experience.

Let us know in the comments below if any other aspect of Material Design has kept your interest level high.