The demand for wearable devices is definitely on the rise these days. People have started to spend their money on these futuristic devices, and this is the reason why more and more tech companies are jumping into the scene. In 2015, most of the major tech companies, such as Apple, Samsung, and Sony have decided to roll out their wearable devices for the consumers. So, let us provide you a peep into the top 5 wearable gadgets of 2015 you should know about.

Apple Watch

Quite undoubtedly, Apple Watch is one of the most anticipated wearable devices of 2015. This smart watch has created a lot of buzz with its recent launch. The watch is available in three different segments – Apple Watch, Apple Watch Edition, and the Apple Sport Watch. With a choice of feature sets like dial shapes, color options, digital crown technology, and in-built notification system, it will appeal to the personalization needs of users.

Pebble Smartwatch

It was during the CES 2015 event when Pebble showcased its 3^rd edition of smart watch. With its 3^rd edition, the tech company would be expecting to accumulate a lot more accomplishment than it has had with the previous versions. The previous editions of Pebble smartwatch were loaded with basic features like sending/receiving emails and messages with a really powerful battery (up to 7days of battery backup). The 3^rd edition will definitely offer something more to the users.

Tag Heuer Smartwatch

The brand ‘Tag Heuer’ needs no introduction in the watch industry. It is associated with quality and sheer luxury. But, now the company has decided to step into the world of tech gadgets. In 2015, you can expect Tag Heuer Smartwatch to hit the market, which would be run by Intel processor. The Swiss watch maker has given an indication that the wearable device will borrow some of its design element from the digital watch range of Tag Heuer.

HTC Gluuv

In case you are looking for something quite different then HTC Gluuv may fit into your needs. It would be the first wearable device from HTC, which will offer flawless integration with HTC One M8. By connecting your HTC smartwatch to M8, it would become possible for you to sync both of them and get regular updates. One of the most striking features of HTC Gluuv is its amazingly powerful camera, of 87.2 MP!

Sony Smart Eyeglass Attach

This device might remind you of the Google Eyeglass. Following the footsteps of Google, Sony is planning to come up with its own version of Smart Eyeglass attach. This device will be loaded with sensor HUB, Bluetooth, wireless LAN, and a powerful processor. In addition, it will also feature an OLED Micro Display accompanied with an optical unit.

With so many options to choose from, the competition between the wearable devices of 2015 is definitely going to get tougher. However, this will certainly prove beneficial for the consumers, as tech companies will have to keep improving their products in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Rapid prototyping is nothing but submission of mock-up design (wireframes) about how a system should look and function upon full-fledged release. The system can be anything – a software, an app or a website. With rapid prototyping, stakeholders get a glimpse of what the fully ready design will look like and how it will behave. This will then undergo validation from leadership executive, developers, designers and other associated stakeholders.

The core purpose of this activity is to ensure that all perspectives are clearly factored in when doing actual development and thus save costs, time and effort in multiple iterations afterwards. When prototyping, you need to focus on the key/common functionality that will be used the most. Anything that is new, complex or routinely used functionality but needs security will definitely go through prototyping.

The process

The three key stages of rapid prototyping process include –

1. Prototype – is the development of sketches or simulations that mock-up the actual solution
2. Assess – this is then shared with key stakeholders for their review and feedback
3. Revise – all feedback is incorporated into the prototype and made ready for further fine tuning

As more feedback keep getting added the prototype grows in scope and assumes a full-fledged pre-development design. The term ‘Rapid’ refers to the quick time in which the mock-up goes through a series of iterations to evolve into something concrete.

Fidelity in prototyping

Fidelity refers to the amount of effort/time involved to make prototype nearer to the actual product. So, low fidelity (wireframes) will be a rough pencil sketch far removed from the actual working system (more practical in the initial iterations), while high fidelity is as realistic to actual system as it gets – by use of high end simulator tools (this will be practical when all feedback has been collected and incorporated into the prototype).

Depending on the stage at which the development happens or the end objective of the prototype, fidelity can also encompass one or more of the below dimensions of fidelity –

1.Visual fidelity – This tackles the look and feel aspect of prototyping. It can range from rough pencil sketches of the mock-up to hi-fi stylized versions. More focus should be on the UI aspect here.

Juicy Tip – Don’t go high end in the first stage itself as the mock up is bound to take shape and evolve further post gathering feedback from stakeholders. As the process progresses, you can bring in individual elements such as color, graphics, high-res images etc.

 2. Content fidelity – This tackles the way content placement will affect the overall look of the application or website.

Juicy Tip – Start off by placing dummy text (“Lorem ipsum…”) into the rough sketches just to fill up the blank space on layout. As the design keeps getting better you can replace this with actual content to gauge its impact.

 3. Behavioral fidelity – This dimension shows whether the prototype will be static or dynamic / interactive when presented to stakeholders.

Juicy Tip – Initially, keep interactivity to the minimum as focus should be on layout and visual appeal. Later on you can add elements of interactivity to make the behaviors as similar to actual system as possible. This way the subsequent iterations can be utilized for usability testing and user experience.

GoodWorkLabs specialises in User Experience (UX) for software products, mobile apps, games and enterprise products. Request for a free quote for your UX, prototyping and design needs.

The leading outsourced product development company GoodWorkLabs was featured in the anchor story in The Telegraph, the largest newspaper of the Eastern India. Here are excerpts from the story –

Start young, take risks and break out of the rut! Vishwas Mudagal did just that to have his share of ups and downs before tasting sweet success. Now, the 32-year-old entrepreneur-writer-motivation speaker wants the younger generation in the Northeast to dream big and follow its passion from college itself.

“The idea behind GoodWorkLabs was to provide high-end technology solutions to other companies. Today, we have 20 clients, including Flipkart and Samsung. About 80 per cent of our clients are based outside the country,” he said.

On what makes his firm acceptable in the global market, Mudagal said, “It’s about aesthetic sense, scalability, innovation and the ability to build a product incrementally. We believe we have acquired these traits and our clients have responded well. Not many IT service companies have in-depth knowledge of building a product, as doing that requires going through a gamut of services over a period of time.

The Northeast, he said, has a huge potential for entrepreneurship but needs to have the right momentum. “The impetus on entrepreneurship as of now is not there. There is the need for developing infrastructure and building a marketing campaign. Having said that, the region has abundant human resources. A lot of young people from the Northeast have done well in cities outside the region,” he said.

Read the complete story “Breaking Out Of The Rut Mantra For Success” Story here.

Vishwas Mudagal, CEO of GoodWorkLabs, was invited for an exclusive event by CII Young Indians Jaipur chapter to address the members and also students of ICG – IIS University at Jaipur. Vishwas address a large audience on key aspects of entrepreneurship, building path breaking products that can change the world, innovation, writing and so on, encouraging young women to dream big and take up entrepreneurship during the college time. According to him “College is the best time to experiment and understand what you are passionate about. This is when you can start your first company. Success or failure doesn’t matter, what matters is you take the first step.”

Vishwas who is also a best-selling author encouraged everyone to take up writing and storytelling, saying “The only way to live several lifespans in one lifetime is by writing stories.”

Young Indians team is doing a great job in encouraging youngsters and creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurship and business growth.

Here are a few pics from the event –

Vishwas Mudagal with CII – Young Indians leadership team – Jaipur co-chair Abhinav Bhantia, Jaipur chair Abhishek Mishra, Northern Region Chair Rohit, Ashish Maheshwari, Ashish Modi, Nivedita and everyone.

Vishwas with students of ICG College, Jaipur. The future women entrepreneurs, authors, and game changers!

The Nasscom Product Conclave 2014 Kolkata, the mega event conducted by the IT-BPO body Nasscom, was a great success and has given a push to the IT industry in Kolkata, especially the startups from the region. Vishwas Mudagal, the CEO of GoodWorklabs, spoke about Lean Startups at the event. He highlighted the growing popularity of Lean Startup philosophy, the need to build products iteratively using the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) model, acquiring ‘validating learning’, experimenting with pivots and various other tricks entrepreneurs could use while starting up or scaling companies.

Below are few pics from the event –

Vishwas Mudagal in a panel discussion on Lean Startups.

‘Losing My Religion,’ the best-selling novel written by Vishwas Mudagal was showcased at the event. It is now seen as a book that is a preamble to entrepreneurship and startups, as it exposes the reader to the life of entrepreneurs, and their struggles and glory.

Let’s begin with a simple definition of what Cross Platform Mobile Development is. It is a manner of writing single codebase for applications, which could be used on different operating systems. It is a known fact how difficult Multi-Platform Mobile App Formatting can be. Each platform functions differently and is unique in its own way. However, one could say that Cross-platform apps are the “in-thing” today. So as a developer, it is essential to develop best cross-formatted apps. Fortunately, there are some really good Cross Platform Mobile Development tools / platforms / frameworks in the market today (they have for sure evolved quite a bit). We bring to you the Top 5.

#1 – PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an award-winning Mobile Development Cross Platform that is capable of creating applications for Symbian, Android, Blackberry, Palm, iOS (iPhone and iPads) and Windows. These developers write their applications based on web shortcuts such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSS3. It is also open source and free, so there are no licensing costs. PhoneGap works systematically, and provides developers an easy access to hardware components. Like the accelerometer, camera, sound, GPS tracker and many more which are quite advanced in nature. In addition, PhoneGaps also conducts training to developers for free who are willing to make it big in this industry.

#2 – Appcelerator

Appcelerator creates Cross Platform Mobile Apps through Web Programming languages such as PHP, JavaScript, HTML, Python and Ruby. One of the best things about Appcelerator is that it provides its users with more than 300 API’s and location information to access easily. It is known to power over 1000 native apps in a month. For the 3rd Party Components, it provides value-adds such as Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS), app analytics and a marketplace.

#3 – Sencha Touch

Sencha Touch as a Cross Platform Mobile Development tool is a HTML5 mobile application framework for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. Sencha Touch can be used to develop UI’s for mobile web applications that have a look and feel like those of native applications on the supported mobile devices.

#4 – Whoop

This is a very interesting tool for Cross Platform Mobile Development. Whoop claims that they are “the one-stop mobile app publishing platform for non-developers.” They state that they are suitable for even non developers. This is considered one of the best ways to go for beginners in Mobile Development. Although, there is an ease in its use, it does not possess many important requirements for the latest features on hardware. It consists of a WYSIWYG interface which allows the developers to easily drop app elements to attain the desired result.

#5 – MoSync

MoSync is an advanced SDK for Cross Platform Mobile Development. This SDK provides the developers with many useful tools such as runtimes, libraries, integrated compilers and more. It includes Eclipse based IDE and supports C/C++, PHP, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and Java. MoSync supports OS’ such as Android, Windows Mobile, Moblin, Symbian, Mobile Linux distro. The release of MoSync 2.4, will allow support for iPhone OS and BlackBerry.

#6 – RhoMobile

It offers Rhodes, an open source integrated framework based on Ruby. This is basically used to develop applications that can be used on several other mobile OS’. It allows native applications to be developed for Symbian, Android, Windows Mobile, iOS and RIM. RhoMobile provides a framework, which needs the developer to just code once. This same code can be used to develop apps for different OS’.

Cross Platform Mobile Development tools are in huge demand today. We hope these are able to help you in developing an awesome app!

For consultation and development of cross platform mobile apps, connect with GoodWorkLabs, the experts in cross platform mobile and HTML5 development.

Step 1: Describe and also get described.

A simple but clear description about your app is an absolute must. It should not be the bare minimum. But then again, it should not be a long essay either. The trick is to make it interesting so it can grab the consumer’s attention. Ensure that the description is written well, along with all the details and the key features, which would compel the user to download the Ipad app. Attaching screenshots of the App, would also be an advantage. To have a better idea, look out for similar apps in the Apple App Store that are successful, to get an idea of what is working for them.

By getting described we mean get good reviews and ratings. Getting good reviews and ratings would put the iPad app at a higher rank in the App Store. One does not need to hire a PR Agency to market their app. You can simply do a Google search of your app’s topic. This will lead you to finding relevant newspaper columns and blogs, which you can target with a press release. Mention that promo codes are available for whoever would like to review the app. This can be a clever form of marketing.

Step 2: Are you making your Ipad App social?

This question determines how well you can market your Ipad app. In the current times, promoting an app mostly happens online and social media is the key. Using popular social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and others, to promote your app is a common and effective method. Liking, sharing and commenting have become a big way to sell your app to people. This, basically increases the visibility of the app. Another way to boost sales for your Ipad apps is by following pages of app development, marketing, sales, etc. Being connected to likeminded people will help you understand better.

Step 3: Be smart

We advice that you do not charge the customer for your app at the first go. Consider offering a “lite” or a “trial” version of your Ipad app. It should contain adequate key features of the main app, so that the consumer knows what he will be purchasing. Also, it ensures that he is adequately excited about it.

Here, we divulge a bit and tell you that, it is important to know how to monetize your apps. Marketing takes time and till then one must keep afloat. Do read our previous blog on the same to get a fair idea on how to do so. Click here.

Step 4:  Get Your iPad App on the Web

It is not a necessity to spend a fortune on a website. It could be just a standard WordPress site, which would work just as fine. What you need to consider is the quality and the content on the website. It should not look amateurish. Your website will act like an online business card. It will give the customer an idea about your company and your app. The trick is to make sure your website creates curiosity. We tend to remember those, that makes us curious.

Next, SEO (search engine optimisation) of your website is very important. Identify the keywords for your app, optimize the content for these keywords and ensure you drive traffic to your site through search engines. This is called organic traffic and is the cheapest, the best and the most relevant traffic you can ever get. Also, once the visitors land on your site, make sure you convert them into your clients by continuously improving your website.

Step 5: Here comes the iPad App!

Now comes the time to launch your app. All the strategizing, planning and marketing has led you up to this. Ensure the visibility of your Ipad app is high. Making noise about your app at this stage is the way to go. Get in touch with bloggers, journalists, etc. to spread the word about your app. Getting people interested in the app is the first step to having a successful iPad App. But do make sure you have an app that is clean, bug free and unique. It can be the same old story but with your unique twist.

(image source – http://timenerdworld.files.wordpress.com )

“You put water into a cup it becomes the cup,

You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle.”

A responsive website is something like water. It can take the shape and size of the device you are visiting it on.  It also helps you stand out from the crowd. Times have changed and more people are online from their mobile devices or tabs. Hence, it has become a necessity to have a Responsive Web design that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere and on any device without an issue. There are several advantages of having a Responsive Website, but we list you the Top 4.

#1 – Because Google says so!

Google is the God of all search engines and we are sure you want to get a high rank here. And, guess what Google loves? Responsive Websites. They feel this is the best Industry practice that you can follow. A Responsive Web Design has the same URL and the same HTML no matter which device you use. This makes it easier for them to index and organize the content. This is basically very user friendly as all the content is available on one website and on one URL. This makes for easy browsing and sharing.

#2 – SEO is the last word

SEO is the last word for websites in the current scenario. If you have a good SEO strategy that usually assures that your website gets a higher rank on the various search engines. Having one website means having one set of hyperlinks. This reduces the hassles of maintaining the website and helps in focusing on how to increase the reach with a consolidated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. It is not economically viable to have different SEO campaigns for different devices. With a Responsive Website the focus then narrows down to just one link. Thus, making strategies and tactics for every device easier and SEO effective.

#3 –   Let’s Save

Needless to say, that adopting Responsive Web Design to your website would lead you to saving a lot of time and more importantly money. By testing the development, support and maintenance across a number of websites, the overhead charges increase. This can easily be avoided by maintaining a single responsive site, as there will be less content to manage. This also means the high bounce rate, which mobile websites usually face, can be combated. Less bounce rates mean more footfall on the website, which obviously means more out of less investment.

Also, for businesses and individuals who don’t have a need to create and publish a mobile app on the app stores (be it iOS, Android or Windows), responsive websites save a ton of money because you also cater to your users on mobile through a good website that can be optimally used on phone or tablet screen through the browser.

#4 –   Be in the loop

Responsive Website is the most ‘in’ thing and a necessity today in order to flourish your online business. With the growing number of mobile phone and tablet users, soon all websites will have to have a Responsive Web Design in order to sustain. Since the new trend of online shopping has completely taken over, not having a Responsive Website would end up with you losing customers or users. Also, remember, not everyone would like to download your app due to a variety of reasons (hassle of downloading, the bandwidth issues, the memory the apps eat away, etc.). So responsive websites then are a must.

We strongly feel, that a Responsive Website is the key to expand and make your online business a success. It not only makes managing the SEO strategy, but also provides a great user experience across any device.

Want to build your responsive website? GoodWorkLabs specialises in building beautiful responsive websites with great user experience. Contact us today.