A successful app development for iOS entails close collaboration between iOS developers and graphic designers. Any disconnect between the two delays the app development process, leading to an infuriated client. In order to ensure seamless workflow between developers and designers, we have listed below a few practical and easy to follow tips for designers that save time, reduce iterations, and speed up the iOS app development process significantly-

1. Honesty at the mock up stage – At the initial stage, use only those deigns in the mock up that delivers value to the full developed app. At the mock-up stage there are a lot of unknown variables that need to be accounted for

a. will the app being developed be the right fit for your designs?
b. will your design respect the dynamism or uncertainty of real life and adjust well to actual elements, layout, data, or content?

This tip will make certain that developers’ screen mock-up truly depicts how the app will look like at the stage- i.e. when not all information is at hand.

2. Close collaboration – Constant and open communication is a must between developers and designers. As a designer, you can sit with developers and see how your designs get programmed into living entities within the app. This helps maintain overall consistency of the color and theme of the app and prevents any disconnect with what the designer delivers versus what the developer expects.

3. Avoid redundancy – If possible and applicable, you can deliver a similar set of elements as a template that can be customized further by developer and then applied appropriately. For instance, if you are designing a button element, there need not be separate buttons for ‘ok’, ‘cancel’, ‘submit’, ‘search’ etc. Developers can easily add the label upon blank buttons wherever required.

4. Design prototypes – There are tools that help designers convey a dummy depiction of how different elements will be arranged and brought together. Developers will get a sense of the different action, navigation and animation put together by you and thus remove any confusion. You can try out tools such as Invision and Proto.io to create such productive design prototypes.

5. File delivery – Developers already have a lot going on to accomplish app development. Some useful piece of advice for designers to help reduce overheads on developers would be-

a. Sorted delivery – You can make folders per screen of the app and dump all images in it. You can also put in a screenshot of entire screen with placement of various elements to avoid confusion.

b.Consistency – You would need to ensure that all elements are consistent. For instance all images should be .PNG (and not a mix of .JPG and .PNG)

c. iOS oriented – Images need to be both high res (for retina display of recent iOS devices) and low res (for older iOS devices). Also follow the universal naming convention (for e.g. suffix high res images with “@2x”).

These steps will ensure that the deliverable can be easily used by developers further in the app development process. Got any other useful point to add to the above list? Write in to us and let us know.

In today’s frantic technology driven world, mobile app have created a strong niche in a short span of time. When 25% of international media and marketing executives view mobile as the most disruptive force in their industry ¹, it is time to sit up and take notice Having a small business app developed for its service/product offerings could help give emerging and nascent businesses a solid platform to chart the growth map by capturing the formidable mobile audience.

The need for such apps is further corroborated by the fact that by end of 2014, mobile usage is predicted to overtake desktop usage ². Having said that it is essential to know what features can help in sustained interaction and engagement that will in turn help close sales and earn business through the mobile. Today let us have a glimpse at some of the must-have features which could tip the scales in your favor:

1. Seamless Social Media Integration:

Before everything else, this clearly is the need of the hour! We are living in a world of social media boom. You simply cannot undermine the importance of this aspect. Having mobile apps and social media business pages separately proves cumbersome for smooth management and increases abandonment rate. Hence, business apps need to be seamlessly combined with the respective social media profiles.

2. Location Based Services:

You can employ this strategy to give your company increased chances of business from mobile users in the vicinity. You can showcase your outreach with the help of location check-ins. Moreover, you can optimize customer satisfaction by giving them area specific offers, discounts, and special prices.

3. Customizability:

In a world of mobile revolution, people have gained heightened app sensitivity. That’s right! Users want their apps to represent their preferences, tastes, hobbies and likes. They need the power of customization. Changes like appearance modifications, notification settings, saving personal information and managing order history need to be incorporated within the app for best results.

4. Simplicity:

Apps with simple yet enticing interface and navigability will promote ease of understanding, improved readability, and seamless internal mobility. Too many advertisements and offers can act as deal breakers. ‘Minimalistic’ is the new buzzwords adopted by leading players such as Apple to great effect.

5. Payment Processing Methods:

Make sure that your customers have access to single button payment features [Credit cards, bank transfers, online banking, etc.] so you never get to miss ever a single business sale due to cart abandonment or long-winding checkout process.

6. Timely yet Relevant Communication:

Push emails and push messages optimize customer communication by a significant margin. Users will appreciate getting to know about new offers, deals, discounts or early bird rewards that will sweeten their online purchase.

7. Monetary Management:

Take care to have a robust and secure gateway and backend to –

• Integrate Bank Accounts
• Monitor payments and sales
• Manage payroll and orders anytime, anywhere
• Track Invoices

8. Shipping and Delivery Management:

Allow your precious customers to get real time updates regarding the whereabouts of their package information once the payment has been done. Keeping them informed about the status of delivery till the time it reaches them instill a sense of confidence in customers’ minds – a factor that possesses a great recall value.

9. Comprehensive Feedback System:

Give your users the power to communicate with you directly or indirectly via comments, periodical surveys, FAQs, discussion forums and forms. Getting a chance to review and post feedback provides further impetus to customers to try out your business app again as they know that their comments are being acted upon.

1 – As appearing in http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/mobile-applications/8-statistics-every-business-should-know-about-mobile-0363048

2- http://www.convinceandconvert.com/mobile/7-mobile-marketing-stats-that-will-blow-your-mind/

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.

The 2014 Apple Conference near its headquarters in Cupertino, California turned heads by the bunch with new devices, a new payment system and new a smart watch. If you haven’t had the chance to watch it live, here is our lowdown on the key highlights of the glittering events that was as many as 4 launches in one dazzling evening.

#1 – iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – The device every loyal Apple fan has been waiting for was finally announced by Tim Cook, the Chief Executive of Apple. While the basic look of exterior matches the iPhone 5, the slightly rounded corners managed to hold attention. Also prominent was the protrusion of the camera lens out of the phone’s body. While the iPhone 6 sports a 4.7 inch screen, the iPhone 6 Plus boasts of a huge 5.5 inch screen – the biggest screen size on iPhone till date.

Both the phones feature Retina HD display, iOS8 and 20 LTE bands. They run on the proprietary Apple A8 64-bit 2^nd generation SoC that contains a little over two billion transistors built around a 20nM process. Apple claims 25% speedier CPU and 5% boost on graphics. ¹

The price sensitive consumer would be forced to think twice before ordering the new iPhone 6. However, crazy fans around the world will see no problems in shelling out $299 for 16 GB, $399 for 64 GB or $499 for a 128 GB iPhone. The interesting thing here is the increased storage made available in place of the maximum 64GB space in previous iPhones. ²

We are sure that the new editions will be a delight to both the iOS app developers as well as the iPhone users.

#2 – Apple Pay – The conference also marked the debut of Apple Pay, a new payment process that uses NFC and fingerprint-sensing TouchId to enable purchases directly from the phone itself. Users simply have to get a one-time credit card verification done from their bank. They can then use Passbook, Apple’s online merchant services, to make payment at a wireless tap-and-pay terminal. Tim Cook claims Apple Pay to be “an entirely new category of service. And it’s all about the wallet”. ²

#3 – Apple Watch – Apple also officially announced its first Apple Watch at the event. It has an accuracy of +/- 60 milliseconds and comes in six strap styles and 2 metal frames color tones. Some of the key features include Siri integration, touch screen, a gyroscope, a heart monitor and an accelerometer. It also doubles up as a “comprehensive health and fitness device” by using a three-ring system for monitoring physical activity everyday and gauging it against set goals. It will be available from 2015 onwards at a starting price of $349.

Tim Cook’s love for music was evident when he mentioned the iTunes festival in London and the growing fan base of iTunes. He then announced the final performance of the evening by U2 and helped distribute the band’s latest album for free to the participants.

Write in to us and tell us which of the product launches of the evening did you find the most enticing?

1 – http://www.extremetech.com/computing/189787-apples-a8-soc-analyzed-the-iphone-6-chip-is-a-2-billion-transistor-20nm-monster

2 – http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/apple-live-blog-new-iphone/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

3 – Image source – Mashable

CEO of GoodWorkLabs, Vishwas Mudagal on a recent visit to Guwahati spoke to The Assam Tribune (the biggest newspaper in North East) on how to give a push to the economy and IT sector in the North East. Excerpts below –

“Investors want proper infrastructure and investor-friendly atmosphere. But, the State Governments of the region have not been able to provide these to the investors so far,” Mudagal claimed.

The IT Expert, however, said that his company is willing to invest in the North East especially in the software and mobile applications. “We need to conduct a feasibility study on the North-east to carry forward our plans,” he informed. The Bangalore-based IT company has been providing IT solutions to several leading companies, including Samsung, Flipkart and Klub Hub.

Mudagal also appealed to the youth to start business by utilizing available resources. “The region has vast resources, so the younger generation should start business instead of Government’s jobs. But at the same time the banks and other financial institutions should also play a key role in extending their credit support to youth,” he observed.

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!

This is Part 2 of the iOS8: Amazing New Features series. You can read Part 1 here.

With the release of the new iOS 8 SDK (Software Development Kit) in June 2014, the app developers are in for some really good news. This Developer’s kit includes 4000 new APIs (Application Programming Interface), which will help the developers to add new features and capabilities to their apps that will assist in enhancing the apps’ performance.

Following is a list of the various new kits and/or features that come with iOS 8 SDK.

Advantages of iOS 8 v/s iOS 7 Features:

Games:

Technology improvements in iOS 8 make it easy for iOS game developers to implement their game’s graphics and audio. 

• SceneKit helps create 3D animated effects and scenes into apps.
• SceneKit integrated with SpriteKit helps create high-performing and battery-efficient 2D games.
• Metal offers streamlined API, a unified graphics and shading language. Modern architectural considerations, such as multiprocessing and shared memory, make it easy to parallelize the creation of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) commands.

App Extensions:

App extensions lets the developers create actions or buttons separately, which can be used in other apps as well.

• Your app can now share photos, videos, files and website links with social networking sites and other such websites.
• You can also customise your own action buttons to help users complete various functions like translating text into another language or editing documents, and so on.
• Developers can now get their apps to display widgets such as news stories, in the ‘Today’ section of the Notifications centre.
• Also, your apps can provide storage location which other apps can also access. This helps users to edit one file using several apps.
• Create custom keyboards that users can install and use universally.

CloudKit:

• Developers can now store and retrieve their app data in a more structured, secured and efficient manner directly on the iCloud.
• They can also make the users anonymously log in to their apps with their iCloud Apple IDs.
• Now there is no need to write server-side application logic. With CloudKit, developers can solely concentrate on client-side app development.

Touch ID:

• Developers can now make use of Touch ID, the way User IDs were used to gain access to certain contents in the app.
• Touch ID cannot be accessed by iOS or any other app, and is well protected.

PhotoKit:

• Now create apps that can directly edit photos in the camera roll. Previously, users had to first import the photos.
• Other attributes include fetching objects and requesting changes, thread-safe architecture for caching and loading thumbnails, and knowledge of changes made by other apps.

Manual Camera Controls:

• Now users can use your apps and directly control the exposure settings, camera focus and white balance.
• Also, they can click pictures with different exposure settings with the help of ‘bracketed exposure captures’.

HealthKit:

• With HealthKit, all health-related information shared by the users is stored in one secured location.
• iPhone or iPad App Developers can gain access to all the information as soon as the users share them with their app. This helps the developers to provide users with a complete health-report instantly.

HomeKit:

• Developers can now create apps that will help users to locate other iOS devices in their house, for quicker configuration.
• Your apps can also control the devices with the help of certain actions.

Handoff:

• iOS 8 can make users continue using an app on another device, from right where it left off on the previous one.
• Your apps also have the option of doing the same.

Swift:

• Swift, as the name suggests, is the new fast programming language which is highly secured and interactive.
• It is used for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.
• Writing Swift code within Xcode 6 shows immediate results before compilation into native machine code.
• Code your apps in playgrounds before moving it into projects.

Here’s part 1 of the iOS: Amazing New Features series.

(image source: Any Geo blog)

Here’s a 2 part series to get a glimpse of the amazing new features Apple has come up with for iOS8 over iOS7.

Part 1 – Differences between iOS 8  v/s iOS 7  

On June 2, 2014, at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2014, Apple Inc. announced the eighth major release of its iOS mobile operating system. It has succeeded iOS 7, which was released in September 2013. There are some exciting new features for both iPhone users and iPhone mobile app developers.

The new iOS is an improved and advanced version of the previous operating system. Following is an overview of the different new features of iOS 8, in comparison with iOS 7.

Keyboard Difference between iOS 8 and iOS 7:

• The new QuickType feature helps in typing faster by providing word suggestions in iOS 8.
• It suggests what word to type next in accordance with the people you are interacting with, whether they are friends or colleagues or a complete stranger.
• Users can now also install a third-party keyboard, like Swype or Swiftkey.

Interactive Notifications:

• Now reply to a message without leaving the app you were using. This is also possible for third-party apps like facebook, where you can like or comment through the notification without opening facebook at all.
• This also works on the lock-screen.
• In iOS 7, double-tap could only get you in touch with the opened apps. In iOS 8, the same option can now get you in touch with your favourite contacts instantly.

Health Kit:

• iOS 7 had separate apps to measure blood pressure, heart rate, calories burnt, diabetes and other such metrics. With the new Health Kit in iOS 8, now keep all these measurements in one place.
• It’s personalised as well! The kit recognises your readings and acts accordingly. For instance, if your blood pressure is higher than what it usually is, or your heart rate has increased abnormally without having done any activity, it will instantly notify a hospital, and a doctor will contact you immediately.
• For this, Apple has also tied up with Mayo Clinic and several other hospitals.

Spotlight:

• Spotlight is enhanced, providing you with results from multiple sources. For instance, if you search for a movie, you will get results from iTunes, as well as its current running show-time in theatres.

Mail:

• Delete mails, mark as unread, or flag, by simply swiping the mail in the inbox.
• While composing emails, if you want to access other emails, you could now just swipe down the composing mail and check your inbox.

Safari:

• This app has become tidier, as you can now choose to hide the sidebar containing bookmarks, shared links and reading lists.
• It also provides a bird’s eye view of all the websites that you have opened, grouping the tabs which are from the same site.
• Scanning the credit card and make purchases without entering your details.
• By holding the ‘+’ icon, open a recently closed tab.
• Now enter into privacy mode for only select sites, unlike previously, when under privacy mode, all opened tabs went into that mode.

Enterprise:

• Configuring your device in accordance with your organisation has become as simple as it can be.
• Also, there is better privacy option with passcode protection for all apps – calendar, contacts, mail, messages, notes, reminders, third-party apps (eg. fb).

Siri:

• If you now say ‘Hey Siri’, the Siri is activated right away. You don’t even need to touch the phone at all.
• It even recognises songs playing in the background.
• Ask it to purchase that song for you, and it will take you to the iTunes store.
• It also supports 22 new dictation languages.

Continuity:

• With iOS 8, you can now have all Apple products synced together.
• Switch between devices and pick up from where you left off, and that too, without manual configuration.
• You can now also Airdrop files between Mac and iOS devices.

iCloud Drive:

• In iOS 8, if you make any changes on the documents that are saved in the iCloud drive, you instantly have it on all your synced devices.
• You also get the first 5GB data storage for free.

Messaging:

• In iOS 8, now share audio and video files instantly and also share locations.
• Have group conversations, add or remove people, and switch to ‘do not disturb’ mode to mute a conversation, or leave the group entirely.

Photos:

• Editing features for photos in iOS 8 has become smarter than before.
• Also, photos can now be easily searched for by typing their timeline, location or name of albums.

Family Sharing:

• With this new feature, add up to six members sharing the same credit card.
• Share as many photos, movies, songs, documents, lists or calendar reminders with family.

End of part 1. In part 2 we will discuss the Developer’s Kit. 

Update: Read the Part 2 – iOS8 versus iOS7 Developer’s Kit here

(image source – IBNlive.com)