Tushar, Author at anteelo

Native vs. Hybrid App Development: Which Is Better?

Posted on 08/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

Apps are more than just technology. Apps have become a part of life and people are spending the majority of their days on apps now. Not to confuse these apps with game apps since non-gaming apps have seen a sudden rise in the market. Next year, 2020, the non-gaming apps are said to reach the global download rate of 284 billion.

Now tell us, can your business afford to lose such a huge market? Absolutely not! Going mobile has so many advantages and opens up multiple doors of opportunities for businesses. Apps are great for creating awareness and providing more value to your customers. This is why most businesses are opting for a mobile app solution.

Those who are going for app development for business must be knowing that there are many choices and decisions to make. During the entire app development process, there are a lot of choices that the app owner and the app developer make in order to get the best possible outcome.

One of these decisions is a choice between native and hybrid apps. The debate of native vs hybrid app has been going on for a while and honestly, there is no black and white answer to it.

So, let us start by understanding what is native app and hybrid app in simple terms.

Defining Native and Hybrid Apps

Native apps are particularly built for one platform. These apps are based on programming languages that support one platform at a time. The languages are Java or Kotlin for Android app development and Swift or Objective-C for iOS app development. These apps cannot be run on other platforms since they are developed for a specific platform. For instance, an app built for iOS platform cannot run on the Android devices and vice versa. However, this does have a benefit. Since the apps are built for one specific platform i.e. iOS or Android or Windows, the apps can use the full functionality of the devices. This means a smooth running app with lesser errors.

What is hybrid app? A hybrid mobile app is based on the web view which runs on a web application in a native browser. These are viewed in UIWebView for iOS and WebView in Android. These apps are developed using languages like CSS, HTML, JavaScript and then Cordova is used for wrapping them into native apps.

When compared, Native vs hybrid app, one is rich in performance and the other has a higher reach in the market. Despite the differences, both types of apps use languages that are considered to be the top programming languages in 2019. These apps have benefits as well as limitations which we will discuss in the upcoming segment of the blog.

Hybrid vs Native Apps Pros and Cons

Now that you are clear with what are native apps and hybrid apps, let’s see their pros and cons. Both the apps are good for different reasons but not for the same reasons. Each has its own pros and cons which will determine whether you should go for a hybrid

mobile app or a native mobile app.

Pros of Native apps

Native apps are fast and smooth since they are developed for one platform.
These apps have the best performance.
In terms of user input and output, the apps run much smoother.
Offline mode is available for most of the apps.
Access to the full functionality of the app devices.
The overall user experience is great as the UI is specific for the platforms.

Cons of Native apps

The cost of native mobile app development is high.
App development time is slow.
You will need expert development agencies since the programming languages are complicated.
This is not a good choice for simple apps.

Pros of Hybrid apps

A hybrid mobile app is developed in less time.
The cost of development is lower for Hybrid apps.
A Hybrid application can run on multiple platforms.
The app development for multiple platforms needs to be done only once.
The device’s APIs can be accessed.
The maintenance and support for these apps are easy.

Cons of Hybrid apps

Hybrid app development is a much slower process than native app development.
Hybrid apps cannot use the full functionality of mobile devices.
The web apps fail to be interactive and intuitive which is why native apps are better than hybrid in providing good user experience.
Need network at all times to run well.
Hybrid apps depend on a third-party wrapper.

So these were the native vs hybrid apps pros and cons. We can clearly see that both have a reasonable number of pros and cons. Web apps or hybrid apps lack high performance whereas native apps require constant updates from the users’ side. For proper comparison, we shall move to the next segment which is the difference between native and hybrid mobile apps.

What is the Difference Between Native App and Hybrid App?

The native vs hybrid app comparison is done for different criteria. Some differences between mobile native vs hybrid are quite clear as they can be noticed easily. However, there are also some major differences that take place during the app development process.

The first difference is the one that we have been talking about since the beginning of this blog. The native apps are built for one platform whereas the hybrid apps can be run on multiple platforms.

This brings us to the second difference between hybrid app and native app. The programming language used in both apps is different since there is a difference in supporting the platform. Hybrid apps are developed using CSS, HTML and JavaScript whereas Native apps are built using Java for Android and Swift for iOS.

The third difference between native app and hybrid app is the developer. When going for native app development then there is a need of an expert app developer. Since the app is focused on one platform, the importance of UI/UX design in the app is very high. Customers tend to leave the app if they are not satisfied with the UI of the app. On the other hand, hybrid apps are easy to build and takes less time. They do not require an expert for the development process.

In the native vs hybrid app, performance is a major difference. Native apps are smooth and provide better user experience than hybrid apps. For a better understanding of these differences, here is a table of comparison between native vs hybrid app.

One of the differences is the app development cost. Native vs hybrid app development cost differs. The hybrid app development cost ranges from low to medium whereas the native apps range from medium to high.

All these differences help a business decide whether they can use the advantages of a native app or a hybrid app. However, we cannot ignore the fact that both the app development choices have seen some successful apps. Some of the successful Native apps are Twitter, PayPal, LinkedIn, Google Maps, Telegram, PokemonGo, etc. Instagram, Yelp, Baskin Robbin, Basecamp, etc, are examples of Hybrid apps.

If even after this long comparison you haven’t figured out a side in native app vs hybrid app, then the next segment is for you.

Native vs Hybrid App Development: When to Choose Which?

After seeing the pros and cons of native and hybrid mobile applications and the difference between native and hybrid app, we can say each has a set of benefit that the other can’t replace. The hybrid app performance when compared to a native app is poor and lacks interaction. This is a strong point for anyone thinking of owning an app.

Before deciding between native app vs hybrid app, there are some factors that must be considered:

The speed of the app
The UI/UX of the app
The complexity of features in the app
The app development budget
The purpose of the app

Let us see point by point when to choose which option between native vs hybrid mobile app development.

Choose Native apps:

If you want an app that works online as well as offline.
When you want an app that is interactive and high performing.
If you can accept some low responsiveness in your app.
If your app needs to choose from a wide range of functionalities.
If your app needs to access the mobile devices’ features.

Choose Hybrid apps:

If you have an existing website and want an app for it.
If the app constantly needs to download information from the internet.
If you want to get an app in a short period of time at a less cost.
If the app is simple and does not have complicated calculations or designs.
If you are still testing your ideas in the market.
If the app should be able to use any hardware the device offers.

To conclude with, native apps are built with strong features and technical advancements whereas hybrid apps are cost-effective and less time-consuming. If you wish to know more about native and hybrid app difference or how to build hybrid apps or native apps, contact our app development team at Anteelo.

Key Features to Include in a Personal Trainer App

Posted on 07/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

Today, everyone is talking about health and fitness. The whole world is trying to get into better shape and thus, going to the gym is a norm for almost everyone. However, in most of the cases, it is seen that people don’t have time for going to the gym. Due to this, the demand for personal trainer apps is growing by leaps and bounds. Sensing this demand, several companies are coming up with high-quality personal trainer app development services.

The best thing about this app is that you only need a wall, chair, and your body weight. It gives users the access to 72 different exercises and additional 22 workouts, allowing them to find the suitable program. If you are engaged in providing personal trainer app development services then have a look at all the main features of the 7 Minute Workout app and the way of implementing them.

In other words such agencies are engaged in offering world-class fitness apps at affordable rates and within determined timeframe. Talking about fitness apps, Official 7 Minute Workout by Johnson & Johnson. This app has managed to acquire more than 5 million downloads on the Google Play Market and over 2 million downloads on the Apple App Store.

Amazing features and their implementation

Voice control

With this feature, users can pause and resume training at their convenience. They have the chance of switching between exercises and controlling music. In order to make voice control possible in your personal trainer app, you can integrate Siri for iOS or Google Now for Android.

Smart workout

This feature forms the most appropriate training for users according to the level of preparation as well as their preferences. After the complete workout, users can determine the difficulty level of the exercise and can indicate which they prefer. This allows algorithm plan an effective workout. If you are planning to teach your app to form workouts, then you have two ways. In this regard, you can write an algorithm for building training by yourself. You can use marketplaces for algorithms.

Timer

This feature is perfect for calculating exercise time as well as rest intervals. To implement this feature for android, you can use CountDownTimer class, whereas for NSTimer for iOS. This way you can offer great personal trainer app development services.

Music

This app is perfect for listening songs during a training session. By using AVAudioPlayer class, you can implement this feature in your iOS app. If you want this feature in your android app, then use the multimedia framework.

Wearable edition

This 7 Minute Workout app has an edition for wearables. There is no denying that synchronizing an app with a wearable device is perfect for tracking the efficiency of exercises. In addition, the collection of data like heart rate and calories burned to name a few can be easily done.

Video player

It is good to provide guidance with video explanations. With Android multimedia framework in an Android app, your app can play audio and video files from standalone apps in the filesystem or over the network.

In conclusion, all the above-mentioned features are perfect for bringing a revolutionary change in the app development sector Hence, you have to make sure that you are incorporating all the aforesaid features in your app.

Ingredients for Creating Customer Engagement with Interactive Chatbots

Posted on 06/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

The chatbots have made strides since their inception almost a decade back. There are many of them who gives customer support on Slack and yet others aim at lonely people keeping company with their surprising wit.

The potential of these chat based bots is game changing and there are many experts who even predict that these will eventually dislodge the apps with their uniquity, usage depth and importance in our daily lives.

Almost all of the technology majors are putting all their investments behind AI, which is in turn is based on machine learning and Big Data, as they are continuously trying to reach what may be termed as nearest to human intelligence. The bots in the present times are for initiating dialogues and to spur conversations with the customers.

However, there are many instances when these bots go bad. Some of these may tell the same thing repeatedly and yet some others are unable to answer the simplest questions, as the designers mistakenly overlooked that the humans often ask questions which are unpredictable and silly.

A poorly designed chatbot user experience will quickly turn a customer engagement into a terrible user experience. The users generally have high expectations from these bots powered by Artificial Intelligence. It is these which are taking customer experience to the next great level. The UX experience rendered by these bots must be able to make the customer feel as if the chabot is speaking in its own human language.

The foundations on which these bots are based on are not only dependent on the programming skills but there are lots of dependencies on the chatbot UX design. The usability of the bots is determined by how much they are able to answer the queries asked by their users.

Here are some UX elements that builds successfully the most engaging and interactive chatbot:

1. Smart Chatbot

AI must have the ability to comprehend in-depth human behaviour. Not much cross questioning is required, but they must be able to answer all the queries from the humans. Your bots appear with a smarter personality with fully incorporated AI and language interpretation in place.

2. Visual Representation

Humans prefer to think that the bots used by them are more like friends who are answering all their queries in the form of some useful information, rather than one human machine interface or for that matter a robot.

There are many users who quite annoyingly ask repeated silly questions to their bots, so that they must be designed in such a way, that the most polite and non-offensive answers are provided with.

3. Chatbots with Compact Replies

Short and simple answers are what attracts your users. If the chatbot is unable to reply in lengthy sentences, then they must be programmed in such a way that the replies are made in short and compact sentences.

The conversation with these bots is made more engaging and interactive with videos and photos to explain something in further details.

4. Escalation System in Chatbots

These bots also need some human supervision as it is not always possible to get all the answers based on them. There are some levels of interactions which require customer interactions to be carried out with the company executives.

The best of the UX for chatbots ensures that the bots are programmed in such a manner so that it understands when to escalate the query to a higher level supervisor. This will make it possible to resolve the customer issues, without causing any delays whatsoever.

The bots that are developed must ensure that the bots say the right things at the right time. You can involve a set of random people to test the bot, whether it has the right effect. This will be successfully bring out those areas which were overlooked earlier. Once the flaws are rectified, these chatbots can be successfully displayed to millions of users. The chatbots must not be the ones that performs some mundane activities, but must be designed as a specialized purpose-driven bots that engage your target audience.

Anteelo is one of the best custom chatbot development company, that have seen an outstanding pace of growth, in a matter of two years time. They have worked in many verticals like restaurant, health, learning, entertainment and many more. They believe in delivering user-centric apps for their customers, utilizing cutting edge technologies.

Snap’s Lens Studio App lets you make your own AR animations!

Posted on 04/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

If you are a Snapchat user, you would agree that the Snapchat’s Lenses is the best thing about the app. You can add amazing AR filters and elements to your pictures and share with friends.

Till now, the Augmented Reality filters in the app were limited, but now the Snap has introduced an AR animation creation tool, called Lens Studio App, which will encourage people to create and share their own AR filters.

Do you know? Snapchat is the first company to introduce Augmented Reality lenses to the public.

Lens Studio App for AR Creation

Lens Studio desktop app is the simpler version of what Snap’s own team is using for creating AR filters. It is free to download for Mac or Windows, and easy to use.

In Lens Studio, one can design static or animated objects, 2D cutouts, floating picture frames, windows to the other world, 3D objects and much more. These filters and objects can be seen using the rear camera in Snapchat and react when you tap, look at or approach them. Isn’t it interesting?

The Augmented Reality filters you create are firstly verified by Snapchat’s moderators to ensure that they are not related to weapons, stereotypes, violence, nudity, hashtags, hatred, violence or some illegal activity. Once verified, you get a Snapcode which you can share with the other users via social media, print materials, website, or other means.

The users can scan the code and use the Augmented Reality filter for next 24 hours. This time limitation to use a snapcode is expected to be discouraging for the overuse of a particular lens, limiting the burnout among the developer’s friends and viewers. However, it is an opportunity for the developers to update their code and provide a better user experience.

“This has been an amazing year for AR as a technology,” says Eitan Pilipski, who leads Snap’s camera platform team. “We are really excited to take this AR filters tool, and make it as simple as possible for anyone using Snapchat.”

Snap has partnered with seven AR development companies to build ‘world lenses’ for the rear-facing camera and ‘face senses’ for selfie camera, namely Media Monks, Avatar Labs, Trigger, Fishermen Labs, North Kingdom, Haus, and VidMob. Besides this, the company has said that the regular users would be facilitated with the opportunity to develop AR face filters, though no definite timeline is mentioned.

Snapchat is also looking forward to initiating various Lens Studio challenges, where they will offer rewards to AR app developers who create Lenses as per the proposed theme or use case. Right now, it is assumed that the recognition will be given on the new Lens Studio website. However, it can be expected to be switched to the Snap’s app to drive developer’s interest in the platform.

The release of AR animation creating tool is supposed to be not limited to hobbyist or developers. Rather, it is expected to be great medium for the companies to advertise their products/services. It’s also taken into an acknowledgement that the Snapchat has experienced a fall in its user engagement, and has introduced this feature to remain in the competition; there’s no proof that offering World lenses to everyone around will put Instagram on notice.

A Quick Overview of Chatbot Development : Benefits and Drawbacks

Posted on 03/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

According to ComScore’s 2017 US Mobile App Report, users spend 90% of their mobile app time in their top 5 apps. Surprised? Well, more alarming is that nearly 50% of their time is spent on a single app, leaving 18% lesser time for the second and other three apps. This means that until and unless your app is the first or second most used application, there’s no way to get valuable users’ attention. But, is it so easy to become the first choice of the users? With Google, Facebook and Apple leading the market in terms of user engagement, this seems to be nearly impossible. What to do then? How to rise above these tech giants? Well, the answer to these questions is Chatbot.

Chatbot- The New Face of App Market

“The tech industry continues to undergo critical changes. The Websites replaced the desktop Operating system, mobile apps trumped over the websites and now, the Chatbots are all set to surpass mobile applications.”

Chatbots are becoming a hype in the tech industry! Also called Bots and Messaging bots, Chatbots are considered among the best ways to reach the customers and keep them hooked. As per our experts, chatbots with the help of messaging applications are providing newer opportunities to brands for user attraction and engagement. It is offering a promising future to the businesses, and in fact, is supposed to surpass mobile apps by the year 2020. So, what’s your plan now? Ready to invest in the technology used by popular companies like Hyatt, Spring and HealthTap? To make it easier to decide, here we are sharing the merits and demerits of Chatbot Development.

Benefits of Chatbot Development

Reach a Wider Customer Base

As the messaging applications are gaining huge momentum over social networks and other applications, a Chatbot built into a chat platform like Facebook Messenger can help you to reach a wider customer base across the globe.

Increased User engagement

Chatbots are usually text-driven, with images and unified gadgets. It enables the users to get all the information under the same roof, without going through the whole content. In short, the bots screen out the content users which to know and deliver to them in no time. With the help of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, the chatbots learns from the user’s behavior, previous interactions and offer customized services/products. Also, it keeps the vital details like name, address, credit details, etc. into its storage which implies the user need not to provide these information again and again. Apart from these, the Chatbots keep consulting the users like humans about their previous experience, which helps the customers get emotionally linked to the bot.

“According to Gartner’s report, 85% of user communications will be managed without human involvement by 2020.”

Round the Clock’ Customer Service

Another reason why businesses are looking ahead to shaping the future with bots is its potential for ‘round the clock’ customer service. This empowers the customers to communicate regarding any product/service even in the midnight and get a response immediately.

Faster & Customizable Facility

The websites take a few seconds or minutes to load, while the mobile apps consume your storage space. However, the chatbots loads instantaneously and do not ask for separate phone’s memory storage. Thus, they win the race as users prefer mobility solutions with faster loading time and lesser memory consumption.

Besides this, the bot provides a wider array of services- ranging from diagnosing your health to buying a gift to booking a flight ticket at the same platform. This is one of the prime reasons users love bots over the mobile apps.

No More Stress of App Downloads

One of the challenges faced by the companies is getting their app downloaded. According to a report, though the number of app downloads is going to exceed 197 billion by this year, the rate of app downloads in the developed countries like the USA is declining to zero. In such a scenario, a Chatbot can be the ultimate solution for you! A Chatbot is integrated within the messaging apps, and need not be downloaded for usage. That means, your targeted audience can take the perks of your chatbot without compromising with their phone’s storage.

Lower Development Cost

With Chatbot development, you can be available on all the mobile platforms and devices; you no more need to rely on platform-centric development resources. You need not spend weeks and months on developing an app or wait for approval from the app store. Also, building a chatbot is much faster and cheaper. According to our developers, a top-class Facebook bot can be built at about half the cost of a mobile application. Isn’t that amazing?

Limitations

Immature

There’s no exaggeration to the fact that the Chatbot is the fastest flourishing technology in the field of app development. But still, it is not mature enough to give tough competition to humans and mobile applications. According to the top mobile app development companies, the bots gain knowledge by the interactions and might need a human assistant to handle the situation when something goes wrong.

The very best example of this is Microsoft’s chatbot Tay which turned from human-loving bot to a racist freak within 24 hours.

Can Replace Promotional, Retail & Content-focused mobile apps only

Although there are millions of applications on the App Store, about 75% of revenue is driven by games. Various mobile app development agencies have integrated the gamification into the bots to attract the younger audience, but there’s still tough competition in the market. The applications like Prisma, Pokemon Go and MSQRD are still ranking on the top, proving that mobile apps are still in business.

Conclusion

Now, as you are familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of Chatbot development, take the right decision for your business. For any further query or get a bot for your business, contact us!

AI Technology in Mobile Banking Apps: Redesigning the User Experience

Posted on 01/10/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

From Siri in the phone to Netflix recommendations on Smart TV, the Artificial Intelligence technology is revolutionizing our lives. It has become the hottest technology of the present time. Every small to medium businesses- from food chains to personal fitness centers are employing this technology to reap higher benefits. And finance industry is not at all lagging behind. Finance companies are also hiring the top mobile app developers to invest in this technology and enjoy its perks. Before we begin to delve the benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Finance and Banking sector, let’s have a quick recap of what is it all about.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a fusion of three state-of-the-art technology, namely Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Cognitive Computing. The main idea behind this technology is to mimic the human intelligence and provide better communication between the humans & machines.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Banking Mobile Apps

In the war of gaining a competitive edge in the marketplace, it is quite tough to rely completely on humans. The humans have a limit to the speed with which they do any task. They can’t act with the speed of light to deliver an impressive experience to multiple users at the same time. However, human intelligence machine can do this. And this is the prime reason they are gaining such a huge traction in the market.

Following are some of the benefits finance and banking industry is enjoying with the help of AI:

Customer Support

The banking sector is adopting the AI technology to enhance its support system and offer better value to users. The AI-based customer service Chatbots are imitating the human interactions and providing them desirable information/result in no time. This feature is helping users with relevant information and in tasks like recovering passwords. This way, it is cutting down the workload of financial specialists, empowering them to focus on more crucial tasks.

“Artificial Intelligence allows us to offer an experience that doesn’t require our customers to go through several pages on our website; they can easily get the information through simple conversations. This is a great time-saving convenience for busy users who are already using Messenger.”

– Steve Ellis, Head of Wells Fargo’s Innovation Group

Fraud Detection Technology

Fraud detection is one of the key areas excelled by Finance world with the implementation of Artificial Intelligence. The AI equipped apps easily identify the fraudulent activities and alert the customers. It also helps payment providers and retailers in examining and securing financial activities in connection with their firms.

Financial Planning

The Artificial Intelligence plays a significant role in assisting the users to choose the right plan for them. Using the data from the past activities of the users and offers from banks such as credit card plans, investment policies, funds, etc., the AI-enabled mobile applications are offering the most optimal recommendations to the users.

This feature is the core factor behind the revenue growth in the major banks and so, is highly in demand by many other entrepreneurs. If you are also in the finance business, reach to the top mobile application development companies today!

Automated Transaction

The users love automation and the opportunity of running timeline crucial tasks. Because of the same, the AI-based applications are ruling the industry. At Anteelo, our adept mobile app developers have built various projects based on automated functionalities.

Personalized Remainder

Various finance companies are implementing the AI based personalized reminders into their mobile apps. Just like an alarm clock, these reminders remain active for a certain period of time to enable users to perform a particular task on time. This feature is helping the users in renewing their policies and other such financial transactions before the time passes.

Wrapping Up!

Artificial Intelligence is heavily influencing the market, especially the finance industry. The industry’s leading giants have already begun to enjoy its benefits, setting a new stage of the competition. If you are a finance or banking corporation, it’s high time to hire the best mobile app developers and get your own AI-integrated app. Otherwise, you might find difficult to remain on the apex of the market.

Various fascinating facts regarding some Internet tools

Posted on 30/09/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

INTRODUCTION

Can we imagine a day without Facebook or Google? Can any employee think of a day without Google-Drive or Dropbox?

It’s a technical world out there and we use all these tools to connect and know about everything under the sun. We use Facebook to learn about our friends, Google is our gateway to the internet and Dropbox is used for sharing and uploading files.

But no one tries to know about Facebook or Skype or Google and how they originated. So here’s a few interesting facts about some regularly used online tools.

1. GOOGLE

Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

It was originally nicknamed “BackRub”. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word “googol”, the number one followed by one hundred zeros.

After the company’s IPO in 2004, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000.

One interesting little tidbit about Google is that all new employees are called “Nooglers,” and are given a propeller beanie cap to wear on their first Friday.

2. DROPBOX

Did you know that the founder of Dropbox, Drew Houston, conceived the idea after repeatedly forgetting his USB flash drive while he was a student at MIT.

He founded Dropbox, Inc. in June 2007 and was officially launched at 2008’s TechCrunch50, an annual technology conference.

Dropbox has been named as the world’s fifth most valuable web startup after Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, and Groupon.

But Dropbox’s fast growth hasn’t always been smooth. It burst into China, only to find itself blocked by the Chinese government.

3. SKYPE

Skype’s original proposed name was Sky Peer-to Peer. It was founded in 2003 by Janus Friis from Denmark and Niklenstrom from Sweden.

Skype comes bundled with a mind-boggling number of exotic and unlikely locales and languages. Here are just a few of them….Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan,
Chinese (Traditional and simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

Did you know that a Skype user can have local numbers in any country, with calls to the number charged at the same rate as calls to fixed lines in the country. The countries on this growing list are referred to collectively as the Skype.

4. FACEBOOK

Facemash is the original name of Facebook. Did you know that at first it was used to rank girls of Harvard University and the ranking was done only by the Harvard students?
It was founded on February 4, 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow Harvard University students Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.

Did you that Al Pacino’s face was on the original Facebook homepage.
The “Social Network ” Movie based on the Facebook has won Four Golden Globes.
The founder Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind, which means blue is the colour he can see best. No prizes for guessing why his favourite colour is the dominant palette for the Facebook site.

Moreover it is reportedly impossible to block Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook.

CONCLUSION

We are the children of a technological age and we have found streamlined ways of doing our everyday work by using hundreds of online tools. we use all these tools to connect. Today I have provided some tidbits of information about a few of them. So that when you use them next, you will be be better informed not just about the usage of the tool but also about the tool itself.

Top Silicon Valley Agency’s UI/UX Design Deliverables

Posted on 29/09/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

INTRODUCTION

“If you work in Silicon Valley, you come from the future”

Firstly, what are UI UX design deliverables, and Why are they critical to your success?

It is a document that usually communicates ideas, various research outputs, and sets a direction for other designers and developers. Now, for design professionals, these deliverables are a tangible manifestation of the evolving design direction & communicate how that direction can be achieved. Each deliverable is structured in a way that helps provide solutions for the next phase. But not everyone understands this term often when discussing or presenting ideas during various phases of a design process. Thus, UI UX design deliverables are very much useful to break down complicated ideas or functionalities and thus making them easier to understand for everyone in the room.

What are the types of design deliverables?

In the initial stages of design, the focus should not be on high-quality UI, rather effectively communicating the initial ideas for the design solution. At every stage of the design process, the type of deliverables varies to an extent. With a view of adopting the best way for information transfer, there are three types of deliverables.

Creation deliverables – Used to provide low-fidelity ideas during the early stages of the design process.
Communication deliverables – Adopted to communicate everything that we learn from each design session to keep the team aligned.
Validation deliverables – UX deliverables that were used for research & findings to validate any reason.

Lollypop Design Agency in Silicon Valley is often asked by potential clients and design evangelists about various design deliverables that we and other design giants offer to meet business goals, keeping in mind the user needs and expectations.

No matter what industry we work for, from small startups to established companies, the deliverables for any project following the design process are more or less the same and vary according to the available resources, requirements, timelines, and budget.

Here are some of the major design deliverables that various Silicon Valley design agencies practice for their different projects as a part of their design methodologies.

1. Discovery & Research

Stakeholder interviews takeaways
User research document

2. UX Design stage

UX Audit
Information Architecture
User flows
Wireframes

3. UX Design stage

Visual designs
Animations
Design systems
Visual design specifications

Let us now understand these items one by one and their significance in the whole process.

Stakeholder Interviews takeaways

It is always a priority to understand brand perspectives, varying user behavior to compliment the importance of competitive brand stake in the marketplace & identify differentials. Also, stakeholder interviews play a pivotal role to help guide the flow of the entire project considering the business goals, technical constraints, usability problems, and what customers expect out of a final product or service.

User research document

User research is the most important part of the design process that encourages us to precisely discover how our target customers feel while collaborating with the product that is designed to meet their objectives. User research is done to gain the sharpest possible insights into the needs and pain points of the users while stakeholder interviews give us insights into the business goal of a product.

UX Audit

UX audit uses methods to expand an existing situation and offer heuristics-based recommendations for improvements or user-centric enhancements. Ultimately, a user experience audit helps us understand how to boost conversions by making it easier for users to achieve their goals on your site or software along with pointing out critical, mid-level, and major issues and how to prioritize issue resolution in any product. UX audit is a method to make sure the brand communicates consistently across all customer experience touchpoints.

Many of our Clients find this to be an invaluable investment with strong ROI in future development as this audit process helps to vet and validate the product roadmap, ensuring a highly successful product launch without costly redesign or redevelopment.

Information Architecture

Information architecture and wireframes are all about organizing the content and flow of a website or an application so that users can complete their tasks and achieve their goals quickly. The focus is on creating usable content structures out of complex sets of information.

User flows

User flow can be considered as a series of user actions or simply the various states that the user needs to go through to achieve any expected goal. The main goal of any user flow is to provide designers & developers a detailed description of all the possible flows, including edge cases, errors, and various states. User flows also help businesses have a high-level view of the product and make sure their features, technical jargon, and workflows don’t confuse the user.

Wireframes

Wireframes generally give the first impression on how a website or app might look by incorporating the Information Architecture and arranging elements to best accomplish a particular purpose. Since it is the first phase of the version there is a scope of changing plans and ideas. These high-fidelity designs can be used for usability testing, and serve as an excellent reference for developers to get a good idea of the final product. Wireframes help connect the site’s information architecture to its visual design by showing paths between pages. It also helps prioritize content through the determination of how much space to allocate to a given item and where that item is located.

Visual designs

The visual design may be considered as the “final coat of paint” on the product but it’s not just that: visual design can greatly affect the UX of a product, and therefore must be approached very carefully. Hopefully, a lot of interaction design and usability heuristics were worked out during prior steps of the UX design process so that the designers can focus on the visuals. It’s one last opportunity to take the product to the next level. Visual design is the last step before handoff to developers and the phase where a style guide and final specs are crafted. It’s not just about “making things pretty,” but also an opportunity to strategically define & implement the brand’s identity into color schemes, usable layouts, creating contrast, and visual hierarchy.

Animations

Animations are used purposefully to enhance the overall user experience and guide users along the way. They are used for various purposes like feedback, continuity, directing attention, etc. These animations in the form of GIFs, videos, or Lottie files are used by developers to implement into the final product. When animation is used subtly, it can help users build mental models about how the system works and how they can interact with it. UI animations are subtle, unobtrusive, and brief micro-interactions, they can improve the user experience and can communicate feedback and state changes, prevent disorientation, and strengthen signifiers.

Also, animations offer a level of sophistication to an experience and help diversify the product experience in the marketplace.

Design system

A design system can be considered as a set of design-specification documents that are intended to be one single source of truth that groups all the digital elements for any brand/product. Style guides, rules for typography, colors, responsive behavior, photos, and visual designs as a comprehensive design system are usually the ultimate handoff to the clients and the developers. Some style guides and specifications are put together manually, and others are generated automatically. This design system can be thought of more like “bibles of style” on the shelf that everyone on the team can refer to.

Design Systems will also influence and compliment brand identity within digital marketing efforts by extension which is a value add to clients & marketing/product teams!

Visual design specification

The final step in the design workflow is to create specifications for development teams. Margins, padding, assets, element measurements, color codes are various small details that need to be considered while building any product. These minor details if missed can impact the overall user experience of the product.

How hard will it be to add some new deliverables soon?

Design deliverables as mentioned, communicate how a direction can be achieved to lay that final product. Changes in these deliverables are expected over time according to the shifting user behavior and variance in business needs. Now, adding new deliverables is pretty easy but ensuring its consistency, accuracy, and quality is the most difficult part. Most importantly above and overall, is validating and carefully considering whether that deliverable is truly adding value to the entire project or the workflow to be specific.

Conclusion

UI UX design deliverables again vary according to the needs of the client and project priorities.

The deliverables and the way they are handed off, the methods per se are more than enough as a whole. Some parts of the documentation can be done parallel to the process or some are done before or after the process. Now the tools used for these deliverables can vary to an extent, but that’s a topic for another article.

Thank you for reading this blog & stay tuned for more articles on thought leadership.

The Mobile App Industry’s Reaction to the Facebook Data Privacy Affair

Posted on 28/09/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

Facebook Data Breach affected over 87 Million Users in March this year and the days that followed are affecting the millions of mobile app development companies globally.

This is the story of what happened and how it continues to affect the mobile app development industry even days after the fire has settled.

Backstory of What Went Down with Facebook and 87 Million Users in March 2018

In the weekend of 17th March 2018, the news and uproar arose against Facebook when the news came out that the social media giant had been wrongly sending out personal user data to Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that worked on Trump 2016 election campaign. The case was not that of a hack, it was of not informing the users in black and white of what data is being shared to the third party apps that request access into not just users’ but also their friends’ Facebook profile.

The next few days were utilized by Facebook in large scale reputation management – accepting what happened heads on and making auditing of all third party apps, to see how they are using the user data, their action plan.

With the news of data breach having settled now, the restriction on mobile app developers who are accessing users’ Facebook profile remains.

The Direct Impact of Facebook Data Breach on Mobile App Development Companies, Globally

Following the day the data breach news broke out, Facebook has put all the third party apps that are associated with the social media platform under audit scrutiny. The brand is now going through all the apps analyzing what information they are taking and how they are using more minutely than before. This, in turn, resulted in Facebook banning over 200+ mobile apps.

Under its new data privacy statement, Facebook has put its foot down on the decision that it would be taking away the developer access from apps that are not being used by a user in over 3 months. Facebook also said that it is changing the login process in the next version as a system that would limit the access data to only the users’ name, profile picture, and email address. If the app needs any more access it will have to seek Facebook’s permission.

Also, Facebook has announced the new set of European Privacy controls, which highlights that users will now be asked to give permission if they wish to see an advertisement from the third party apps, giving the control of personalization to the end users.

Following this, doing targeting advertisement through Facebook has become a little difficult for the app developers. The app development companies that also handle the marketing efforts might have to start looking at other social media platform for app marketing opportunities.

What should be the next plan of action of the mobile app development companies

Incidents like these, like what happened when Uber got hacked or when PayPal was hacked, end up giving a direct negative blow to the app development industry, with Facebook incident, it’s no different.

The biggest impact that mobile apps that give login access through Facebook have faced is a decline in the login rate emerging because of the lost user trust into how their data will be used.

As mobile app development companies, it has become our responsibility to ensure that we have a framework in place where the exact detail of how the information is being used is specified to the users. We will have to make conscious efforts to only take in that information that the app actually need to function.

As for asking for viewing friends’ profile for marketing goes, apps should look at other ways to extend their user base at the back of one user. They should make use of another marketing medium like discounts on sharing the app or sharing the recent purchase on Facebook to take the word out.

Going a little in-depth in the technical side, here are the things that a mobile application will not be able to do with Facebook bringing major changes, rather restrictions in the access that its API is giving –

1. Related to Login

Users will no more be able to publish anything on Facebook through the business’s mobile application.
Apps asking for following information will have to go through a strict security check before the permission is given – Users’ Friends, events, likes, group, photo, post, video, and tagged places.
Apps will no more be able to get following information through users’ Facebook login – religion, politics, relationship, friend list, education, work, about me, and activity preferences like music, book, movie, etc.

2. Related to Facebook Events

Apps will no more get following information – attending, declined, comment, feed, interested, no reply, photos, posts, videos, and comments.
Companies can no longer post operation on maybe, interested, attending, or declined edges.

3. Related to Friends

Facebook has removed the following social contexts – Friends who like, Friends tagged at, music friends heard, videos friends watched.
Mutual Friends API is not available anymore
Apps’ right to invite friends will be returned with an empty data set.

4. Related to Tags

Apps will no longer be able to get access to photo, video, or post of the non-app users who have been tagged by the app users on Facebook.
Apps will no longer be able to view users’ tagged places
Apps will no longer get to see the detail of friends users tag on posts or photos/videos.

5. Related to User Information

Apps will no longer be able to get any user information related to – About, Education, Friend List, Interest, Political Inclination, Religion, Relationship, Website, and Work.

Now that you, as a business that is on mobile using the Facebook API, know what all restriction you will be facing following the Facebook new data privacy new guidelines, let us look at the solution that you have.

The only solution that you have left with amidst all the restriction and scrutiny is changing your business model.

You will have to find other ways to get users’ information beside relying on Facebook for it. Plus, your app layout should be clear enough for the time when Facebook scrutinizes it for the rightful intent behind collection of user information.

In short, if you want to continue using Facebook as a mode of getting user data you will have to be your intention known and even then, it is time to expand your advertisement mode and not rely on just platform.

API Development: A Complete Guide

Posted on 28/09/202011/06/2021 by Tushar

Assuming that you’ve heard the word ‘API’ for like zillion times while communicating with mobile app developers, today I’m going to cover everything about APIs in this article. So, put your seat belts and get ready to get into the world of APIs – the superheroes behind the functioning of the mobile apps.

Let’s begin with what are APIs?

1. API

API(Application Programming Interface) is a set of instructions, standards or requirements that enables a software or app employ features/services of another app, platform or device for better services. In short, it’s something that let apps communicate with each other.

For example, when we hit on the ‘Connect Facebook’ button on Candy Crush, it does not ask us to enter our Facebook account details. Rather, it accesses the data from the Facebook server and let us enjoy playing – all thanks to API.

An API is the base of all the apps that deal with data or enable communication between two products or services. It empowers a mobile application or platform to share its data with other apps/platforms and ease the user experience without involving the developers. On the top of it, APIs eliminate the need to build a similar program or platform from scratch; you can use the existing one of some other app/platform. Because of these factors, both app developers and business leaders focus on API development.

If you are also interested in API development or wish to gain a sound knowledge of the same, keep reading

Before we delve further, let’s just have a look at the basic terminologies that will make it easier to understand the concept.

2. Terminology

a) API Key: When an API request through a header or parameter to recognize the requester, the authorized code passed into the request is said to be an API Key.

b) Endpoint: When an API interacts with another system, one end of the communication channel is termed as Endpoint.

c) JSON: JavaScript Object Notion or JSON is said to be a data format used for APIs request parameters and response body.

d) GET: The RESTful API’s HTTP method of obtaining resources is called GET.

e) POST: It is the RESTful API’s HTTP method for building resources.

f) OAuth: It is basically an Open standard authorization framework that renders access from the user’s side without directly sharing the credentials.

g) REST: REST (Representational State Transfer) is a kind of programming architectural implementation meant to enhance the efficiency of communication between the two devices/systems. It is light-weighted and based on the idea of making a particular data available only when requested by sharing references to the data instead of the entire copy of the data itself. The systems enforced on this architecture are said to be ‘RESTful’ systems, and the most overwhelming example of RESTful systems is the World Wide Web.

h) SOAP: SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol is a messaging protocol for sharing structured information in the execution of web services in computer networks. It works with XML information set and application layer protocols (like HTTP and SMTP) for message format and message negotiation & transmission, respectively.

i) Latency: Latency is defined as the total time taken by an API in the process from the request to the response.

j) Rate-Limiting: The term API Rate-limiting refers to the process of defining the rate at which an end user can access the APIs. In other words, it means restricting the number of requests a user can hit to an API per time.

k) API Throttling: The process of regulating the usage of APIs by users during a particular time period is called Throttling. This can be used for API limiting. For example, you set the limit of 1000 API requests per day. When the user hit the 1001 request, the server will send 429 messages as HTTP status to the end user along with the message, “Too many Requests”.

For more terminology and acronym, refer this site.

Now, as you know what are APIs, are armed with the terminologies and are familiar with the anatomy of the growing API market, let’s dig deeper into the technical part – beginning with how do APIs work?

3. Working of API

Suppose you opened some XYZ app/website to book a flight. You filled the form – you entered the departure and return date, city, flight, and other relevant details – and submitted. With a fraction of seconds, a list of flights appears on the screen along with the price, timings, seat availability, and other details. How this actually happens?

To provide such stringent data, the platform sent a request to the airline’s website to access their database and get relevant data via API. The website responded with the data which API delivered to the platform and the platform displayed it on the screen.

Here, the flight booking app/platform and airline’s website act as endpoints while API as the intermediate streamlining the data sharing process. When talking about communicating the endpoints, the API works in two ways, namely: REST and SOAP (see definition above).

Though both the methods bring effective results, mobile app development companies prefer REST over SOAP since SOAP APIs are heavy and platform-dependent.

To understand the API lifecycle and working process in detail, contact our experts today!

Now coming to the main part – How to develop an API? What tools and technologies to choose? What practices to adopt for an effective API development?

4. Tools for Developing an API (like a PRO..)

While there are a plethora of tools and technologies equipped into the process of creating an API, the popular tools and products for developing APIs for developers are:

a) Apigee: It is a Google’s API management provider that assists the developers and entrepreneurs to triumph at digital transformation by reestablishing towards an API approach.

b) APIMatic and API Transformer: They offer sophisticated automatic generation tools to build top-quality SDKs and code snippets from API specific formats and transform them into other specification formations, such as RAML, API Blueprint, etc.

c) API Science: This tool is primarily used for evaluating the performance of both internal APIs and external APIs.

d) API Serverless Architecture: These products assist mobile app developers in designing, building, publishing and hosting APIs with the help of a cloud-based server infrastructure.

e) API-Platform: This is one of the open-source PHP framework that is apt for web API development.

f) Auth0: It is an identity management solution used to authenticate and authorize APIs.

g) ClearBlade: It is an API management provider for embracing the IoT technology into your process.

h) GitHub: This open-source git repository hosting service let the developers manage code files, pull requests, version control, and commenting that are distributed across the group. It also let them save their code in private repositories.

i) Postman: It is basically an API toolchain that empowers the developers to run, test, document, and evaluate the performance of their API.

Although the world is full of APIs and APIs, there is still a major gap in utilizing the perks of API. While some APIs make integration to the app a breeze, other turns it into a nightmare. To help you out in ensuring that you build a former one, here are some of the factors related to APIs for developers to consider:

5. Must-Have Features of an Efficient API

a) Modification timestamps/Search by criteria: An API should let the users search data based on different criteria, like a date. This is because it’s the changes (update, edit and delete) that we consider just after the first initial data synchronization.

b) Paging: Many times, it happens that we do not want to see the complete data changed, but just a glimpse of it. In such a scenario, the API should be capable of determining how much data to display in one go and at what frequency. It should also inform the end user about the no. of pages of data remaining.

c) Sorting: To ensure that the end user receives all the pages of data one-by-one, the API should empower the users to sort data as per the time of modification or some other condition.

d) JSON Support/ REST: Though not compulsory, it is good to consider your API to be RESTful (or providing JSON support(REST)) for an effective API development. The REST APIs are stateless, light-weighted and let you retry the upload mobile app process if it fails. This is quite tough in case of SOAP. Besides, JSON’s syntax resembles that of most of the programming languages, which make it easy for a mobile app developer to parse it into any other language.

e) Authorization via OAuth: It is again necessary that your API authorizes via OAuth since it is faster than other methods – you just need to click on a button and it’s done.

In short, the processing time should be minimum, response time good and security level high. It is of paramount importance to put efforts into the best practices for securing your application, after all, it deals with a heap of data.

6. Best Practices for Building the Right API

a) Use Throttling: App Throttling is a great practice to consider for redirecting overflow of traffic, backup APIs and safeguarding it from DoS (Denial of Service) attacks.

b) Consider your API gateway as Enforcer: While setting up throttling rules, application of API keys or OAuth, the API gateway must be considered as the enforcement point. It should be taken as a cop that lets only right users get access to the data. It should empower you to encrypt the message or edit confidential information, and thereby, analyze and manage how your API is being used.

c) Allow overriding HTTP method: Since some proxies only support GET and POST methods, you need to let your RESTful API override the HTTP method. For doing so, employ the custom HTTP Header X-HTTP-Method-Override.

d) Evaluate the APIs and infrastructure: In the current time, real-time analysis is possible to get, but what if API server is suspected to have memory leaks, draining CPU or other such issues? To consider such situations, you can’t keep a developer at duty. However, you can perform this easily via using numerous tools available in the market, like AWS cloudwatch.

e) Documentation: Last but not the least, it is profitable to create an extensive documentation for an API that let other mobile app developers easily understand the whole process and utilize the information for offering better user experience. In other words, a good API documentation in the process of effective API development will lessen the project implementation time, project cost and boost the API efficiency.

Now as you have gained an in-depth knowledge of what are APIs and what factors to consider while developing one, are you interested in API development? If so, reach to our experts.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT API DEVELOPMENT

1. What is REST API and SOAP API?

REST (Representational State Transfer) API is a software architectural style that describes a complete set of constraints to be employed for building Web services. Whereas, SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol much complex by adding more standards than REST, such as security

2. How do I make a good RESTful API?

Making a good RESTful API is easier when you follow these practices:-

Use Throttling
Considering your API Gateway as Enforcer
Allowing overriding HTTP method
Making a proper documentation
Determine the APIs and infrastructure

3. What is API and types of API?

API (Application Programming Interface) is a collection of instructions, and requirements that let a software or mobile application utilize the features/services of other applications, platform or devices for exceptional services.

There are basically different types of API:-

Web service APIs
WebSocket APIs
Library-based APIs
Object remoting APIs
Class-based APIs
Hardware APIs, etc.

4. What is JSON API?

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is an encoding scheme created to eradicate the need for an ad-hoc code for each app to interact with servers in a particular manner.

Defining Native and Hybrid Apps

Hybrid vs Native Apps Pros and Cons

Pros of Native apps

Cons of Native apps

Pros of Hybrid apps

Cons of Hybrid apps

What is the Difference Between Native App and Hybrid App?

Native vs Hybrid App Development: When to Choose Which?

Choose Native apps:

Choose Hybrid apps:

Amazing features and their implementation

Voice control

Smart workout

Timer

Music

Wearable edition

Video player

Here are some UX elements that builds successfully the most engaging and interactive chatbot:

1. Smart Chatbot

2. Visual Representation

3. Chatbots with Compact Replies

4. Escalation System in Chatbots

Lens Studio App for AR Creation

Benefits of Chatbot Development

Limitations

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Banking Mobile Apps

Customer Support

Fraud Detection Technology

Financial Planning

Automated Transaction

Personalized Remainder

Wrapping Up!

<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://blog.trello.com/hubfs/download%20(41).png" alt="Various fascinating facts regarding some Internet tools" width="615" height="308" />

INTRODUCTION

1. GOOGLE

2. DROPBOX

3. SKYPE

4. FACEBOOK

CONCLUSION

<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/clay.global/static/img/reel/reel-1350-min.jpg" alt="Clay: UI/UX Design Agency, Web Design &amp;amp; Branding" width="562" height="318" />

INTRODUCTION

What are the types of design deliverables?

1. Discovery & Research

2. UX Design stage

3. UX Design stage

Stakeholder Interviews takeaways

User research document

UX Audit

Information Architecture

User flows

Wireframes

Visual designs

Animations

Design system

Visual design specification

Conclusion

Backstory of What Went Down with Facebook and 87 Million Users in March 2018

The Direct Impact of Facebook Data Breach on Mobile App Development Companies, Globally

What should be the next plan of action of the mobile app development companies

1. Related to Login

2. Related to Facebook Events

3. Related to Friends

4. Related to Tags

5. Related to User Information

1. API

2. Terminology

3. Working of API

4. Tools for Developing an API (like a PRO..)

5. Must-Have Features of an Efficient API

6. Best Practices for Building the Right API

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT API DEVELOPMENT

1. What is REST API and SOAP API?

2. How do I make a good RESTful API?

3. What is API and types of API?

4. What is JSON API?

Delivering excellence, collaborating across time zones.

Take a look at our global hideouts.​

Contact

India (HQ)

Atlanta, USA

Take a look at our global hideouts.