When designing a map to help users find their way around a campus or complex facility, it’s best to keep in mind what elements are most important for the user to see, and help them focus on the task at hand: finding their way.

Keep it Simple 

When introducing a user to an interface, you should be mindful of the user’s cognitive load, which is the amount of information a person’s mind can take in at one time; if you present the user with too much information to process all at once, it can slow down their ability to complete their task and make it appear more difficult.

With established modern UX patterns across wayfinding with popular apps like Apple Maps or Google Maps, it’s important to keep the user experience familiar, while guiding users through their experience. In map design, it’s best to keep the map itself simple and neutral, to provide the user a base layer of information in orienting – and place focus on the wayfinding UI like the route line, points of interest, or the animated blue dot.

Only Important Details

When designing the map, it’s best to consider what visual elements of the map layout would be most beneficial for the user to notice while they are finding their way around the facility. Key landmarks, notable walkways, and clearly marked exits and entrances can all be useful elements that make up the map. Other details like interior rooms, complex furniture arrangements, or patterns on the floor may provide more detail than is needed.

Do Not Distract

There are a lot of potential design elements that could be used in map design, but should only be used as needed – and each element should be thoughtfully considered when looking at the mapping experience as a whole. Flashy visualizations like 3D maps or heavy use of branding and saturated colors can actually harm the user experience, requiring a high cognitive load of the user, which could actually overwhelm them, or require additional time for the user to sift through which elements are most important.

Let Us Guide You!

Our design team will work with you to help translate complex floor plans into beautifully simple and user-friendly map designs. We’ll work with you to identify the most important areas of the map to focus on, which landmarks or exterior areas are best to illustrate, and what level of detail is ideal for your visitors. Additionally, our designers will help you in extending your brand to the map design, while keeping in mind the above best practices to deliver a perfect map design for your facility.

Chat with us today to discover how we can help you create an unforgettable experience for your visitors!

The post Best Practices for User-Friendly and Engaging Maps appeared first on Phunware.

I asked the team to weigh in on the highlights from this year while the excitement is still fresh in our minds. From new features to on-site sessions, we’ve covered quite a bit of ground. Here’s what you need to know, from our team to yours, about the future of Android as shown at Google I/O 2018.

The new Material Sketch plugin, demonstrated.

“I enjoyed the inspirational sessions this year, especially ‘Designing for Inclusion: Insights from John Maeda and Hannah Beachler.‘ Seeing two leaders in the design field talk about their experiences and take on the industry was motivational. I am also excited about the new material theming as part of Material Design 2.0 as it enables us to push Android design and brands to better align with their brand guidelines.”

—Ivy Knight, Senior UX/UI Designer

Slices, demonstrated.

“I am really excited about the Navigation library and Slices. Navigation will eliminate a ton of brittle code that we commonly write for Android apps, and I am looking forward to updating Phunware’s App Framework to integrate with it. Slices is really interesting, as it will help our users re-engage with apps that they may have forgotten about. It also enables some really cool use cases such as searching for a doctor’s name and being able to offer the user routing straight to that doctor in a hospital app.”

—Nicholas Pike, Software Architect Android , Product VS

Alex Stolzberg & Nicholas Pike

“I was really excited about the new WorkManager that allows for easy background processes to be performed. You can also easily chain and sequence jobs to make the code very clean for a large amount of processes rather than having a cumbersome nested callback structure, reducing the possibility for bugs when writing features or making changes later on.”

—Alex Stolzberg, Software Engineer Android, Product

L to R, Nicholas Pike, Jon Hancock and Ian Lake. Ian is a former Phunware employee turned Googler who stays involved both with his former coworkers and the larger developer community.

“I’m very excited that Google is taking an opinionated stance on development architectural patterns. Writing apps for Android has been a wild west for years, and having some direction and guidance directly from Google will result in new Android developers entering the field with a greater understanding of how to build complete, stable apps. When those new developers find their first jobs, they’ll be more likely to be comfortable and ready to contribute quickly.”

—Jon Hancock, Software Architect Android

Ram Indani and Romain Guy, an Android Graphics Team Manager, at the in-person app review session.

“I really liked the app review sessions. It shows that Google cares about the applications being developed and is willing to work with the community to improve them. Feedback received from the reviewers is valuable and they ensured that the Googler reviewing the app had expertise in the apps they were reviewing.

—Ram Indani, Software Engineer Android

L to R, Alex Stolzberg, Ram Indani, Nicholas Pike and Duong Tran.

“I am excited about what the new Cast Application Framework has to offer. Some of the benefits of the new framework include simpler code implementation and ad integration as well as enhance performance and reliability. Also, new features such as Google Assistant with voice command are automatically included. I was amazed by the Cast Application Framework team’s willingness to work with developers to create unique solutions for our client’s business requirements, such as providing a custom framework and unique branding options.”

—Duong Tran, Software Engineer Android

Want to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in mobile news? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

The post Phunware Team Takeaways from Google I/O 2018 appeared first on Phunware.

Here at Phunware, we are dedicated to making accessible and beautiful apps for an international audience, spanning all languages and locales. We also promote continuous learning for our developers and sharing our knowledge with the developer community. With that purpose in mind, I’d like to pass along a few tips and tricks I learned at DroidCon Boston 2017 that make it easier to adapt your Android apps to reach more users worldwide.

1. Apply automatic right-to-left (RTL) layout support

Languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Persian are written from right to left, which requires a different layout from left-to-right languages like English and Spanish. With the newer Android SDKs, you can skip the step of providing those RTL layouts separately.

MinSDK 17+ automatically updates layouts for RTL with the following:

• In your AndroidManifest.xml, specify supportsRtl = true.

  

  • With this setting, Android will update layouts for RTL automatically when the system language calls for it.
• Use start and end in layout attributes rather than left and right to get the appropriate automatic RTL changes.
• Remember to add margins on both sides / ends of your layouts.

MinSDK 19+ automatically handles RTL mirroring of vector icons with the automirrored attribute:

• Define which icons should or should not be mirrored with RTL (for example, the search icon).
• Reference the Material Design docs for suggestions on what should or should not be mirrored.

2. Prevent grammar issues by using strings.xml with placeholders for arguments instead of concatenating strings

Because grammar is different from language to language, developers cannot assume sentence structure. Rather than concatenating strings together, use placeholders in strings.xml for arguments (Ex: %1$s, %2$d), so your translation service can specify the grammar properly. Also, make sure your translation service understands that they should leave these placeholder values untouched.

• To help translators understand placeholder values:
• Specify a placeholder argument name (id="color").
• Provide a placeholder example (example="blue").

3. Use <plurals> to handle one-to-many results

This little trick will save you time and hassle (it’s also a suggested Android practice), and it makes for cleaner code. Here’s how it looks:

• Warning: some languages do not have the concept of plurals. You will have to adjust your plural definitions for those languages accordingly.

4. Speaking of strings, avoid using Spannables to format strings that will be localized

Again, since sentence structure and grammar can change from language to language, the placement of the formatted part of the string might not necessarily be where you’d expect. If you must use a Spannable, don’t use hardcoded indices to format characters (bold, italic, etc.)—you might just BOLD something that makes no sense at all. Instead, programmatically find the parts of the string to format the characters.

Instead of Spannables, you can use:

• HTML formatting in strings.xml (ex: <b>Hello</b>)
• Html.fromHtml(String text)

5. Use the “German Test” to check text bounds for truncation or bad layouts

Sometimes, localized text can extend beyond the bounds of your layouts—not good. To check for this, use German. It’s a useful test language for this issue because English-to-German translations result in text expansion of up to 20%, with compound words replacing multiple-word English phrases. At the same time, German uses relatively few special characters, so you’ve got a relatively “pure” test for text bounds.

6. Use the Fastlane Screengrab tool to streamline localization QA

This new tool automates the capture and collection of screenshots across each localized screen in your app, uploading each one to a folder where QA can easily compare and verify each version. Here’s how to use it:

• First, write espresso tests to go through each screen in your app.
• Then, set up Fastlane Screengrab to take a snapshot of each screen the tests go through and upload to a folder (it can take in several languages, and run against many devices).
• Finally, compare and verify screenshots.

(Image source: Fastlane Github.)

7. Use Fastlane Screengrab and Supply to localize on the Google Play Store

Gather the appropriate screenshots with Fastlane Screengrab, then use Fastlane Supply to push up your store metadata, screenshots and .apks quickly and easily. Use Timed Publishing mode so you can review and make changes before final upload. And don’t forget the Google Play character limits for your app listing. (You might want to create a script to count characters and verify that they are within the store limits.)

Finally, here are a few reminders for any developers working on app internationalization and localization:

• Many languages use special characters that don’t appear in English, so make sure the fonts that you support can handle any special characters needed (not all of them can).
• Default strings must always be defined in the values/strings.xml file.
• Watch out for special characters in your strings.xml that must be escaped (Ex: \', \").
• Keep an eye out for these important Lint warnings:
  • Extra translation (Too many translations)
  • Incomplete translation (Missing translations)
  • Inconsistent number of placeholders (more placeholder arguments in one translation versus another)

I enjoyed sharing these tips with the rest of the Phunware development team and I hope they’ll prove just as useful for you. Want to join us? Phunware is always looking for curious and creative developers who want to work at a company where mobile is top priority. Check out our open positions and let’s get busy changing the world.

This blog post was made with the permission of Phil Corriveau (Intrepid), who presented the class Bonjour, Monde: Optimizing Localization at DroidCon Boston 2017.

Want to learn more? Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates on mobile technology, strategy and design.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

The post Going Worldwide: 7 App Localization Tips for Android Devs appeared first on Phunware.

Source: The Far Side by Gary Larson, 1980

These confusing doors are called Norman doors after Don Norman, a cognitive scientist and usability engineer who was inspired by many experiences with bad design to produce the seminal work, The Design of Everyday Things. Norman argued that good design is intuitive design—design that doesn’t require conscious thought to be usable.

When The Design of Everyday Things was released in 1988, the idea of user-centered design and applying design thinking to all areas of life was revelatory. Design thinking forces brands to ask the right questions, find the best solutions and implement the best approach to get results. Here’s what it looks like in its simplest form:

• Ask questions and empathize
• Understand and define
• Evaluate ideas
• Iterate

Although design thinking has been proven since 1988 to be a repeatable problem-solving approach in everything from business systems to software engineering, some business leaders still see design as a magical process, a superficial add-on or a way to use leftover budget dollars. But design should never be an afterthought. Without it at the heart of a project, usability problems will keep users away. Let’s explore how design thinking can be applied to enterprise mobile apps.

Applying Design Thinking to Enterprise Mobile Apps

App Strategy: Identifying Areas of Need

Good enterprise app design is not about making things look nice. It’s about creating a positive user experience and solving real problems for real people. Well designed apps remove frustration along the user journey, resolving pain points and anticipating issues users may not even realize they could have. These apps are able anticipate user needs because design thinking was central to their development process.

No matter how clever your designers and engineers are, real users have a way of uncovering use cases you would never think of and demonstrating how usability can be improved.

If you want your app to solve real problems for real users, do your research. Ask users what they need help with. If you already have an app, review existing engagement metrics to identify areas for improvement—where users abandon the app, for example, or which features they never seem to use. Analyze competitor apps to see where yours excels or falls short.

If you’re building a new app, conduct user testing or interviews with target users first. Get to know them and their needs, preferences, pain points and behaviors so you can make good design decisions and improve the user experience at every opportunity for iteration. No matter how clever your designers and engineers are, real users have a way of uncovering use cases you would never think of and demonstrating how usability can be improved.

Your app’s success depends on how engaged your users are. Learn more in this eBook: Sticky Notes: How to Re-Engage Your Users Like a Boss.

GET THE eBOOK

Solving Problems with Enterprise App Design

Once you uncover the problems your target users are experiencing, it’s time to use mobile to solve them. This part of the process can be messy, but it’s where you dig in as a team and experiment with strategies and ideas—even some that might seem crazy at first. Sketch, whiteboard, diagram, discuss, challenge and revise to uncover solutions worth trying. That’s where the magic happens.

It’s a good idea to look for an app development partner with expertise in Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google Material Design to create workflows that are useful and compliant. App design must feel fresh and timely without being too trendy—and therefore doomed to fall out of style. Choose a partner that will build for beauty, function and longevity.

The next step is to use the findings and wireframes from your discovery process to form educated hypotheses about how your app’s design can be the solution to your customers’ problems. Choose forward-looking technologies that will provide deployment flexibility and extend the life of the finished app. And test, test, test—not just to identify and fix bugs right before launch, but throughout the design and engineering process (and even after launch). Continual testing allows you to keep refining the user experience and uncover unanticipated issues before they cause bigger problems.

Iteration and Improvement

Good design recognizes constraints like budget and business goals as essential considerations for finding the best and most appropriate solutions. Long gone are the days of hero design, when eureka-like moments of inspiration seemed to appear out of thin air. The more effective process is working as a team with your development partner and end users to create prototypes and iteratively improve upon your initial ideas.

Experience proves that the best solutions come from testing and getting feedback from business leaders, designers, engineers, testers and end users at every stage to confirm that prototypes effectively solve the right problems. You may choose an app development partner that has already found effective solutions to common problems in your industry, but make sure they also routinely iterate and improve on even the smallest details for the best outcome.

How Design Thinking Can Help Your Organization

The American Marketing Association has said that customer experience is the new battleground and the customer journey will take precedence from today forward. Customer experience can now make or break a company, and word spreads among consumers in near-real time. Because your app is likely to be a central part of your customers’ experience with your brand, it’s essential to apply human-centered design thinking to the app lifecycle, from start to finish.

In other words, don’t put any metaphorical Norman doors between your users and their goals. Even minor moments of frustration add up to a negative overall experience. Instead, put the time and effort into thinking through how your app will work in the real world to provide the smoothest, most effective user experience possible.

To learn more about best practices at every stage of the mobile lifecycle, check out the eBook Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

The post No More Norman Doors: The Importance of Design Thinking in Enterprise App Development appeared first on Phunware.

Conversational UX = Having a Dialogue

Part of a designer’s job is to tell a story to the user. In designing a conversational UX, you’re telling your story through a direct dialogue, whether it’s via voice with a virtual assistant or via text with a chatbot. You do that by creating a script in a developer-friendly syntax that defines the user experience. A few things to remember:

• Conversations aren’t straight lines. Gone are the days of touch-tone phone tree interactions—there is no single path to follow. That means you have to think about the different ways a conversation could go and anticipate as many variables in your design as you can.
• Responses will vary. No two users talk the same way, so your design should include some flexibility in how to respond. How this works depends heavily on the technology you use and how much natural language it can recognize. In the case of Astrology Zone, we were building specifically for Amazon Alexa, which has a particular structure and recognition pattern. Google Assistant draws upon more than a decade of search data to enable a deep natural language recognition system, so it will understand variations in phrasing more easily. (Siri performs similarly.)
• Users want to feel they are talking to a person. Think about it: Wouldn’t it be awkward if somebody you’re talking too suddenly sounded automated? Maintain a normal conversational tone across each interaction. Assistant even has the ability to add in smalltalk, which can keep the user engaged. With Astrology Zone, we added in messaging that Susan Miller uses to address her followers during sign-off.
• Remember, “Voice” doesn’t always mean just talking. Remember when I said that I don’t like talking? It turns out many people feel that way. Google, Amazon and Apple have responded by adding more visual components into their virtual assistants. For example, Google Assistant recently updated to allow for text input in addition to voice on the phone, which is very helpful when I can’t speak over my babbling baby. You still need to apply the same design approach, however, whether a user is literally speaking or conversing via text. On mobile, virtual assistants provide an opportunity to enhance the experience with visual elements like images, search suggestions, links and app content.

Conversational UX Guidelines Aren’t Fully Baked Yet

Read the guidelines, but bear in mind they may be incomplete. We’re in the early days of conversational design and documentation is still evolving. While my team was working on Astrology Zone for Alexa, we read everything we could get our hands on and spent plenty of time interacting with Alexa. Still, we quickly hit roadblocks with development. Why? I’d written our phrases according to what the guidelines said we could do—but those guidelines didn’t say what we couldn’t do.

I’m sure the conversational UX guidelines will become more thorough over time. In the meantime, if you have time to test and iterate, you can experiment with how phrases should be set up. If not, stick to the exact wording provided in the guidelines to be safe. Be careful with verbs and connecting words. There are only a limited number available right now (fewer than we thought). And watch out for possessives—they’re a pain. We never could get Alexa to understand “yesterday’s” correctly.

Further Exploration Reveals New Insights

As I got more interested in conversational design, I kicked the tires of multiple virtual assistant options. I had the most fun with Google Assistant. It’s by far the most robust of our new robotic-voiced friends. Its app development tool, Actions on Google, is amazing and enjoyable to use (I wish every tool worked the same way).

After being introduced to Actions at this year’s Google I/O, I dove in and was able to create a demo in no time. Actions allowed me to focus on writing interactions and possible responses rather than formatting and more technical aspects of design because the system trains the action for variants with every input. On the other hand, writing for Alexa feels like diagramming sentences.

This exploration led me to see how fast I could make a basic app to tell facts about my baby, and even add in some personality and expressiveness. I also tinkered with making a demo Guardians of the Galaxy experience—and learned that in the long run, you don’t want invocations and responses to be exactly the same. (“I am Groot!” followed by an “I am Groot” response…. And another “I am Groot!”… Trust me when I say this doesn’t work out well.)

Conversational UX Design Tips

Here are a few tips from my time on the Astrology Zone project and my other explorations:

• Provide natural guidance. Create an introduction that tells the user what the app can do and provides some simple suggestions for interactions. Users discover and explore conversational apps differently—they can’t just tap around a screen to find features—so you have to help them out.
• Keep it short and sweet, and let users be brief as well. For example, to initiate a conversational experience, it’s a good idea to allow users to say only the “invocation” (the app name) and some parameters. A user can initiate Astrology Zone on Alexa by simply saying “Astrology Zone Pisces Today.”
• Let the user mess up and guide them back. If an app only states that something went wrong, the user doesn’t know if it was something they did or something went wrong with the app. That’s frustrating. Instead, provide an error message with the reason for the error (wherever possible), along with options the user can select to get back on track.
• Test with multiple people who have different accents and speech patterns. You want to make sure users can comfortably converse with your UI.

Conversational Design Could Improve Accessibility

Users with blindness or visual impairments rely on screen readers to understand and interact with digital devices. On mobile, these readers are built into the operating systems—VoiceOver on iOS, TalkBack on Android devices. Conversational design can help enhance these current features by scripting the user’s experience with the app.

Last year, I worked on a proof of concept for a hospital mobile solution that would make indoor mobile wayfinding accessible for users with blindness or limited vision. I had to think through and write the experience—in this case, the user’s dialogue with the app was in the form of gestures. Imagine if this was pushed further with the use of a virtual assistant. Users would be able to navigate hospital facilities through natural conversation, without the cognitive load of dealing with a standard app UX.

We could also harness these discoveries and disciplines to design for any situation where visual intake of information might not be possible or advisable. For example, interacting with a visual UI on your phone is really not a good idea when driving—in fact, it’s illegal in many places. In the near future, apps may switch to voice-only conversational UI when driving is detected.

After all of this exploration and experience, I’ve come to believe that voice and conversational design will soon be an essential part of UX. I look forward to building even more in the future. In the meantime, check out Susan Miller’s Astrology Zone for Amazon Alexa.

LEARN MORE ABOUT ASTROLOGY ZONE’S ALEXA SKILL

The post Look Who’s Talking Now: Exploring Voice and Conversational UX appeared first on Phunware.

I went to The University of Texas at Austin to study design, but halfway through college, I realized I was more interested in implementation than design alone. I’d worked with basic HTML and CSS since high school, so I started teaching myself Android development.

Mobile had grown immensely since I started college, so I started teaching myself Android development. I used the Commonsware book and took one Intro to Comp Sci class, but mostly I wore out my Google muscles reading everything I could find to help me learn how to code. Because my degree program was very open-ended, I ended up with an Android dev internship at a small start-up, planning to move into UX design.

After I completed my BFA, I joined the Phunware Phamily as a UI/UX designer, but I was still coding for fun on nights and weekends. Eventually, I switched to development completely, which is what I’m doing now—I’m a software engineer specializing in Android OS. I find that my background in design really enhances my development work, and my self-taught path has been its own kind of advantage. I’m living proof that many different routes can lead you to a successful coding career, if you’ve got the passion for it and the tenacity. Here are a few things I learned along the way.

The Value of Having a Design Background as a Developer

I personally find it a lot easier to design things and then code them. Because I know what the back-end can and can’t do, I can design with that in mind—rather than focusing only on aesthetics. I know where I can push boundaries and where it’d be better to stick to what the OS gives us.

There’s definitely a creative side to coding, but you also have to think like a computer. It’s more about knowing what’s available to you, being able to read through dev documentation and being able to say, “okay, will this take days or weeks to do, or can I build off of this?”

Here are a few examples of how a blended design / coding perspective helps:

• When I’m starting a new project or updating an existing app, I review all of the newest features coming out on the OS so we can design accordingly. For example, Marshmallow 6.0 completely changed the way we ask for permissions. Rather than the user okaying everything at the beginning, we now have to ask ourselves, “When and where will the user be prompted for this permission?” Otherwise, we’ll be asking for camera permissions in the calendar and that’s no good. This was a big change—and we definitely have to take it into account when designing a UI for compatibility.
• Material design is ever-evolving. It started off very colorful and not very textured, and now it’s edging toward more texture. Understanding the OS style shifts will help you mimic them in a way that feels natural. (It also helps you spot opportunities to buck the trend and go for your own thing.)
• Moving forward, augmented reality (AR) is pushing the idea of digital objects existing in “real” space—the concept of voice-activated user interfaces also reflects this idea. I’m a huge sci-fi nerd, so I have a very particular vision of what the future should look like (hello, Minority Report and Iron Man’s suit). Pokémon GO opened people’s eyes to the possibilities of AR, and I really love the idea of having floating UIs accessible to anybody anywhere.

How to Kick Down the Door and Keep Growing

Let’s be real—it’s challenging to get into a development role without a Computer Science degree. Here are a few tips to help smooth your path.

• Be ready to prove yourself. Back up your credentials with strong examples of your work on GitHub or Bitbucket.
• Join a local professional organization (or three or four). I’d like to give a little shout out to Women Who Code. It’s a great tech community that offers a lot of scholarship opportunities to go to conferences (where women are often underrepresented), and those conferences are invaluable for face-to-face discussion and learning. I also recommend joining your local Android or iOS developer group and getting active. Don’t be afraid to get involved and give a talk—it’s a great way to network and build your confidence at the same time. Giving a talk is a great way to build your confidence and learn as you teach. I recently gave a talk at the Austin Android Developer Meetup about animations, which drew on my experience as both a designer and a developer. Find a topic you’re interested in and run with it.
• Look for strong influencers in the dev community to follow on social. On the Android side, I learn a lot from following Chiu-Ki Chan (@chiuki) and Christina Lee (@RunChristinaRun). You can see what I’m up to at lorajk.com and @loraj_k.

The truth is, taking the scenic route into a coding career has ultimately increased the value I bring to the Phunware Phamily. My colleagues appreciate my design background as well as the MacGyver-like way I taught myself to code. Both add expertise and depth to my team and help us deliver better results for our customers.

Have you walked the code less traveled? Phunware is always looking for creative, dedicated and interesting people to join the Phamily. Check out our latest career opportunities—and enjoy the journey!

Want to learn more about our Android dev team? My colleague Ivy Knight shared our key takeaways from the 2017 Google I/O developer conference (including some really terrible Android puns).

READ IVY’S TAKEWAYS

The post From Design to Dev: the Code Less Traveled appeared first on Phunware.

We were stoked to interact with and learn from the Android community, and especially to see the current and potential uses for new Google Assistant features. Here are some takeaways from our favorite sessions, things we’re looking forward to and a little Android-related “phun.”

What Excited You Most at Google I/O 2017?

We asked our group to weigh in on the announcements and products they were most inspired and excited by at Google I/O 2017. Here’s what they had to say:

“Apart from the new Android announcements (like Kotlin and Android Architecture Components), I was most excited about the other conference attendees. Seeing so many passionate developers in one place really gets me inspired.”
– Dustin Tran, Software Engineer (DT)

“I was most excited about Kotlin and the new Android Architecture Components stuff, but I am also very interested in the Google Assistant API and writing apps for that platform. Android Things was also really cool to see in action.”
– Alex Stolzberg, Software Engineer (AS)

“I was most excited about the incredible community collaboration focus this year. So many of the announcements came about because the Android dev community asked for specific things. Google recognized that and invited non-Googlers from the community on stage for the first time ever.”
– Jon Hancock, Software Engineer (JH)

“I really enjoyed talking to some of the Google design team and going to the sessions on the Google Assistant.”
– Ivy Knight, UX / UI Designer (IK)

“I was really excited to be a part of such a huge conference—and to hang out with the California-based Phunware devs I only see every couple of years.”
– Sean Gallagher, Software Architect (SG)

“What was I most excited about at I/O? The amount of code and time we can save with Kotlin and the new Architecture Components.”
– Nick Pike, Software Architect (NP)

Want to stay up to date on the latest and greatest in mobile news? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

What Was the Most Impressive Session at I/O 2017?

Thanks to our ten-person Phunware team, we were able to attend a broad selection of the 150+ sessions offered at I/O this year. Which impressed us the most?

“I was most impressed by What’s New in Android, where we learned about many tools—like an official Android emulator with Google Play pre-installed, and Android Profiler which allows precise and real-time app monitoring—that will make Android development much easier. Equally impressive were the Architecture Components sessions. Google has realized that developers often have to solve the same problems: network calls to retrieve data through orientation changes and caching / persisting that data. Now, they’re providing easier-to-use and standardized components to utilize when implementing these common use cases.”
– DT

“My favorite session was probably the Android Things talk about Developing for Android Things in Android Studio.”
– AS

“My favorite session was Introduction to Kotlin because of the sheer number of jaw-dropping moments. “
– JH

“Building Apps for the Google Assistant got me excited to try building an Assistant app myself. API.ai looks great.”
– IK

“My favorite session was the Office Hours during which we got some really good one-on-one time with Android NDK team devs. They answered a lot of tough questions. Not only were they helpful, they were also great folks!”
– SG

“Life is Great and Everything Will Be Ok, Kotlin Is Here! (Pretty self-explanatory, right?)”
– NP

How About the Best I/O 2017 Puns?

One of the best things about attending conferences like I/O is the inside jokes. In case you’re feeling left out, here are some of the Phunware team’s favorite (terrible) Android-related puns:

“An Android app walks into a bar. Bartender asks, ‘Can I get you a drink?’ The app says, ‘That was my _intent_!'”
– DT

“Ok Google, give me an Android-related pun…”
– AS

“Android puns just require too much Context.”
– JH

“Can’t wait to check out all the FABulous Materials at I/O.”
– IK

“Need some space to store your app data? Google just gave us lots of Room.”
– NP

Interested in joining the Phunware Android dev team and possibly heading to I/O yourself next year? Check out our open opportunities and apply today!

The post Phunware Team Takeaways from Google I/O 2017 appeared first on Phunware.

Cart, meet horse. Please straighten things out. In fact, how about we start with who’s driving in the first place?

That’s right. We need to start with the customer.

Learn more in this eBook: Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

To Create a Mobile Solution, Start with the Problem

Having a mobile presence is not about having a mobile-optimized brochure. It’s about using capabilities unique to mobile to solve problems and create experiences for your users. Brands should always start by answering the question “What customer problem(s) are we trying to solve? What kind of experience do we want to create?” Forrester Research echoes this sentiment in its report, Make Smart Wireless Location Technology Decisions. In fact, the report’s #1 recommendation is “Digital business professionals should first determine what service they want to offer to customers.”

Here are some of the most common customer problems we see at Phunware:

• “Trying to find my way to my surgical appointment is overwhelming and scary.”
• “I just want to know whether all the gym equipment is taken before I head down there.”
• “I’m running late for my flight and starving. Is there a healthy option in this terminal I can grab before boarding?”

These are the common business problems driving businesses to investigate their technology options:

• Driving foot traffic and sales
• Streamlining operations
• Increasing revenue from tenant shops and food outlets
• Reducing workload for customer-facing staff (such as information desk, concierge services, etc.)
• Tracking movable assets
• Acquiring and engaging users
• Understanding consumer context and behavior to guide marketing decisions

Learn more in this eBook: Mobile First: Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

As you’re answering these questions, make sure you’ve got all the stakeholders on board. While different departments and groups might have wish-list items or secondary goals, keep the overall team focused on your goals.

Ultimately, we recommend narrowing things down to one or two primary problems you want to solve, with 5 or so secondary issues to address. Then, and only then, start looking at various technology solutions to see how they might apply.

Curious about how location technologies fit into your overall strategies? If you’d like to brainstorm with a mobile solutions expert, give us a shout.

The post Cart, Meet Horse: Why Choosing a Mobile Technology is the Last Place Digital Businesses Should Start appeared first on Phunware.

Experts agree that we’re headed for a bright future where virtual assistants with artificial intelligence act as intermediaries for our mobile and digital lives. When even USA TODAY is publishing articles about personal digital assistants, you know the tipping point is nigh.

Text-based intelligent “bots” are already proliferating across messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, enabling users to order flowers, book plane tickets and even do their banking within their platform of choice. (In China, the messaging platform WeChat is already an everyday tool for ordering meals, making doctors’ appointments and even donating to charity). As Leonard Kie recently put it in CRM Magazine, bots are “making the basic email and messaging tools people use every day smarter.” They offer a convenient way for users to interact with brands without leaving their preferred environment to visit a website or download an app.

Ultimately, these voice- and text-based virtual agents will be pervasive across devices and across your home, the office, your car and your purse or pocket. They’ll be able to coordinate solutions from multiple apps, web services and platforms. Forrester Research says this evolution will move through a four-stage trajectory, as we go from single-device app and web experiences all the way to fully blended ecosystem experiences. These are heady times, my friends.

I was reminded of all of this through a recent TUNE webinar on The Future of Mobile. Guest speaker Julie Ask, Forrester VP and Principal Analyst, made two points abundantly clear:

1. Large players like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google are sprinting down the path of virtual agent / meta-platform dominance.
2. This doesn’t mean mobile apps are dead or dying anytime soon.

Phunware and the Future: We’re Already Ready.

Here at Phunware, we talk a lot about mobile apps. They’re our bread and butter. But we’ve always had our eye on the horizon. Technology evolves. So do people. The way we use technology changes, along with the way we feel about it.

The Phunware platform is built to weather all of these changes.

• It’s device-agnostic. Phunware’s platform features can be delivered across multiple devices—smartphones, tablets, wearables and so on. They’re built for interoperability, just like the “experience components” Forrester recommends.
• It’s designed to deliver exceptional user experience, now and in the future. Phunware has been creating category-defining mobile experiences for brands across industries since 2009. When this expertise is coupled with data from the 800+ million devices touching Phunware’s platform every month, we can continually build and optimize audiences and campaigns.
Read More: Download the eBook: Mobile Data: The Missing Link in Your User Engagement and Acquisition Strategies.
• It surfaces contextual data across all the apps your customers use—and makes it actionable. Context is critical for understanding your customers and creating positive user experiences, and you need data to understand context. But just as the TUNE webinar pointed out, it’s unrealistic to think users will spend most of their time in your branded app. Phunware Data allows you to gain visibility across the “walled gardens” of the different apps your users are using to understand what they’re doing, when, where, how and why.

Sometimes, it’s fun to watch all the drama unfold. People naturally worry that they’re getting left behind as one technology disrupts or displaces another. But when you start from a data-driven, interoperable, user-first premise, you can ride all of these waves with relative serenity.

Here are our recommendations:

1. Start with a good solid app if you don’t have one.
2. Make sure you’re using flexible building blocks.
3. Gather every scrap of data you can.
4. Keep the user experience first and foremost.

Now, let’s go make truly useful and really cool stuff.

Want to stay up to date on posts like this? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to receive the best in mobile content.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER

The post Smart Talk about Artificial Intelligence: Bots, Virtual Agents and the Future of Mobile appeared first on Phunware.

VR has finally progressed to a point where we’ll be wearing headsets to take in content. Luckily, this isn’t the cyberpunk dystopia we’ve read about for decades, but an environment where we can binge-watch our favorite shows in a comfy spot. VR is all about long moments, taking users in and letting them immerse themselves in content—not just the bite-sized moments we designers have become accustomed to creating. So what will user experience design for virtual reality look like?

Responsible UX Design in Virtual Reality

VR requires building (and keeping) trust with users. Unless it’s on purpose and the user is aware, responsible VR design means not scaring the user or causing motion sickness. It means considering that the user is likely sitting (Google’s research indicates that users will spend 30 minutes or more with a compelling VR experience), and what that means for design: restricted movement and range, limited field of view and so on.

Empathy is already critical to UX design—we’re always thinking about how the user will interact with our apps. In VR, we’ll need to focus even more here to consider VR’s immersive nature and how long users interact. It can be more than quick swipes on a phone for a few seconds—they’ll have sight and sound inputs as well. If the user is surrounded by a scene of family or another calm setting, interrupting the experience with sudden or loud transitions would be jarring, to say the least (I’m looking at you, pop-up ads).

Watch the overview of VR at Google from I/O 2016 to learn more.

Watch Now!

Looking to Games for Cues

For virtual reality user interface, we may take a page from skeumorphism, video game design and even wayfinding. The user needs to feel grounded, so the UI must work with the surroundings, keeping in mind which objects are in different planes. Principles from real-life signage and wayfinding also come into play, like leading the user through an experience and adjusting type size related to distance from the viewer.

Designing a virtual reality UI requires considering the user environment holistically—not only the range they’ll view but the sounds they’ll hear and how to make your brand work in this space in a delightful manner. Using subtle textures, shadow, lighting and movement will help.

Daydream Labs: Lessons Learned from VR Prototyping at Google I/O 2016 to learn more.

Watch Now!

Looking at video game design, there are a few main types of UI to consider for VR:

• Non-diegetic design is often seen as HUD interfaces where the UI sits on top of the scene. Placing elements too close to the viewer’s eyes can create a problem, however, so this approach is not advised for VR.
• Spatial UI incorporates the UI into the environment instead of on top of it.
• Diegetic UI is also part of the environment, whether attached to an object or in the scenery. Both spatial and diegetic UI present opportunities to incorporate more delightful and immersive interactions.

VR is exciting, if also a little intimidating (I’ve never made an immersive 3D world before). But it will empower people to have new experiences traveling, learning and even shopping. Of course not every experience will work as VR, but the experiences that do translate well will be extremely powerful. VR represents a great opportunity for brands to teach their users something with “hands-on” learning or to experience their favorite content in a whole new way. As with any new design field, it will bring lots of changes. Just remember not to make your users nauseous while exploring.

Want to learn more? Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates on mobile technology, strategy and design.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

The post Diving into Virtual Reality with UX appeared first on Phunware.

We’ve talked before about using push notifications to keep app users engaged. However, strong user communications can’t solve all your problems. A solid app retention strategy also requires smart design and ongoing content development. That’s what we’re going to talk about today—how to build in stickiness at the design and content level.

First: Ask yourself what you’re really trying to do.

Ultimately, building an app means creating an experience to surround what you want people to do or buy, and also creating engagement or utility that leads to that action.

The experience you build may be primarily geared for content consumption (news, entertainment), utility (weather, wayfinding), commerce (hotel, retail), or gaming. It may be a hybrid of those things. But keep in mind that brands often go wrong by trying to be everything to everybody. Your audience may just want to shop. Or they might just need wayfinding. From the outset, know what you’re trying to do, for whom, and why.

5 starter tips for built-in stickiness

1. Good apps are good guides.

As you go along, a good app shows you new things, gives you smart advice, offers unique benefits because of who you are or your level of activity, and makes everything easy. ITTT’s Do app is a great example of using explicit and implicit instructions to help users familiarize themselves with the interface and start using the app right away.

Do’s explicit instructions (“Quickly email yourself a note”) and implicit instructions (gray boxes suggest new items and actions).

Tips like these lessen the learning curve.

Do gets your first task started for you, reducing the barrier to adoption.

2. Above all, be useful.

Apple’s App Store will reject purely marketing-based submissions—your app must provide some kind of value. We recommend reviewing the App Store review guidelines, but here are a couple of examples from those guidelines:

• “Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as Apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected.”
• “Apps that are primarily marketing materials or advertisements will be rejected.”

Apple is definitely not kidding around here. So what sort of value are we talking about? It might be:

• Discovery — ex: showcasing cool products so I don’t have to look for them
• Promotional —  ex: offering coupons and special deals
• Entertainment — ex: live-streaming video from a sporting or media event
• Utility — make it easy to pay, show me how much money I’m saving

Of course, it’s also important to make sure that the value you are offering is actually relevant to your audience. If your prospective users are primarily seniors, for example, in-app payments might be completely outside their comfort zone and therefore pretty useless..

(NOTE: The Google Play store for Android-based apps has less stringent requirements, but it’s still a good idea to review them.)

3. Tell people where to look and what to do.

People generally don’t like to dig very deep into apps, so it makes sense to incorporate a social media-style feed to surface content from different areas of the app and move it forward.

Tell people what to do. When you’re trying to capitalize on your users’ limited time and attention, push forward the actions you want them to take next. Many apps have adopted notification centers for this purpose. Here’s an example from Waze:

The Waze notification center for new users…

…and after the app has gotten to know you.

4. Keep it fresh.

It’s a good idea to update your content at least once a day. Bear in mind, these content updates don’t have to be huge forklifts of information. Think like Facebook or Twitter—add snackable bits of news or timely reminders to your feed. Most platforms make it easy for marketers and other stakeholders to keep things fresh. Yahoo News Digest provides regular updates and has built-in design features that let you know how long it will be until the next update, and it gives you an interesting (and socially-sharable) quote when you consume all of the content in your digest.

This simple countdown tells me when to expect the next update.

Fascinating!

5. Give them the VIP treatment.

People who download your app are often your most interested and loyal customers. They’re showing a certain level of commitment, so reward them with the VIP treatment through personalization.

Here are some examples:

• Tailor the newsfeed to her interests and in-app behavior—surface things she wants to see.
• Personalize the greeting and images to her location and the time of year.
• Change the app behavior based on her location. When she walks into your store, for example, the app could present her shopping list with a map leading directly to items on the list, and links to those products on the website.
• Use rewards to keep users coming back—this can be anything from special discounts or loyalty program points to simply showing a fun animation during the greeting.

The truth is, a solid app retention strategy is an ongoing, multifaceted process that starts with initial design and never really ends. You can no longer put up a website and just leave it there, unchanged, for the next five years. The same is true for apps—users must be nurtured (they’re worth it) and your content and features must be continually refreshed (also worth it). Check out our eBook for sticky notes about how you can re-engage your app users like a boss.

DOWNLOAD THE EBOOK

Want to sit around and nerd out on app retention strategies? Give us a call. We love this stuff.

The post App Retention: 5 Tips for Built-in Stickiness   appeared first on Phunware.

Right now, organizations are bringing their departments together to reflect on the holiday season’s successes and failures. And the smart ones are learning from 2014 to become bigger and better over the next 12 months.

In spirit of this aspirational time of year, below are five mobile resolutions for the retail industry. Keep in mind that these are just high-level concepts for you to mull over as you finalize (or get started on!) your strategies.

When it comes to mobile (or any investment), there is no universal strategy. The unique goals and target audiences of each organization are what ultimately drives their approach to mobile.

1. Make mobile experiences seamless and easy to shop.

Research from Apigee indicates that by the end of 2014, 63% of U.S. smartphone owners used apps at least once a month, up from 56% in 2013. Moreover, 20% of smartphone owners said they plan to increase how much they spend via apps this year.

To keep pace with this surge in demand, retailers need to create streamlined app experiences that are organized, intuitive and easy to browse. After all, when the user experience is clunky, disorganized or otherwise unpleasant, users are more likely to get frustrated and abandon the shopping experience altogether. Supporting this point, research from Contact Solutions found that 51% of consumers abandon their carts and close apps when they have a poor experience. Up to 20% stopped using the app entirely.

2. Personalize the app experience.

Beautiful UX is only the first step in a long journey to app optimization. Today’s empowered consumers expect anytime / anywhere access to information, content and services that enrich their shopping experience. Loyalty programs play a major role here.

For example, beauty retailer Sephora’s app integrates with its Beauty Insider loyalty club. Once logged in, club members receive a personalized experience that tracks their loyalty points, sends them unique rewards and offers and monitors their Beauty Bags (records of past purchases and “Loves”). How can you create a similar user-focused experience?

3. Use push notifications to drive foot traffic.

Hyper-precise targeting by user location, demographics and loyalty is what makes push notifications so powerful. But there’s a fine line between being engaging and annoying. Walgreens is one retailer that does it right. The pharmacy retailer uses Passbook to send notifications when consumers are in close proximity to a store, encouraging them to stop in and take advantage of timely coupons and deals. Integration with the Walgreens app and loyalty program also allows consumers to receive more personalized messages, and even receive notifications when their prescriptions are ready for pickup.

4. Guide customers through the store.

Recent success stories from top retailers like GameStop and Lord & Taylor are helping to accelerate adoption of beacon technology. These two retailers take different approaches to beacon engagement:

• GameStop allows consumers to use their smartphones to “activate” beacons on shelves. Once they do, they can access complementary content, such as video game videos, ratings and reviews.
• Lord & Taylor embeds beacons in different store departments to trigger alerts as app holders move throughout the store. Retailers can build on Lord & Taylor’s strategy and personalize beacon-triggered alerts. That way, users would receive offers tailored to their unique tastes and preferences. This approach keeps shoppers engaged, surprised and delighted by the mobile brand experience.

5. Turn associates’ mobile devices into their little black books.

For decades, associates who work in department and luxury stores have relied on their little black books. These handy resources hold invaluable information about clients, past purchases and preferences. With tablets and smartphones, associates can access this same information with far more detail and context.

This year, consider how mobile can act as your hub for associate engagement and empowerment. How can you integrate associate apps and resources with enterprise information such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems and sales data?

Does your retail organization have any mobile resolutions in place? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

The post 5 Retail Mobile Strategy Resolutions for 2015 appeared first on Phunware.