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Apr
19

Let it go – Building a real MVP

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Coding

In Startupland, the most valuable product is the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Why? Because you didn’t blow your entire budget/savings getting there.

People often come in and start throwing this term around “MVP”. Requesting something along the lines of:  iOS and Android apps, a web portal, and a full dashboard for all users and grandma! Oh and an admin portal with state of the art features as well.

This is not an MVP. This is your wish list. Your nice to have list. Your 2 years in list.

“But…but… I NEED to have these things or I won’t be successful.” you say.

Hogwash. Success is based on building the RIGHT thing. Not ALL the things. I know it’s exciting to start building but slow your roll!

While it’s not too hard to trim an initial feature list down by pairing some low hanging fruit, oftentimes you’re still not at your target budget. You may need to drastically slash costs to get to market or not get there at all. At this point we’re not talking about removing 2 questions from the signup page or changing out how fancy search is, we’re talking about removing entire areas or better yet – entire platforms. 

Prove your business model before investing in it in multiple tech stacks.

Do you rrrrreally need that admin portal for your 25 users?  Can you hold off on Android to see if what you have in iOS is really what users want? Do users really need to have both web and mobile access?

 

What should I cut when I don’t want to let go?

1. Assess features & users to find platform launch targets

Where are your users hanging out? Are they older? Younger? Are they turning to the web for this service? Is this something they need on the go? Assess your audience and the core features of your product to determine whether this is a web or mobile play to start (you can add more entry points later! This isn’t forever!)

2. Sweat Equity for Behind the Scenes

Even the great and powerful OZ understood the value of manual effort.

Do you really need all the management stuff automated? Weigh your time versus your cost of development. Is hiring a $10 an hour intern to review applicant profiles cheaper than building a machine learning service? Can you keep track and manage payments with excel and quickbooks instead of a custom point of sale system? Only upgrade/build your tools when the workload demands it not before.

3. Tech debt can be your friend (in the beginning)

Don’t polish and deeply invest in a feature if it isn’t proven yet. High traffic areas can be improved upon once their value is clear. What if you spend half your budget on a feature that when launched collects cobwebs from your so-called target audience? Make pivoting painless with lightweight development decisions.

 

Infinite runway? A budget as deep as the Grand Canyon? You may not have the make these hard choices, but I would still advise you to do so. It’s healthier for a product to be able to grow based on real world user experience. Give yourself the flexibility to change features and change messaging without having to visit 6 different codebases and remove 8 months of work. A simple product launch isn’t easy or straightforward, but it’s a smart one to start with.

Still having a hard time slimming your MVP? We’re here to help! We love creating products that built for success and don’t have a problem saying no (or strongly judging you for not being able to say no to yourself).

Need someone to question all your decisions and make helpful suggestions?

 


Native versus Hybrid efficiency graph
Apr
06

Native vs Web Apps

  • Posted By : Patrick Goley/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : App Advice, Coding

When building a software product for mobile, there comes a time early on when you must decide between building a native application or a responsive web app. When making such a decision, it’s very important to understand the implications of going one way or the other. A native app is typically more expensive to build, but the extended capabilities and high speed execution often makes it necessary or at least advantageous for certain products. Today we’ll explore a few benefits of building native apps to help make this decision easier for anyone setting out to build a new mobile product.

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Why go native?

Direct Hardware Access

Icons8One huge advantages of natively built applications is they have direct access to many hardware features that web apps simply do not. While HTML5 has brought easy access to the camera and microphone with the <input> tag, these elements simply output a file and don’t give you access to the media in real-time. If you want to build fun camera filters or do any kind of signal processing, you’re much better off in the native realm.

While web apps have some access to media capturing hardware, they don’t have any access to some of the other sensors on the device. For example, native apps on iOS have full access to all HealthKit data (should you allow them) collected by the motion co-processor and other activity trackers, which are always working whether your app is running or not. Native apps can also use geofences and other location-based triggers to provide context-aware behavior and offline notifications, which can draw your user’s attention back to your app at opportunistic moments.

Blazing Fast Execution

200 (4)Native apps can work more efficiently because they run directly on the hardware, meaning there’s very little overhead to performing computation. This can make a huge difference when doing lots of graphical work or anything that is computationally expensive. While hardware-targeting makes applications less portable, it allows them to really take advantage of the processors they run on, giving you the high resolution and fluid graphics you see in native games and media apps today. Apple’s graphics library Metal is a great example of this, being designed specifically for the GPUs in Apple’s products to achieve maximum performance.

User Experience

There’s usually a clear difference in appearance and quality between native and web-based apps, as web apps lack the responsiveness and familiar UI elements of a native app. While web apps can certainly accomplish a lot, the extra layer of separation brought by running in a browser or web view rather than natively means the app can’t respond as quickly to things like touch events. This accounts for the slight lag you experience when interacting with the UI of web-based mobile apps, which amounts to a less-than-stellar user experience. Also, users may not pick up on custom UI controls from the web when they are used to a consistent experience from native apps on their platform, which can lead to usability problems. If the user feels like they’re swimming upstream to use your app, they probably won’t keep at it for long.

Offline Functionality200 (1)

One clear limitation of web apps is the necessity to download them over the internet each time they are loaded. Since native apps are installed once and can store tons information on the device, they can provide all kinds of functionality without an internet connection. iOS apps can even preemptively load data before the user opens the app through silent push notifications that “wake up” the app to retrieve new data.

Even with an internet connection, the first few seconds of a web app experience often consist of spinners and sluggish stylesheets causing elements on the page to jump around as it loads. This requires a measure of patience from your user, which might be too much to ask from some users especially after navigating through a few pages. With user attention spans getting shorter and shorter, you need to capitalize on every second they spend in your app, creating value for them and not putting them on hold to download and render bloated web pages.

"We're getting really close to ready" – the false dream of hybrid apps pic.twitter.com/xyvXT3qNao

— Bill Morein (@wmorein) May 5, 2015

In short, while native certainly isn’t the right choice for everyone, there are a quite a few cases where it’s necessary or at least beneficial. It’s important to consider these implications not only for the current state of your product but also for it’s future, as it would be unfortunate to commit to a web-based platform only to have to rebuild later when you need native-only features. While historically writing native apps have meant coding for one platform at a time, there have been big developments in native, cross-platform solutions such as Xamarin, now backed by Microsoft, and React Native, brought to you by Facebook. These solutions, while still growing, hope to deliver the fully native experience without limiting you to a single platform which can greatly reduce the cost of certain projects.


Mar
29

Mobile Madness – Elite Eight

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : App Advice, Business

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: iOS, Swift, Erica Sadun, and Jake Wharton. Here is your updated Bracket. We’re moving on to some strange pairings. We’re getting into the really abstract comparisons of what is “the best” here at Mobile Madness. Join us on this journey.

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Steve Ballmer vs Felix Krause

This is getting hard guys. The insane cult-of-personality that is Steve Ballmer or the straight up utility and approachability that is Felix Krause. Don’t make me make this choice!
Answer the twitter poll here


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Erica Sadun vs Jake Wharton

Ultimate indie expert battle – still iOS versus Android in this bracket. In one corner – Jake Wharton and his 1 billion excellent open source libraries and in the other corner Erica Sadun – Queen of Swift. Make your pick. If you can. Answer the twitter poll here


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Xcode vs AWS

Ok, whew, this bracket got weird. Let’s compare a development platform with a cloud service. Both are massive industry standards but which works better? Which is more integral to development?  Answer the twitter poll here


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iOS vs Swift

The parent or the child? What do you think of iOS as a platform in general? Is Swift its best incarnation? Is the future of iOS brighter with Swift? Can iOS win all bets as an innovator in its own field? I don’t knowwww! Answer the twitter poll here


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Mar
28

Mobile Madness – Round 2 (People and Code)

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Business, Coding

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: AWS, Xcode,  Felix Krause, and Steve Ballmer. Here is your updated Bracket.

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Limor Fried vs Erica Sadun

Software versus hardware, each of these women is dominating their field. Make your pick!
Answer the twitter poll here


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Jake Wharton vs Jake Marsh

Battle of the Jakes and at the same time battle of the iOS versus Android indie experts. Which Jake do you back?
Answer the twitter poll here


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iOS vs React Native

This is really a battle of native versus cross platform. Flexibility or doing it right? Which side are you on? Answer the twitter poll here


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Objective C vs Swift

Oh snap! Old school or new school? Have you dipped your toe into the new Apple paradigm? What do you think? Answer the twitter poll here


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Mar
23

Mobile Madness – The Code

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : App Advice, Business, Coding

The results are in and the winners from yesterday are: Limor Fried, Erica Sadun, Jake Marsh, and Jake Wharton. Here is your updated Bracket.

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On to the third bracket of Mobile Madness 2016 with the numbers, the code, the languages and platforms. FULL STACK BABY!

First up: The Kings of the Mobile Kingdom

iOS vs Android

iOS and Android have been battling it out in the mobile space from day one. Globally, Android has a whopping 84.7% marketshare while iOS has only 13.1% (Q3 2015). Having multiple hardware manufacturers and OS distributions, Android provides many options to the end user, but at the cost of a consistent and reliable experience between them. iOS can deliver a high quality experience across all devices because Apple is fully in control of the design and production of their hardware and software, but it comes with a higher price point and fewer options.

AndroidvsiOS

So which wins? Beauty or Breadth of Market? Answer the twitter poll here

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Second Bracket: Everything to Everyone: Cross Platform 

React Native vs Xamarin

React Native is a version of Facebook’s React.js, developers can write javascript that controls native UI elements among other things. React has been praised for it’s architectural design and the resulting increase in developer productivity. Xamarin, recently acquired by Microsoft, is a cross-platform development solution for writing native apps in C#. It comes with a robust IDE called Xamarin Studio that makes building cross-platform apps a breeze. One major difference between the two is that React Native is open source, while Xamarin is not only closed source, but requires a monthly subscription to use (but you get real support!).


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Who knew we’d bit pitting Facebook against Microsoft in a mobile development battle. What do you think of these unlikely platform contenders?  Answer the twitter poll here

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Third Bracket: Languages in the Key of C

Objective C vs C++

While both languages are in the C family, Objective-C and C++ have some huge differences. Objective-C is a dynamic language where everything compiles down to C code that uses the Objective-C runtime library. C++ is usually compiled to assembly and has no runtime library which means it’s generally much faster. Most Objective-C programs are now compiled with ARC which will manage memory for you, whereas a C++ developer must be very careful of how they allocate and free memory in their program. Objective-C has proven very productive for writing high-level code such as UI or business logic. C++ is less productive but much more powerful when you need to work at a low level, like when implementing high-performance graphics or audio processing.


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CPlusPlus

High brow or low power? Which C will it be? Answer the twitter poll here

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Fourth Bracket: Old Kids and New Kids

Java vs Swift

Java is generally accepted as the most widely used programming language today, and has been for some time. Swift is quite new on the scene, which only hit 1.0 in September, 2014. Swift has been acclaimed for it’s use of functional programming and value types which can help simplify problems in the minds of developers. Java works mostly with objects and reference types and only recently added functional programming capabilities through lambdas. Swift is entirely open source whereas only some Java implementation are (see OpenJDK). Swift still has much to prove for general use outside of iOS and Mac apps, but support from the open source community as well as big players like IBM is driving adoption for the language at a rapid pace.


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Answer the twitter poll here


Mar
22

Mobile Madness – The Indie Experts

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Business, Coding

The initial results are in and the winners are: Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Jony Ive and Felix Kraus. Here is your updated Bracket.

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On to the second bracket of Mobile Madness 2016 with a continuation of the people that contribute to the mobile landscape. Some of these indie darlings have made the jump to the big leagues but for the rest, they soldier on one awesome book, blog post, or tweet at a time.

First up: Master Makers

Ayah Bdeir vs Limor Fried

Ayah Bdeir is the founder and CEO of Little Bits everyone’s favorite snap and play electronics toys. We’ve been geeking over the space kit for a while now and constantly suggest these as a great intro-to-electronics. Limor Fried is the founder of Adafruit the one-stop shop for all the whosits and whatsits to make your maker-dreams come true. Adafruit materials power our christmas tree and gif tv (really!).

littlebits-Ayah-Bdeir_37757

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So who build better tools for the builders? Big builders? Little builders? Answer the twitter poll here

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Second Bracket: All things Swift 

Natasha Murashev vs Erica Sadun

Natasha Murashev more commonly known as Natasha the Robot is everywhere all at once with her talks, advice, and tutorials on all things iOS. She’s been a key figure in brining Swift to the masses, including help organize the try! Swift conference. Meanwhile, Erica Sadun has been a major contributor when it comes to Apple’s latest language, Swift. While her skills with Swift are only matched by her wit, according to the Swift Evolution project, she has by far the highest number of accepted pull requests. You can be sure her ideas are not taken lightly in Cupertino.

Both are rocking it with the new Swift language and have build a massive following for their questions, comments, and observations.


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Who is the true education maven? Answer the twitter poll here

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Third Bracket: All things Android

Jake Wharton vs Roman Nurik

Jake thrust himself into the spotlight with his incredibly famous open source Android libraries such as ActionBarSherlock and NineOldAndroids, as well as his contributions to Square’s massive catalogue of open source libraries such as Butterknife and Retrofit. He continues to deliver enlightening talks and presentations about Android and its continued evolution as a platform. While also an experienced developer, Roman is most famous for his work with the UX aspect of Android development. As one of Google’s most popular designers, Roman helped bring the beauty of Material Design to the Android world. He has also crafted a collection of open source libraries focusing on improving user interactivity and experience with your Android projects.


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Answer the twitter poll here

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Fourth Bracket: iOS

Jake Marsh and Mattt Thompson

When it comes to iOS developers, Mattt with three Ts is virtually a household name. His brain children AFNetworking and NSHipster are still widely used and respected to this day. Go check out his other projects too for a host of other useful libraries and services. When it comes to the best tutorials in the shortest amount of time, Jake Marsh is your guy. His little bites of cocoa has become an overnight success, and is a great place to learn fun new iOS tricks that can be used in every day development. Both these guys have made their mark when it comes to contributing to the development community.

Answer the twitter poll here


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Mar
21

Mobile Madness – The Brains

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Coding

We are going to kick off Mobile Madness 2016 with our first bracket of tech luminaries. We are going to cover some heavy hitters like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as well as some industry innovators like Ray Wenderlich and Felix Krause.

First up: CEOs who inherited empires

Steve Ballmer vs Tim Cook

Ballmer_Cook

In one corner we have Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. Steve is known for his…passion for software as well as his ownership of the LA Clippers.

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In the other corner we have Tim Cook, current CEO of Apple and …fan of Pharell’s Happy

timcook

Apparently we’re not the first to make the comparison:

NYTimes: Why Tim Cook is like Steve Ballmer
Forbes: Will Tim Cook be the next Steve Ballmer?
Yahoo: Is Tim Cook the new Steve Ballmer?

However we are the first to pit them head to head. Who will be victorious? Answer the twitter poll here

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Second Bracket: Famous Founders

Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are each half of wonder duos that made modern personal computing what it is today. PC versus Mac. Generous genius versus design-centric demigod?

steve-jobs-vs-bill-gates-mac-vs-pc

Which world do you back? Answer the twitter poll here

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Third Bracket: Mobile CDOs

Jony Ive vs Matias Duarte

The men behind modern UI patterns and design. Jony Ivs has led the Apple Design-Revolution. While Matias Duarte has spearheaded Material Design – Google’s attempt to fold the diverse android platform under one unified design theory.


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Matias

Has Jony Ive lost his magic “intimate” touch with the recent launch cycles? Will Google ever solve their massive design/product fragmentation issues? Who is the better design-guru? Answer the twitter poll here

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Fourth Bracket: Tools and Teaching

Felix Krause and Ray Wenderlich

We snuck these guys in here as innovators each in their own way. Felix Krause is the brain behind the recent Fastlane Tools, which we recently sang the praises of at a local Cocoaheads meeting. Ray Wenderlich is the king of iOS tutorials and guides.


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Both are contributing to the developer experience without being the head of some mega-corp. (But who is doing it better?) Answer the twitter poll here

 

 


Sep
11

Design Inspiration

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Design

200-2Any strong project first begins with a strong set of tools. Tool #1: Your brain – filled with all those ideas, images, and skills. But my second set of tools in the digital design world are links. What? Yep. Links. Links to great articles. Links to great inspiration. Links to great resources. Below I’ve grouped some of my all-star links into the categories that compose the beginning stages of a design project. The basic building blocks if you will. Enjoy.

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Patterns and Arrangementsui2

And by patterns I don’t mean background visual patterns like this or this, but user patterns. Should the fields have background? Should “forgot password” appear at the top or the bottom? Can I put 10 icons in the navigation bar (please don’t)? The most important question – What is the difference between iOS and Android in UI design?

 

search_3Animations

An animation adds polish, delight, and energy to your app. More than just a spinning circle, an animation can make using an app a memorable experience instead of a series of colored squares you tap your finger on.

Some great resource for animations: Capptivate.co and UIGifs.com

 

Screen Shot 2015-07-28 at 11.41.23 AMColors/Pairing

Do you want the app bright or dark? Medium blue or bright blue? But not corporate blue. Not ocean blue. You know a “bluey-blue”…
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻)

When you find yourself having this sort of conversation – hold the presses and go here: Kuler or here ColourLovers or here Coolors.

 

Landing-TeaserStyle

You can take all three of the above categories and still build drastically different apps when you implement a “style“. Do you want modern and sleek? Bright and playful? Traditional and trustworthy? Each style elicits a different combination and selection of colors, textures, and placement. I like to get an overall idea of stylistic choices from the parents of design aggregation: Dribbble and Pinterest.


That rounds out my link-tastic high-level run down of starting a design process.
Go forth and make beautiful and wonderful things!

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May
06

Pixel Pushing – Custom Drawing for iOS

  • Posted By : Jennifer Bennett/
  • 0 comments /
  • Under : Coding

The devices we carry in our pockets everyday are becoming increasingly complex and are able to capture and log more data than ever before. As a result, it is inevitable that in an upcoming meeting you will be asked to do the following:

“We want charts. Bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, lots of stats, a graph for every person, every place, every hashtag, every action – we want to show it all”…..”Oh, and wouldn’t it be cool if it animated into place too?”

Dust off your middle-school geometry folks, because today with Core Graphics  we’re going to draw some graphs.

computergraphs

 

Watch Wiley’s Cocoaheads talk to learn everything you ever wanted to know (and some you didn’t) about Core Graphics

This talk covers the following:

  • UIView Properties
  • CALayer View Properties
  • UI Bezier Paths (Lines & Shapes)
  • IBDesignable
  • IBInspectable
  • Implicit & Explicit Animations

Or download the slide deck for the highlights. 

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