DEV Community: Fibonalabs Digital

10 Reasons Why Every Businesses Should Invest in Responsive Web Design

Fibonalabs Digital — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 11:30:18 +0000

As someone who is in IT and understands the marketing part of a product, I can assure you that web design has such a big role to play in the success or failure of a product. And isn’t this normal human nature? We tend to look at beautiful things or sights much more than we do at something ordinary. As Charles Darwin has rightly said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one more responsive to change”. And in this blog, we are talking about responsive web design and why not.

In the current times where web designing has taken a different direction altogether, becoming a responsive web design company has become the priority of every business. It helps you in a number of ways from making an impressive website, improving its look and feel different sizes of screens, to helping in increased user engagement and good search engine ranking. In this blog, I have discussed 10 reasons why businesses must invest in single site design.

Budget-friendly
In a traditional method of designing a site, we usually have separate designs for mobile and web applications. It goes without saying that it affects the overall cost as we have to get one site designed separately for two types of audiences; one that uses a mobile and the other doesn’t use a mobile. But with a responsive design the investment made is only once with a design that is appealing for all types of visitors on all the devices.
Flexibility to make changes
In a website updates and changes are almost always ongoing. Reason could be anything like, addition of a new product or services, website revamp, content updates, and so much more. Not just this, sometimes there are small tweaks that need to be done which may take a lot of time if done in a traditional web design. But when we have a site with responsive design these things become quicker and easier. This flexibility is one of the reasons why businesses are leaning more towards responsive designs.
Better User Experience
According to research conducted by Google there is about 67% chance for a user to stay on or leave a website it is responsive or traditional respectively. An avid user counts on basic things like page’s loading time, zooming in and out as per the size of the screens, easy to read content, panning images or text on the screen, etc. Let's consider a scenario where a user landed on your website and page is taking longer time to load, wouldn’t it seem unprofessional? This might leave a negative impact on that user with respect to your business seriousness. But if yours is a responsive web design company, it will take care of such things.
Increased SEO Performance
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is a method of increasing your website's rank on any search engine. The higher your rank is, the more preferable your website would be to most of the users. In fact, in the last few years there have been organizations that exclusively work on SEO metrics for various clients. That’s when responsive web design comes into picture as it plays a vital role in increasing the rank of a website for search engines.
Increased Conversion Rate
By now you must be clear about one thing that SEO and conversion rate go hand in hand. When users see a website at the top ranking, with additional features like easy navigation from one page to the other, seamless payment process, and overall better user experience, it will definitely impact the conversion rate.
Faster Speed in Mobile
According to Google’s standard of page speed it is supposed for a mobile content which is above the fold should load within one second while the rest of the content should load in 2 seconds. Now using a typical old style web design for your app, it is very likely that the users wouldn’t even stay at your page. Because as I have mentioned above, the longer the page loading time the more users will lose interest in your website. This is when a responsive web design comes in handy.
Impactful Social Sharing
Today is the time where people share the URLs for any social media content that they want to promote or the like. But have you ever wondered what an important role a single responsive site has to play in this? Now imagine your colleague sent you a URL as a reference for some work related to your profile and you can’t open it on your mobile. But the same links gets opened easily in your laptop. Wouldn’t it feel the most unauthentic source for reference. Yes, that is exactly what most of us would feel. But with a better web design a URL once shared can be opened on any device be it tablet, laptop, mobile etc. Also, navigating through the site and performing various functions becomes far smoother and takes less time.
Consolidate Data Analytics
With data analytics at all time boom in the current times, it goes without saying that it will take over the market in the coming years. But just imagine how tiresome and strenuous it would have been to perform tasks like tracking customer journeys, their conversion paths, redirections between various versions etc. With the latest analytics tools such as Google Analytics and responsive web design, handling multiple devices and doing responsive reporting has become so much easier.
Continuous Increase in Mobile Traffic
These days people are literally using mobiles as their tools to do business. Whether on the go, in the comfort of your home or in the professional environment of your office, business calls, business models, and several other planning details are mostly shared over the phone. Reason being, a single responsive site has allowed people to download apps in their mobiles with the same look and feel as they experience with their laptops. This has been the major reason why we can see a rapid increase in mobile traffic. An easy-to-use mobile app is a more practical choice to constantly stay ahead of your game.
Google’s Recommendation
One of the most common human traits is to follow and do things that are recommended by someone, be it a person or an organization, that is very popular. In this case I am talking about Google, the world’s most looked up organization which has set benchmarks for its countless services and products. It has not been quite a while ago that Google recommended having a single site design to improve your SEO. They did so because a single responsive site helps them crawling easier and index content in your domain.

*Conclusion *
Though discussed above are just ten reasons to switch to a responsive web design, there are still many more that can be listed here. As Garrison Wynn has rightly said, “Action and adaptability create opportunity”, then why should you stay behind. If you haven’t yet, then do switch to a responsive web design company and the results will be exhilarating for sure.

Top 5 Mobile App Development Frameworks in 2022

Fibonalabs Digital — Mon, 04 Jul 2022 04:56:51 +0000

With everything becoming so handy nowadays, mobile applications have taken over the world of the internet. Almost every desktop app has a mobile app version now. In many cases, there are brands that exclusively have mobile apps only. Let’s learn what has made mobile apps the top choice of business owners in this blog.

To create an app, a framework is the most basic structural aspect that comes into question. We have many frameworks available as open-source, which makes the process easy. So, let’s throw some light upon the top 6 frameworks of 2022.

Flutter

Availability: Open-Source

Developer(s): Google

Operating Systems Supported: Android, iOS, Linux, and Windows

Flutter is the raging mobile app development framework because of its versatile features. It makes app development a seamless, fun-filled process for tech lovers. Bringing a catalogue of options along with it, this framework gives you enough choices at every step. Let’s have a look at the key points of Flutter.

You can use the same UI components for different platforms. Flutter shares the UI as well as business logic thus saving an ample amount of time, effort, and mind-boggling.
The “Hot Loader” feature of Flutter lets you witness the changes made in the app, instantly. This makes the app development faster and better.
Flutter functions at least two times higher than the speed of the rest of the frameworks available these days. This is because of the benefits mentioned above.
It gives enormous results for scenarios like complex UI animations.
The built-in engine Skia, is a plus point for flutter because of its seamless rendering onto different platforms. There are many more reasons that justify why Flutter is the top choice for most business owners.

React Native

Availability: Open-Source

Developer(s): Facebook

Operating Systems Supported: Android, iOS, and Windows

React Native is run in an instance of JavaScript followed by rendering of the components of native platform UI. Depending upon the complexities of the features and designs of different applications, this framework allows a developer to customize platform-specific functionalities for respective apps. These platform-independent functionalities can be written in Swift, Java, or Objective-C, and this code is included in the JavaScript base with respect to different platforms.

Have a look at the advantages of using React Native Framework.

It is a cost-effective technology as it reduces the burden of frequent coding for developers.
It comes with a wide variety of components that are helpful in cross-platform working thus speeding up the whole process of app development.
The fact that React Native renders the native UI components, its performance gets amplified.
Developers can easily understand and share codes across different platforms.
Often ReactNative is compared with NativeScript. As a developer, you can choose any of them depending upon the requirement of your mobile applications.

NativeScript

**Availability: **Open-Source

Developer(s): Telerik by Progress (former)

Repository: https://github.com/NativeScript/NativeScript

Operating Systems Supported: Android and iOS (also supports the Angular)

NativeScript is one of the most in-demand mobile app development frameworks. Having a list of benefits with it, it is often compared with ReactNative (this framework is explained further in this blog). It gives a wonderful user experience by using JavaScript and CSS to provide user-friendly UIs.

It is a unique concept of “write here, use anywhere”, which is the best part for developers. It helps them in combatting the tedious issues of writing different codes for different platforms.

Listed below are some of the benefits of using the NativeScript framework.

It’s pure luxury for the developers as it saves their hard work of writing code individually for different platforms.
It promotes the usage of multiple frames in an app.
Updating templates can be done easily for TypeScript, Angular, and Java.
There is a smooth process of authentication with different login providers.
It comes with the splendid benefit of generating high-end icons for high-resolution images.

For enterprises, NativeScript has its own advantages, such as:

Easing the job of staffing teams to a great extent.
Independence to developers for using the same code cross-platforms.
Increases productivity of apps in turn increasing their purchase.

Choosing NativeScript can be the best deal for businesses in enhancing their growth.

Xamarin

**Availability: **Open-Source (not for MacOS)

Source: .NET platform

Operating Systems Supported: Android, iOS, and Windows (also supports Angular)

Xamarin is a name that definitely comes up in the discussion of mobile app development. It uses .NET to create apps from a parent codebase that can be shared across platforms. Compiled for native performance, Xamrin apps have complete access to all the functionalities in a platform.

Have a sneak-peek at the reasons why using Xamarin is beneficial.

Like the benefits shared by its competitor frameworks, Xamarin also has the advantage of having one code get shared cross-platform. Reusable code is always a boon for developers.
Ease of writing code in a single programming language and doing the rest with the help of Visio Studio.
It saves a lot of time and money because of its sharable code feature.
The maintenance of the apps developed using Xamarin is pretty low-key.
It provides a variety of solutions to test your app and check its performance.

Hence, you can pick Xamarin to enjoy the magic of the latest technology.

Ionic

Availability: Open-Source

Licensed Under: MIT

Operating Systems Supported: Android version 4.4 onwards and iOS version 10 onwards (supports Angular)

With a great variety of applications that can be made using the Ionic framework, it has come in handy in developing hybrid mobile applications. This is one of the highly recommended frameworks, especially for iOS apps. It also comes with the feature of single code sharing across platforms with the added benefit of having a visual development environment at your local.

Some of the merits of using Ionic are listed below:

It comes with intuitive UI components that help developers in creating an excellent user-friendly app.
The “write here, share anywhere” code process works here as well, thus reducing the efforts of developers.
It saves a lot of time by reducing code redundancies.
It gives you complete control of the app-building process. You can pick any of these frameworks and create the most exciting and user-friendly mobile applications.

Why Digital Finance Transformation is Important: Advantages and Trends Unveiled

Fibonalabs Digital — Tue, 31 May 2022 13:31:14 +0000

Digital transformation has changed the overall experience for people in the fintech industry. Nowadays, people are moving more toward digital products and experiences because digital transformation has provided choices, experiences, and convenience. It is continuously reshaping payments, lending, insurance, and wealth management for fintech players as well as customers. When it comes to technology, according to MarketsandMarkets, IoT in banking and financial services can expect market growth to $2.03 billion by 2023.

Why Are Financial Institutions Adopting Digitization?

New Age customer needs: Due to covid norms, people have adapted digital modes to manage their finances all across the globe. Digital transformation allows financial institutions to understand the demand of a new age customer and strengthen customer engagement with personalized offerings.

Boost in Digital Payments through e-commerce sites: Customers love fast, practical, and straightforward payment methods. Mastercard has witnessed a 40% increment in digital payments across the globe. Since many e-commerce customers are shifting to digital modes of payments, companies should boost contactless payments through any means be it scanning QR codes, digital wallets, etc.

Improve Productivity: In financial services, there are many labor-intensive tasks such as credit scoring, risk analysis, fraud prevention, etc. These tasks can come in handy with the help of technology. Financial institutes can take a data-driven approach to automate their operations, thus improving productivity and efficiency.

The top 5 trends of digital finance transformation

The use of these technologies in finance and the benefits they offer are the real reason why digital transformation is important in finance:

Blockchain Technology: Blockchain helps in quicker operations, real-time contracts, digital payments, escrow facilities, loan processing, and reducing expenses of managing a database. To streamline processes and remove unnecessary regulatory glitches in finance, blockchain will be used as RegTech.

Cloud Adoption: Cloud adoption to improve security and resilience in financial services. It can bring a huge reduction in IT costs and operations. It allows IT managers to involve in more innovative ways to generate value and revenue.

Use Of AI: Artificial intelligence has boosted automation in the financial sector also in the form of automated wealth managers and wealth bots. These can be used to calculate the best loan opportunities, best interest rates, best investment opportunities, etc.

Robotic Process Automation: This helps in streamlining banking processes. RPA can focus on streamlining business processes that are usually carried out by bank staff. According to Gartner, 80% of finance leaders have implemented or have plans to implement RPA.

Big Data: Big data support banks and financial organizations to modify their services according to customer insights. This is possible through big data. Using machine learning more data can be processed and analyzed to tailor services.

Advantages of digital transformation in the financial sector

Smooth Operations: Employees, managers, and operators have a role to perform in a company but tedious and time-consuming ones can be easily handled with automation and digitization. Thus, it decreases the cost of many external and internal processes and operates business smoothly with reduced errors.

Data-Driven Decisions: Data collection offers competitive differentiation through data-driven decisions made by the organization. You can enhance data collection for your company by transforming your social media, website, and external operations to capture as much data as possible from the target demographic.

Better Analysis: Data analysis and its tools make assessment easier for your decision-making process. Using data analytics, advanced algorithms, AI, and other software, digital transformation will enhance your data and business analysis.

Reduce Expenses: Adopting digital transformation for your business will remove the need for manual working for a few necessities and thus, reduce costs. Digitization benefits you by streamlining the process, boosting speed, and automation thus reducing financial business expenses.

Empower Innovation: Companies can leverage innovation in technology to improve their business processes which can be achieved through digital transformation. Innovation in the finance sector boosts brand stature, brings new customer acquisition, and increments customer loyalty.

Conclusion

There are many benefits of digital finance transformation but it can be achieved only when the process is approached properly. The future depends on the collaboration between skilled teams and relevant technologies. So, to reap its benefits, financial organizations must set a scope for both and then proceed to digital transformation because there is no future without digitization.

What Are The 6 Core Elements of Digital Transformation?

Fibonalabs Digital — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 13:06:23 +0000

Digital transformation is much more than just bringing your business to digital platforms. If you want impactful changes in the way, you operate the business while preventing risks, then digital transformation is for you.

According to a report by results and market, the digital transformation market is expanding rapidly and is expected to cross USD 3.3 billion by 2025. But there is a noticeable gap between those implementing digital transformation and those who are seriously succeeding in it. The question is what makes the difference and the answer is the 6 core elements that are mentioned below.

*1. Innovation using technology *
While talking about digital transformation, technology cannot be exempted. Choosing the most suitable technology is the most crucial step for the digital transformation of your business. Here are some new-age technologies that can be embedded in your business:

*- Artificial Intelligence and data analytics *
AI-based technologies, such as machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing help companies in smooth operations and better decision-making. The huge data generated is used for future-ready machines that will take over decision-making from humans and make real-time decisions to scale. Organizations can reduce risk by predicting a scenario using AI-enabled tools, and improve customer experience by reducing response time with AI-powered assistants.

*- Cloud-based Technologies *
The aim is hyper-automation so that human capabilities can be used in developing other value-adding products. Using cloud technologies, organizations can improve agility, operations, security, and achieve high scalability. Other useful technologies to include are an extended reality, blockchain, 5G, etc.

*2. Prioritize Customer experience *
As per Mckinsey, digital transformation can boost 20%-50% economic gains and 20%-30% more client satisfaction. Prioritize making the customer experience the base of any investment. Do not expect customers to fit your business criteria instead make your processes such that they fit your customer’s shoes.

For instance, companies like Apple, Starbucks, and Nike focused on customer experiences and thus are the leading companies in their industries. So, focus on developing deep bonds with your customers and solving their problems.

*3. Bring the right mindset to business with LEADERSHIP *
Leadership is the base of a strong foundation. Digital leadership is something that links all four aspects including network, trust, team, and decentralized organization. So, when you select a leader for a group, identify these qualities in them:

Ability to explore, experiment, and have the flexibility to take risks.
Become digitally strong.
Understand the role of technology in social transformation and use this to enhance business.
Encourage collaboration and innovation in environments.
Ability to analyze complete information and not just technology.

With this transition from leadership to digital leadership, digital transformation in business will be easy and quick.

*4. Reorganize the existing business model *
For digital transformation, it is necessary to bring innovation in procedures, costs, processes, and product management to your existing model. In a traditional IT setup, there were basically two phases: the development phase and the testing and deployment phase.

But modern agile setup combines all these elements in one cross-functional team. Using agile technology, development is done in sprints thus, ensuring consistent customer feedback and fast implementation.

Organizations opt for DevOps practices to automate optimize processes to fast, reliable, and better products.

*5. Data-focus *
Data and metrics are the best fuel for perfect decision-making. As per a report, 88% of companies with measured high digital maturity with data-focused usage. Using AI and machine learning in your processes yields nothing if the data they generate is not used and analyzed properly.

Data analysis and integration can be used to identify the pain points of your customers and employees and use them to build transformational strategies. Finding the loopholes in customers' data will help you identify the best solutions for them and build the best transformative products.

*6. Team structure *
According to International Data Corporation market research, "by 2024, 55 percent of successful digitally innovative products will be built by teams that include people with a creative mind, critical thinking, analysis, and automation skills." The creative and skilled team will be able to pull off the successful digital transformation. So, structuring your team is important.

Design your team structure as per the project size and include the following:

Team leader: Consider this as an agile leader that you can appoint for accountability.
Business Leader: Manager who can relate to technology and business processes to make a balance.
Coders and Designers: Skilled force for development and designer to work together.

Your end goal is high performing team so focus on great teamwork and communication.

*Digital Transformation On Your Way *
Now as you know what core elements you should focus on, it's time for implementation. Develop a digital transformation strategy that includes: your goals, market levels, competitor analysis, existing and targeted customers, and required resources. It's better today than tomorrow. As of now, you have the key to start transforming your business digitally. So go and execute it. All the best!

What Is the Relationship between Design Thinking and New Product Development?

Fibonalabs Digital — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 12:08:51 +0000

What's the first discussion about while building a new digital product? Is it about marketing strategies, sales, resources, or technology? No, it's about the problem, people, and their needs. Once you get clarity about these you start designing the accurate framework to serve your audience well. That's where design thinking comes into the picture to make product development easy and precise. Let's dive deeper into it.

*Quick overview of design thinking *
In simple words, it's about putting yourself in the customer's shoes. Design thinking is a framework that shows the human-centered path to innovation. It modifies early thinking for the product managers by having a deep look at customers’ needs, aspirations, and frustrations. Its approach includes redefining the problems, asking questions, challenging decisions to develop strategies, and building solutions.

*Some advantages of applying design thinking *

Reduce variability: Design thinking is a process on loop. UI/UX designers can conduct usability tests frequently to reduce variability in design concepts and prototypes.
People-focused, not product-focused: It gives priority to user requirements, emotional state, and behavior, not just qualitative data to develop product design.
The solution in the form of product: It inspires product managers and designers to build design specifications and test them early during the process.

*Why design thinking is important in new product development? *
The quality of good product designers and managers is to keep personal perception aside and understand the target audience’s daily workflow deeply to gain new ideas and insights.

Navigating the analytical and tactical information from the beginning is secondary:

What total time do we have?
What features are to be developed?
The revenues benchmark in year one to declare it as successful.
What roles should be given to what teams?

This is what the design thinking framework tells us. There are two key mistakes in traditional thinking of product development:

You started by focusing on the product instead of finding the solution for your user’s problems.
Your first objective should be user and their needs, not your organization and your internal needs.

So what do you get on integrating design thinking with new product development?

Exploring various design concepts and specifications.
Collect information through usability tests.
Understanding your user’s issues with product interface and usability.

Remember that design thinking is a non-linear process. So, designers use different processes in parallel or use them repeatedly in their projects.

*How can you execute design thinking in new product development? *
Forget the traditional way of product development and apply design thinking to level up your next IT project. Design thinking is divided into 5 ground-breaking steps:

1. Empathize with customers
It's about observing and analyzing the expected target users. It can be done in many ways: usability testing, interviews, conducting surveys, preview short tests and recording their feedback. You can ask questions to strengthen your bond with them like:

What do they think of your product?
How are they using it?
In what ways do they use your product?
How do they envision your brand?

2. Defining the issues
It's time to compile and analyze the whole data you collected during empathize phase. Thus, you can define the main issues observed during the first phase. Defining problems in a human-centric way rather than a product-centric way is really appreciable.

Abilities of designers during this phase:
Keep analyzing the issues from various angles and think something outside the box.
Define these issues as problem statements in the human-centric method.
Encourage the team to try various possibilities of the solution by asking questions.

*3. Ideate: *
Don’t stop the ideas and keep them striking. Awake your creative selves and think about design concepts that can solve the user’s issues. It is better to organize brainstorming sessions with your team including stakeholders, designers, developers, and other people of interest to build on each other’s creativity. Note all the relevant and innovative ideas for reference later.

4. Prototype
Among all the solutions and ideas, you have formulated, choose the best among them and begin with creating a prototype. Developing a prototype in an early stage will ease the testing of the proposed solution.

When you are trying to solve multiple issues, execute all the selected solutions on a single prototype to check if they work together smoothly. This practice will also highlight the limitations, if any, in the product and the proposed solution. In the end, you will know which solutions work best and which need to be rejected or improved.

*5. Test *
Now your task is to check the usability of the functional prototype you developed and ensure that it solves the issues you marked during the second phase.

This is the final stage, but if you come across any problems, you will have to get back to the earlier stages. In severe problems, you might also have to start with empathizing phase. If you have limited time and budget, go for a usability test.

*Takeaways *

Design thinking isn't only for designers. Its principles can work for anyone in any industry who is trying to build a solution for a problem. Design thinking acts as a gap filler between the users’ needs and the product features for better coordination in the team.

So, apply the principles of design thinking in your new product development process and share your experiences with us!

What Are The Steps In The UX Design Process?

Fibonalabs Digital — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 13:02:56 +0000

User Experience Design, as the name suggests, is all about the user’s experience of interacting with a product or a service. To design a great UI, one must be aware of the concepts of UX design too. It helps the designer adopt an empathetic approach. When combined with their expertise in tools and technology, generate profitable results. UX Design revolves around a plethora of psychological concepts, whose conclusions are pretty subjective. It varies according to the industry, demographics, business requirements, and many other factors.

The UX design process divides into four key phases; user research, design, testing, and implementation, iteratively. We may be in our testing phase, but we are liable to revisit the first phase of user research. Because new issues pop up, and our perspectives may change from time to time in our UI design journey. Now, let us look at the steps in the UX design process:

1. User Research

User research is the backbone of the UX design process. The notion that we do not know our users, helps us create better UX designs! It allows us to adopt a growth mindset and gather direct and indirect inputs from our target audience. In this phase, we interact with several groups of users from different backgrounds and with different experiences, who are a part of your target audience. For example, a social media application may include users from various countries, age groups, disabilities, etc. We try to understand user behavior by conducting interviews, online surveys, and user testing. We may ask questions to the user or allow them to interact with the UI. We get direct answers at times, yet it does not suffice. The real catch lies in the interactions and emotions of the user. We UX researchers must decode this. Based on our observations, we create user personas to refine our results. It helps us to filter assumptions, gain new insights. Now, we can devise a plan that aligns with our capabilities and business requirements.

2. Wireframing and Prototyping

In this step, we develop a tangible to test on the live and potential users, based on the inputs from the previous steps. Here we focus on information hierarchy, and most importantly, usability. The wireframes are skeletal versions of the end designs. It illustrates the website or app page with factors like space allocation, content prioritization, functional availability, behavior intention, and accommodation. To put it in simple words, they are the pencil sketches of the final UI. A digitized version of the wireframe is the prototype. We can create prototypes with tools like Figma, InVision, AdobeXD, Balsamiq, etc. We can create more than one prototype to explore which idea works the best for ourselves and our dear users!

We use card sorting techniques to prioritize our features in the wireframe. For example, on Instagram, when we open the app, we get the short stories at the topmost part of the page, later we get to see the posts. The chat options, reels, suggested posts, etc. occupy different spaces in the application.

3. Usability Testing

Now, it’s the showdown time for our prototype! The deliverable in the previous step is given to the users for interaction and feedback. Here we get to identify the problems and issues encountered by the user. This step may require us to trace back to any of the previous steps. It may seem to be an extra workload, but anything to increase user satisfaction and our company’s reputation is worth the hustle!

Usability testing is conducted through various methods. It is carried out by questionnaires, simple observations, surveys, interviews, heatmaps, etc. The tester or moderator asks the participants to perform tasks, using the prototypes of the UI. The interactions are heat mapped; clicks and navigations on the prototype are traced using tools. The person’s reactions are observed for each move. Sometimes, the participant is asked to talk out loud upon each interaction with the moderators, to gain better insights. The tester/moderator should ensure that they do not influence the participant in any way, as it tampers the results. The tasks are planned realistically. The tasks may be direct or indirect. For example, adding a product to the cart from their Wishlist, or getting rid of an error message in the app. The tasks are curated in a way that the task wordings do not distract the participant or lead to misinterpretation. The users can be active people who use the exact product or even people using similar products.

Usability testing can be qualitative or quantitative. While qualitative testing focuses more on behavioral insights and analytics, quantitated testing shifts the focus on pre-defined targets and metrics. A few metrics are the number of clicks to complete a task, task time, and success. While qualitative testing results aid in our UX design process, quantitative testing helps to collect benchmarks. Remote testing is when the moderator and participant are in different physical locations. We use video conferencing and screen sharing software like zoom, skype, GoToMeeting, etc. We can also conduct A/B testing to choose between any two iterations.

Fourth and Final Step: Implementation of the User Experience Design

Once the prototype is finalized, the UX designer hands it out to the UI designer, who works on the aesthetics and functional aspects of the UI. The role of a UX designer at this phase depends upon the type of the organization. In the case of a startup, the UX designer works along with the UI designer and can view the final version. If the organization is larger, the User Experience Design team is kept in the loop but isn’t involved in the hands-on part of the design. However, the UX designer constantly works on feedback, news, trend analysis, task refining, etc., and documents their findings for future projects.

What Are The 8 Stages of Software Development Life Cycle?

Fibonalabs Digital — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:58:46 +0000

Software Product Development Lifecycle is the process of planning, creating, testing, and deploying software. It is a pre-defined framework adopted by software enterprises. Each product would have a different software development model such as Waterfall, Spiral, V-model, Rad, Agile, etc., so the SDLC varies according to models. In this blog post, we shall check out the 8 stages of the Software Development Life Cycle.

1. Ideation

This is the stage where we brainstorm our ideas. The ideas may not be concrete or executable, yet we can note them down. The aim behind doing this is to refine the ideas in the upcoming stages to bring innovation into the picture. The process can be done in group discussions manually or with the help of software tools. Some of the AI-based tools for this process are Milanote, XMinds, etc. Irrespective of the methods, the stakeholders are always a part of the discussion. The client’s needs are on priority in all the stages.

2. Planning and Analysis

In this stage, the ideas are refined and filtered based on market trends, client’s needs, the budget estimate of the project, time, etc. The features and functions of the software product are defined and documented. The Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document is created in this phase.

3. Feasibility Study

Here, the practical resources to implement the above plans are listed. This includes the technology stack, budget, team allocations, working environments, etc. The feasibility study considers economic factors, legal standards, technical needs, operational feasibility, time frame, etc. The Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document from the previous stage comes in handy here.

4. Design and Prototyping

In the design phase, the front-end features of the application such as User Interface for the intended platforms, for example, Android-iOS or Windows-MacOS, templates, color palettes, and boilerplates, are created. The UI and UX of the designs are worked on and finalized in this stage. This can be done by creating prototypes. A prototype is an early version of a software product, which can be used to give the user an idea about the product in the future. The user can interact with the prototype. Based on their inputs, the product’s design is refined, and features to be implemented in the development phase are listed clearly. In the modern SDLC, we perform testing at all phases, so usability testing is carried out here. In some cases, the prototypes undergo modification or are discarded. Sometimes more than one prototype is given to the users allowing them to choose the best option. In this case, A/B testing is carried out, which helps the teams decide which option to proceed with, based on the user’s choices.

5. Development

In this phase, the designs are converted to functional software. The source codes are written by the developers using the previously decided tools, languages, and frameworks. A large code is split and written by many developers; therefore, a source code management application is a must in this phase. The application allows the developer to track the changes made to the code and control the access. Apart from coding, the development team needs to upskill themselves in case they’re opting for new technology. The team is responsible for fixing errors and glitches, to ensure that the code is compiled successfully. Proper documentation is created in this phase, which acts as a guide for the software product.

6. Testing

After the source code is written, it is tested by the test engineers either manually or by using tools like JIRA, Jenkins, Selenium, etc. The code may be free from bugs, but it should pass all the test cases also. The testers frame the test cases and test the software accordingly. There are different types of testing such as accessibility testing, functional testing, black box testing, load testing, integration testing, interactive testing, security testing, white-box testing, etc. The testing team re-sends the code/module to the development teams when the test cases do not get satisfied.

7. Deployment and Delivery

The software is deployed in increments into the marketplace or ground reality. Depending upon the enterprise, the deployment process begins either manually or automatically using Application Release Automation (ARA) tools to the production environment. These tools are mostly linked with the continuous integration tools to facilitate successful incremental releases of the working software. In this phase, the functioning software is delivered wholly to the production environment if the increments are successful. Otherwise, the increments are rolled back and fixed and then deployed again.

8. Monitoring and Maintenance

Once the software product is delivered, it is constantly monitored to look out for defects and issues that the user might encounter. The user feedback and reviews are analyzed. The respective teams fix the defects or improvise the software products. The bug fixes may not flow through the entire cycle, but a well-planned process is carried out so that the fix doesn’t introduce other problems. This practice is also known as regression.

I hope this blog post gave you a clear idea of the 8 stages of the Software Development Life Cycle. The tasks in each stage may be performed together, or are independent. A successful SDLC would require cooperation and smart work across all the teams. In recent times, adopting DevOps tools and best practices in the SDLC has become a norm. This helps to speed up the software product development process by automating, otherwise manual processes. Irrespective of the best practices adopted, understanding the user’s requirements and queries is the key to optimizing the whole software product development process.

What Are The 7 Rs Of Cloud Migration Strategy?

Fibonalabs Digital — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 12:43:31 +0000

Introduction

Cloud migration strategies are high-level plans adopted by an organization to move their existing on-premise workloads and data to cloud environments or switch from one cloud service to another. The choice of cloud migration strategies varied according to the levels of agility, scalability, technical experimentations, and ownership that the organization wants to achieve. There are many cloud service providers in the market such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Provider (GCP), Microsoft Azure IBM, Alibaba, etc. which provide a wide range of tools and services for cloud migration. In this blog, we shall use AWS as our immediate reference. Amazon Web Services was inspired by Gartner’s 5 Rs model that defined all options available for cloud migration. The AWS cloud migration framework further modified this model into 7 Rs of cloud migration strategy which we will be discussing in this blog.

7Rs of Cloud Migration Strategy

1. Repurchase: The Updated Newbies
In this strategy, we withdraw an existing application and replace it with a cloud-based version from the AWS Marketplace. Here. We start a new license agreement in the cloud, which requires lesser effort in comparison with the “lift and shift” strategies. Applications such as CRM, HR, finance, ERP, etc. can be migrated using this option. The applications are published by different vendors in the AWS Marketplace and categorized according to the delivery modes, pricing, categories, etc. The popular categories provided by the AWS cloud migration framework include Operating Systems, Data Products, Machine Learning, Storage, Networking, DevOps.

2. Relocate: Switch Up Locations
Relocate is the option where we move our infrastructure to the cloud without purchasing new hardware, rewriting applications, or modifying existing operations. This can be done with the help of VMWare Cloud on AWS, as it supports compatibility and portability between AWS and the on-premise environment. For example; relocating the hypervisor hosting Oracle Database to VMWare Cloud on AWS.

3. Rehost: Modify None, Lift, and Shift More
In this strategy, we move on-premise applications to the cloud environment, without modification. This option is chosen when there is a need to migrate large-scale legacy apps to meet targeted business objectives. We must identify the apps which can benefit from the cloud environment, without major architectural changes. Rehost is also the first stage for performing refactoring or re-architecting apps in cloud migration because rehost makes it easier to spin up realistic development/testing environments. The process is not that easy when compared to repurchase, but AWS provides efficient tools to perform rehosting with ease. Cloud Endure Migration and AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SWS) are two such services.

4. Replatform: Modify Less, Lift, and Shift Extra
In this strategy, we replace a few components of the application and host them in the cloud environments. The components are replaced or rebuilt in such a way that they take advantage of the cloud environment. It mostly involves switching from self-hosted architecture to managed services. We should focus on applications that require minimal optimizations if replatforming is the chosen strategy. AWS Lambda, Amazon Cognito, Amazon MQ, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight, etc. are a few services provided by AWS to rebuild parts of the applications. Extensive testing and monitoring are mandatory in this strategy, even if minimal components are modified. This includes testing and monitoring post-cloud migration also. We should pay attention to metrics like security, performance, functionality, and usability because we surely don’t want a crashing application after investing time and effort in the cloud migration process. Amazon CloudWatch can help in application monitoring.

5. Refactor/Re-Architect: Almost Building Them From Scratch
This is the most expensive approach to cloud migration. Here, the application undergoes a complete makeover to adapt itself to the cloud environment. We can opt for this strategy when there is a strong business need for cloud-native features. In most cases, the application is broken into independent services and transitioned into a microservices architecture in the cloud. The applications are refactored only after they are rehosted in the cloud. This strategy involves high risk and efforts, hence should be executed with utmost care. AWS offers a wide range of services in areas like servers, databases, cloud environments, migration tools, testing and monitoring tools, batch processing tools, security tools, source code management, workspaces, etc. The refactoring process is done on Amazon Workspaces with collaborative, skilled, multi-location teams. The development environments are responsive, powerful, collaborative, and secure. Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, AWS Directory Services, Active MQ on AWS, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda, Amazon Cognito, Amazon MQ, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight, AWS Secret Manager, etc. are a few tools used in the refactoring journey. As much as we talk about cloud adoption, it is not the right option in all circumstances. The 6Rs cloud migration strategy model includes passive options for not choosing cloud migration also. “Retain” and “Retire” are the last two R’s which do not perform cloud migration.

6. Retain: Services Which Can Camp-In
Retain is when we opt to keep the items as it is in our existing IT portfolio. We retain applications under circumstances where there are strict regulations to store data on-premises only. We also retain our applications and workloads when cloud migration is not feasible. It is advisable to retain your applications when there are active projects within them, or when the applications and operating systems are not compatible with the targeted cloud environment. Identifying applications which can be retained in the early stages while mapping out the cloud migration can help us make informed decisions. This prevents us from following the cloud adoption trends blindly.

7. Retire: Done and Dusted!
Retire is a cloud migration strategy option where we turn off services that are no longer needed. These services are identified in the early areas of mapping the cloud migration. This may include redundant workloads also. Turning off these services enables the organization to focus on areas that provide more business value and saves resources. However, we must be aware of all the upstream dependencies of a workload before retiring them.

Bottom Line

Organizations can reach out to cloud migration consultancy services to get a clear idea of which strategy would suit their needs the best. Cloud migration consultancies provide insights into the nuances of cloud adoption and provide clearance on factors like payment, ownership, compliance, governance, security, risk management, support systems, and much more. The consultancy services can also help us choose between various cloud providers, for example; choosing between AWS Cloud migration framework or Google Cloud migration framework for our replatform strategy.

What Are the Best UI/UX Design Tools For a Designer?

Fibonalabs Digital — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 08:47:28 +0000

UI and UX design are one of the booming industries in recent times. Companies are investing more in UI/UX design services, as it serves as a bridge to deliver the best user experience through their products. The UI/UX designers are no less than artists, as they put forth their creative and innovative sides to create impactful designs that solve users' problems. To create precise and intuitive designs, using the right tool is very important.

Design tools are used at all stages of your UI and UX journey such as creating wireframes, prototypes, rendering MVP (Minimum Viable Product), etc. There are a lot of open sources and paid tools to amplify your UI/UX design. With the help of design tools, the teams can stay organized and work collaboratively. The design tools with respective plugins accelerate the designer’s work. Design enthusiasts and professional designers can make use of these tools. While some tools work both in UI and UX, some are limited to either UI or UX design. In this blog, we will talk about a few UI/UX design tools. Without any further ado, let us get started!

1. Sketch

The sketch is a popular UI design tool, that helps work on early ideas to handoffs. With Sketch, you can collaborate in real-time with your fellow designers to create that pixel-perfect artwork. Sketch allows us to gather rapid feedback from the stakeholders, share prototypes for testing, and facilitate a smooth developer handoff. You can create your workspace and design system using Sketch. The design systems include styles and symbols that are reusable and responsive to fit the content. Developers can view, inspect and measure the design in any browser and OS, without installing the Mac app or a third-party plugin. Sketch provides hundreds of plugins, assistants, integrations, and animates interactions to make your design more accessible.

2. AdobeXD

AdobeXD is a simple and easy-to-use prototyping and wireframing software that enables designers and developers to create interactive prototypes of websites, apps, and connected products. AdobeXD is unique because it's easy to learn, it's completely vector-based, and it's part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Also, AdobeXD works seamlessly with other Creative Cloud apps and services, making collaboration across teams easier. It includes Adobe Stock for adding relevant, royalty-free images to prototypes. The tool is also integrated with Behance, a platform for showcasing and sharing your work, for easy sharing and feedback.

3. Figma

Figma is a web-based interface design tool that is both simple and powerful. It is designed for teams of all sizes to collaborate on the same project. There are many uses for Figma, including creating screen interfaces for mobile applications, wireframing for web applications, and creating images for user interface component libraries. The primary benefit of Figma is that it allows multiple people to work on the same project at the same time, while giving each person the ability to work on their component or component library, within the context of the overall design. Figma is integrated with Dribbble, a platform to showcase your designs, and build your design portfolio.

4. InVision

InVision is the fastest and easiest way to create clickable, interactive prototypes that look and feel exactly like your finished product. You can use Invision to ideate and design beautifully-designed mockups with a dynamic whiteboard. It allows you to collaborate with your team, uncover potential issues, and gather feedback from customers and stakeholders. Invision is also a feature-rich design platform that allows you to add and style your prototypes using CSS and JavaScript while giving you the ability to include rich media, videos, and presentations. All of these functions help you create clickable, interactive prototypes that look and feel like your final product.

5. Miro

Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that helps in digital brainstorming, documentation, and managing an Agile workflow. Miro is an interesting tool because it allows the designer to connect through video conferences and screen sharing. Miro allows designers to share projects and ideas, thus making collaboration easier. Miro is also a free unlimited program. This helps novice designers also to explore and experiment with their design skills, without worrying about workspace-related issues.

6. Webflow

Webflow is an online platform that allows you to design web pages using a drag and drop interface and without using any code. It gives you the honor to build a website with the power of HTML, CSS, and Javascript in a visual canvas. It is a great tool for both beginners and advanced users. To create a website using Webflow, all you have to do is sign up for a free account on their website, build your website using their drag and drop interface, and publish it.

7. Optimal Workshop

An Optimal Workshop is a unique tool that gives you the best research methods to provide an informed user experience. It gives you various research tools such as OptimalSort(card sorting), TreeJack(Tree testing), ChalkMark(First click testing), Questions(Online survey), Reframer(Qualitative research). It helps to improve digital products built by the designer with quality research.

I hope this blog helped you learn about a few renowned design tools for UI/UX design. The combination of two or more of these tools will help you step up your Design game. There are various famous UI UX design studios where designers use these tools to bring out the best designs.

5 Principles of Agile Software Development Methods?

Fibonalabs Digital — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 09:02:30 +0000

Over the years, software development methods have also upgraded parallelly with technological advancements. Agile software development methods are one approach in the current software development trends. Agile methodology breaks up the project into many phases and distributes the workloads across the teams. We prioritize continuous improvement at each stage rather than working on changes at the deployment stage altogether. Progress is constantly updated with the team members during the daily scrum meetings. The examples of agile-based development methods are Scrum, eXtreme Programming (XP), Feature Driven Development (FDD), Adaptive Software Development (ADD), Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development (DSD), Lean Software Development, etc. The methods are selected according to the type of product/service to be developed. All these agile methods follow a set of dedicated principles. In this blog, we will focus on five crucial principles of agile methodology.

1. Be open to challenges and changes

The agile methodology focuses on being highly responsive to changes at all phases of software development. Our teams must be aware of what is going on in the project at any development phase. The agile method splits the tasks and deliverables into iterations to achieve this high degree of clarity. The iterations must be completed in shorter time frames, usually from a week to four. Ensure that the time frames align with the overall time allocated to the project.

JIRA is a tool that helps us improve our code by enabling the creation of quick filters. JIRA gives a clear insight into the agile processes via reporting functionalities and custom workflows. We can build, test, and release software using this tool.

2. Embrace user inputs

Since agile software development methods adopt a communicative and responsive approach, the customers are on priority. Feedbacks from the customers should be gathered frequently after each iteration, based on which we can improve the product. Thinking from the user’s perspective instead of pre-assuming things helps us develop better products. A new function suggested by one of your customers may turn into a breakthrough for your company’s products!

Sprints by Zoho is a tool that helps in this process. It enables the team to comment on the code changes easily. We can also gather product feedback using this tool and work on the changes in the early stages of development.

3. Facilitate live interaction with actionable software for better visualization and feedback

We need to create working and actionable software, instead of theoretical representations. Documentation does play a part in software development, but it is for the records only. If you want to gain insights from your customers and stakeholders, create small working pieces of a product. We may question this aspect, stating that documentation is necessary to support our claims and give surety to the clients. Well, to justify the implementation of the ideas which you have proposed in the documentation, there is no better method than to provide actionable products! When a user comes into live contact with the software, their understanding and perception change. It gives room for improvement and ensures that we are on the same page with our clients. For example, you state that you have used JavaScript to trigger a warning on the web page when users enter a weak password while registering. When this feature is displayed in the prototype, it helps the client visualize it and supports our claims. Keep in mind that your documentation should be short and precise. Mention only the things you have implemented in your outputs, instead of futuristic proposals.

We can use tools like AdobeXd, InVision, Webflow, Framer, etc. to create prototypes before we move on to the backend coding.

4. Effective communication to step up software development

Inculcating effective communication practices amongst your team members may benefit your project more than adopting a high-end technology stack. Agile software development methods keep the team members engaged through principles like daily scrum meetings and pair programming.

Daily scrum calls are used to update the project status from each team member’s side. It helps us devise solutions for problems that the team members might be facing. For example, if the tester has not received the deployable code from the development teams, the testing process gets lagged. It is a high priority task for the testing team than the development team, so plans must be made to compensate for the same. The team can get in touch with each other and negotiate, to come up with effective solutions. Risks can be managed better if the communication between the team is on point. We can assist a team member who might be on the wrong track!

Pair programming is a technique where two programmers work together at one workstation, either remotely or in person. While one person takes up the driver role, the other can be the observer/navigator. The driver writes the code, whereas the observer checks each line of code as it is typed in. The programmers must switch roles frequently to ensure equality of workloads.

Project communication tools like Teams, Slack, Trello, etc. can help in communication between the teams or within the team. Features like channel creation, tasks assignment, messaging, meeting tools boost the collaborative experience for the Agile teams.

5. Quality over quantity

While we are engrossed with meeting the deadlines, we may miss the focus on qualitative aspects of the project during the development cycle. We can provide parts of the software that meet the industrial standards for security and stability. The software can be updated and improvised further. For example, if your login system onboards the user in 2 minutes, try to reduce the time by working on the server’s latency. Remember to keep realistic quality goals and standards so that you don’t waste time in high-pressure situations to achieve something out of your reach.

Performance testing tools like Selenium, Soap UI, Apache JMeter help to evaluate our work against test cases, to ensure that the quality standards are met.

The above agile principles are tailored according to the specific methodologies we choose, the type of projects, and business requirements. We can further improvise our agile software development methods by incorporating DevOps practices.