Day 8: Dashbook - Bridging the Gap Between Personalization & Customization
When you think about the first thing you do when you wake up, I’m guessing your first answer will be reach for your smartphone. If it is, I’m not surprised. According to a study conducted by the IDC titled “Always Connected: How Smartphones and Social Keep Us Engaged”, 79% of smartphone users reach for their phones within 15 minutes of waking up. In fact, the report also revealed that the average user will spend nearly 132 minutes daily on their smartphone; with Facebook taking up a quarter of those minutes. Aside from Facebook, there are countless amounts of social apps that users use like Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, etc.
There is an infinite amount of incoming data that requires our constant attention via smartphones and a platform to curate it. It’s no surprise that social aggregator apps like Flipboard, Pixable and Slim have been created to collect all that data and present it in one beautiful app. Google Now also aims to do the same thing as the aforementioned apps, but takes a more personalized approach by taking into consideration the users’ Google search history.
All of the apps mentioned above are excellent, but each fall short in one crucial area of the data aggregation app process. With Flipboard, the amount of customization is fantastic, but the lack of personalization leaves much to be desired. The opposite can be said about Google Now, which is all about generating personalized content to your mobile device with limited customization options (cards) on the users end.
Furthermore, both of these apps are not open to developers to create their own cards or widgets within the apps themselves. An exciting startup out of Montreal named Dashbook aims to solve this problem by providing a personalized and fully customizable mobile dashboard to users. The Dashbook app allows users to choose which snippets (also called dashes) of information the user will receive on their dashboard.
Can’t find the appropriate dash for your needs? The best part of Dashbook is that it allows developers to create their own dashes for their dashboard. All it takes is a few lines of code and users will have their own personalized dash. Any dashes created by developers will be shared onto a growing library of dashes.
So whether you’re an analytics driven marketer or a developer that’s looking for a customizable app experience, Dashbook will help deliver personalized information while ensuring you have complete customization over your dashboard.
How can the dash help you today?