#mobile dev day

[cyrielle-vuillemin]

Stage_Round 05 + 06

Et si je cassais le rythme ?

Ces deux dernières semaines j'ai eu à faire à des réunions avec des clients, à des brainstorming avec Thibault, à un cahier des charges, à une stratégie marketing, à faire deux cafés (je sais enfin me servir d'une machine... Je crois que j'ai passé un cap dans mon stage !), à se rendre compte que je dis souvent "du coup", à me battre.

J'ai pu finir le projet sur lequel j'étais depuis 3 semaines. Il me restera à ajouter des "goodies" en js et de régler quelques problèmes pour le responsive.

Depuis cette semaine je suis sur un nouveau projet et pour cela j'ai appris à utiliser woocommerce. J'ai également fait des petites vidéos d'explications pour le client, afin qu'il commence à s'approprier au système d'ajout d'articles, d'articles variables, de catégories, de code promo...

Du même projet Thibault m'a fais confiance en me chargeant de réaliser le cahier des charges complet. Et comme je commençais un tout nouveau projet, on a parlé de Bootstrap et je me suis dit que c'était l'occasion de me lancer et d'essayer ce framework ! Ce n'est pas facile au premier abord, il faut bien comprendre le concept de bloc, de lignes, de colonnes et après ça va tout seul. C'est très intéressant et permet de sortir de sa zone de confort. Pas toujours facile de choisir un métier où on doit s'adapter et se remettre en question constamment.

Les deux prochaines semaines s'annoncent rudes ! Nous avons été mis sur le design d'une application mobile qui doit être fini le 15 décembre. On a une semaine pour tout boucler, ça va être le rush mais ça sera très instructif !

Sinon jeudi 27 novembre a eu lieu à Mons le Mobile Dev Day, avec Thibault on y est allé au matin. Les conférences étaient axées programmation pure et dure. Et un sentiment de pub pour Microsoft Azure... Mais c'était sympa de croiser de nouvelles personnes !

Rythme et mouvement, tu ne peux pas te permettre de rester sur place : bouge.

[making-change-org]

Mobile Developer Day with Facebook and Parse

Move fast and break things but don't let them get to production

We had the pleasure of attending Mobile Developer Day at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters. Parse and it’s tools were the main feature along with a hackathon, but the highlights for us were the great talks on design and product that were given including an impromptu visit from Mark Zuckerberg. We thought it would be great to walk through some of the things we learned with some excerpts from the talks.

Why is mobile so important?

Mobile devices have become personal items that we carry with us everywhere we go. And when I say everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE. Surveys suggest 54% of average users use smart phones in bed, 30% use them at the dinner table and 39% use them in the bathroom. Their adoption is growing at an exponential rate and the devices are ubiquitous.

Why mobile fails & how can we make it better?

Most companies have very small mobile teams - generally 1 or 2 people or worse yet, none. It’s understandable for resource strapped startups to not have the necessary resources allocated to mobile, which is considered a secondary market.

But companies should realize by now that this is no longer the case. If you put together the overall usage of mobile & tablets, it easily surpasses PC usage.

MVP or MDP

The desire to release quickly has always led to discussions on what is the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) but what is the MDP (Minimum Desirable Product) which pushes the product forward and executes on core features.

To achieve great design and desirability, allow space for creativity and let your design be optimistic and ambitious. Let designers craft the best case scenarios then critique the designs and align the scope.

Use the space to engage the user completely as your product should be able to create the desired emotion in the user.

Help the users narrow the choices, but do not force your choices on them. Since many times this involves an ad or conversion point, embed these in the regular flow and take them through an experience ending where the user needs to be.

Release

Some companies have a vast user database and they can leverage beta users to test new products and get feedback. With startups it’s difficult, but that should not mean you test in production. If you release internally, followed by releasing to a small user base and use A/B testing you can craft a great experience which is vital since first impressions mean a lot.

Release regularly; there is no magic number. With websites, this could be twice a day, but with apps this could be every 4 weeks. Continuous deployment and scheduled release cycles can help you achieve this.

With regular releases it is easy to get small set of features out at a time and you can observe its effects, not just the desired ones but also the side effects.

Use the data to understand your user, but don't drive your product entirely based on the data.

Lastly, use intuition, user feedback, and most importantly, the interests of the people developing the product into consideration when developing your product.

Praneeta Mhatre http://github.com/Praneeta Web Engineer

We are hiring! If you want to come work with us and help empower people to Change the world while working on amazing technology check out our jobs page or email us directly: praneeta at change dot org