Simple App Ideas: How to Find the Next Big Thing

Simple App Ideas: How to Find the Next Big Thing

Hardik Gandhi   January 23, 2018

Originally published on http://www.appsterhq.com/

When it comes to building mobile apps, app makers tend to overcomplicate their ideas and strategies.

The app winds up becoming a clunky Swiss Army knife — one that offers too many features, is difficult to learn and use, and costly to maintain.

But when we think about successful apps, it’s often the simplest ones that come to mind — apps like Dropbox and Evernote that address a pressing pain point, yet are effortlessly easy to use.

As Steve Jobs famously said:

“Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Below, I’ll share about tried-and-tested strategies that I’ve used to help startups and entrepreneurs at Appster come up with simple app ideas effectively.

1. Train yourself to become an idea machine:

How do you get better at coming up with app ideas?

The answer, according to entrepreneur, best-selling author and podcaster James Altucher is to become an idea machine.

In Altucher’s words, it’s akin to being a superhero, where you’re never at a loss for ideas — regardless of whichever situation you’re in or whatever questions you’re thrown at.

If this sounds unrealistic, it isn’t — but it does require plenty of practice. Here’s a quick roundup of Altucher’s tips for becoming an idea machine:

How many ideas should you come up with each time?

10.

Why 10 ideas?

Most of us wouldn’t have much difficulty with conceiving a handful of ideas, even if it’s centered around topics that we don’t usually ponder about.

But after the fifth idea is just about when it gets challenging — where we find ourselves at a loss for ideas.

The point of the exercise is to break through this stage in order to build up your idea muscle.

How can you assess your ideas?

You can’t, and evaluating your app ideas isn’t the priority at this point in time. Says Altucher:

“You have to try multiple ideas and see which ones gets the excitement of customers, employees, and you can see that people are legitimately using it and excited by it.”

What are topics you can start brainstorming on?

The key here is to have fun with the ideation process, so don’t limit yourself to business-related ideas.

It helps to think out of the box, and conceptualize ideas around topics like “10 ridiculous mobile apps I would want”, “10 ways an app can solve a problem that I’m facing”, “10 mobile apps that I can reinvent” or “10 mobile apps I would improve”.

How long does it take to become an “idea machine”?

Altucher suggests doing this daily for at least six months.

2. Hone your problem-solving skills

How can app makers go about finding the right idea for their startup?

Daniel Kempe, founder of hand-curated content suggestion platform Quuu elaborates in a Forbes article:

“It’s not about the search for ideas, it’s identifying problems or gaps with existing products or services. Ideas are tough to come by, at least good ones are. But problems, they’re everywhere! Almost every product or service you use on a daily basis was created to solve a problem.”

Here four strategies you can use to hone your problem-solving abilities:

2.1. Review problems you face on a day-to-day basis

The first place to start is by identifying problems that you encounter on a day-to-day basis.

It can be difficult to come up with ideas in a brainstorming session, so start by observing any moments of frustration you have throughout the day — whether it’s an interruption or delay that occurred at work or a problem that crops up in your personal life.

At first glance, these issues may appear to be minute or mundane — but resolving a personal problem has been the launching point for apps like Dropbox and Summly.

The idea for Dropbox arose out of co-founder Drew Houston’s frustration with the absence of a seamless storage solution for his files, while Summly was conceived when founder Nick D’Aloisio found it inefficient to click through Google search results while preparing for his exams.

2.2. Pay attention to everyday conversations

Everyday conversations and seemingly banal complains can become a source of inspiration.

Try carving out a block of time — say five days to a week — where you pay close attention to and note down problems that crop up in conversations all around you. “I wish this could be better”, “I hate this…”, “Why does this keep happening…” are some phrases you’d want to prick your ears up for.

2.3. Tap on social media

Social media platforms are a great way to find out about larger scale problems encountered by individuals and communities all around the world.

There are different ways of conducting a search via social media: you may create hashtags around the problems you’ve picked up on through the above methods, or come up with a list of hashtags around topics or problems that you’re concerned about.

2.4. Go to where your potential users are at

Blog articles, blog comments, forums, discussion boards, Quora — apart from being a useful source of information, these sites are also a great way to interact with potential users or target audience.

Take note of common problems and issues that are being discussed, and don’t hesitate to post comments or start a new thread around any questions you might have — this could spark off conversations that will shed light on problems that you weren’t previously aware of.

3. Keep a close watch on your competitors

A competitive analysis should be carried out at several stages over the lifetime of a mobile app: during the ideation process, before significant changes are made to your app or business strategy, and at regular intervals to keep up with changes in the competitive landscape.

Below, I’ll be focusing on competitive analysis conducted at the ideation stage.

Pay attention to user feedback and comments

User feedback and comments are a treasure trove of information. Start poring through reviews and ratings left by users of your competitors’ apps — from app store reviews to social media comments and forum posts — to obtain a clearer idea of features and strategies that resonate with your potential users.

If you’re in the midst of sounding out your ideas with friends and family or testing your MVP, keep an eye out for remarks like “I’ve tried out the ABC app, but didn’t like a particular feature they had” or “This feature reminds me of XYZ app” — you’ll know that these are competitors to keep track of.

Dig deep into your competitors’ strategies

By delving deep into the strategies implemented by your competitors, you can then break these down into simpler elements, and reverse engineer the processes to replicate their success.

The objective here isn’t to imitate what your competitors are doing, but to combine their strategies with your existing ideas to create concepts and features that work for your app.

Here’s a checklist of questions to help you get started on your research process:

• Which strategies have produced the best results for your competitors?
• What were unsuccessful strategies implemented?
• How can you improve on strategies your competitors implemented?
• How can you adapt these strategies to make it work for your mobile app?
• Don’t forget about indirect competitors

While your indirect competitors may not have launched a mobile app, they are still targeting a similar set of users — so it helps to pay attention to how they’re attracting your potential users with their products or services.

Here are key questions to guide you in your analysis of indirect competitors:

• In what areas are their products or services similar to yours?
• What are successful strategies and ideas that have helped them target and retain their users?
• How can these strategies be improved on?
• Can you adapt these ideas or concepts to make it work for your mobile app?

4. Stay on top of the latest trends

The ever-changing mobile landscape is a challenging space to navigate.

App makers are up against the intense competition — a 2017 Statista study indicated that Android users were able to choose between 2.8 million apps, while the number of apps on the App Store totaled at 2.2 million.

In addition, the emergence of trends like augmented reality, virtual reality and chatbots are revolutionizing the way users engage with mobile apps.

Strategies and features that are effective now may easily be rendered irrelevant in a matter of months. Generating ideas that resonate with today’s users requires a constant pursuit of keeping up with the trends.

Here are a few tools and websites you can use to stay on top of the latest developments:

• Google Trends
• Google Alerts
• App Annie: App market data and insights company producing consumer and competitive information on downloads, revenue, ratings, usage, search terms and more. App Annie’s Insights Blog and webinars are also great resources for app makers.
• Priori Data: App Store intelligence company providing market data and competitive benchmarking information on the global app economy.
• Forrester Research: Market research firm providing advice on existing and potential impacts of technology.
• Trendwatching: Independent trend firm scanning the global market for promising consumer trends and insights.
• Springwise: Provides information on innovation intelligence. Springwise sources for the latest innovation, startup, and business ideas from around the world.
• Trends and mobile apps outside of your industry

Too often, startups and businesses fall into the trap of living within the industry bubble. In adopting a myopic focus on industry trends, benchmarking and best practices, companies eventually wind up providing run-of-the-mill experiences that fail to stand out.

This can be prevented by studying and introducing ideas and concepts from industries, businesses or mobile apps that differ from your own.

Here are key takeaways you can gain from studying mobile apps across different industries:

• Zappos: Zappos is known for delivering stellar customer experiences, and its mobile app is no different. App makers can learn about providing top-notch experiences through studying features like Ask Zappos, a feature that helps users find any product with just a tap of their camera, and Handover, which enables users to shop seamlessly between their Apple devices.
• JetBlue: Pesky push notifications are a bane for smartphone users. Learn from JetBlue’s timely and thoughtful communication, which includes providing flight check-in reminders 24 hours before a flight is scheduled to take off, as well as notifications to let passengers review flight entertainment options in advance.
• Venmo: App makers can learn from the convenience and efficiency that mobile payment apps like Venmo provides — from the way user information is saved for easy access, to how a complex process like sending out money or making purchases can be completed in a few quick taps.

Ten Thousand Followers

Ten Thousand Followers

Hardik Gandhi   January 21, 2018

The amazing story of all you awesome people

There aren’t any good stock photos of “ten thousand”, so this piece will just have lots of kittens

I started writing a blog in May 2016, partly because I kept writing rants on Facebook that apparently were “too good not to be online somewhere”, and partly because I was bored after my Master’s degree and wanted something to do with my Sunday mornings.

Sleeping in, of course, was never an option.

This is Luna. Luna is my 6am alarm clock. Every. Single. Day

18 months later, and I’ve written about 100,000 words, been published in all sorts of places, and am now getting regular offers to pitch to major publications — more on this in the coming months.

And most importantly of all, I got to 10,000 followers. This time last year, it was 100 and about half of them were related to me.

All in all, it’s been a good year.

Pictured: Getting what you always wanted

So what’s in store for the Health Nerd? You’ll be happy to know that this year I’ve applied for a PhD with the University of Wollongong, which is actually super exciting and not scary like it feels to me sometimes. I’m also going to be — hopefully — releasing some episodes of a podcast that I’ve started with a brilliant co-host. The topic will be science in the media and I’m really excited to introduce all of you to my dulcet tones over the airwaves.

I’m so much less awkward than I am in text.

What does all of this activity mean to the blog? Nothing! I’ll still be aiming for my regular one health story a week on Medium, as well as an extra member’s-only article a month for all you subscribers who love that extra content.

Pictured: “Extra content”

To sum up, I’d just like to say thank you to you all. I’d never have made it here without all you brilliant people following me and making this all worthwhile. It was a fantastic 2017, and 2018 shows every sign of being brilliant as well.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store.

The Things Junior UX Designers Should Do More Of (Not Just Design)

The Things Junior UX Designers Should Do More Of (Not Just Design)

Hardik Gandhi   January 17, 2018

As a designer starting out in the beginning of your career, you may not know what to expect during your first job. You could be given lots of work and because you are the new designer on team, you do things without question. You might think you are expected to know everything because nobody said you should seek out the things you need to help you.

Having worked in the design industry almost every summer in college, I’ve learned a thing or two about how a new designer, such as myself, can navigate through challenges and learn in environments based on implied messages of what we should or shouldn’t do. Knowing the basic tools and techniques of good design is essential, but it’s the small details surrounding how we work which can help us progress and open doors. Here are a few tips that growing designers should take into consideration during their first year on the job to accelerate career growth.

Asking for Help Doesn't Make You Stupid

It’s okay to ask for help, but the issue that some designers may allude to when they say asking for help is a big no-no is the phrasing. Instead of directly asking for help, ask for feedback and advice. If you need help with doing research, join a research session. If you need help with moving forward in a project, ask designers to join you in prioritizing ideas. This will provide you with direction. Instead of receiving a hard-cut answer, you receive validation and perspective, things that will help you develop your own point of view. Designers don’t receive answers, they problem solve to get there.

Saying “No” is better than saying “Yes” all the time*

Note the asterisk. You are in control of what you want to do. You can decide when you reply to that e-mail or if you want to go that meeting. We are often given so many things to do that we can’t do all of them, yet we think we have to. Many designers, especially in the beginning of their career, do everything they are told to do, and this distracts them from the work they need to do the most. Decide on what is most important to help get your work done and prioritize.

Don’t say yes for the things that get in the way of producing quality work.

Delegating tasks and prioritizing is hard, but if you can do that, you will get so much done (and more). It’s okay to say no for valid reasons because it tells people that you know what’s important.

Speak up

During a critique, we are excepted to provide feedback for our peers, but not everyone does it because they might be self concious of their thoughts, or they don’t make the effort to help. Don’t be selfish with ideas. Ideas are meant to be expressed and help our fellow designers design for the people. Feedback is a gift. Feedback is what results in more iterations and better experiences.

Take Breaks

I used to work hard constantly, whether it was at home, with friends and family…You name it. But then I realized, without fault, I will be working for the rest of my life and work isn’t ever really “done”. I was taking the time to work on something fleeting, when I could have been spending time with the people I loved and the things I loved to do outside of work. Also, too much work can increase stress which can increase burnout. It makes sense to do as much work as you can to get to a certain job or rank, but that takes time. Just do what you can and relax when you feel overworked or exausted. In the end, health is more important than work because without health, we can’t work.

Be Present

As tempting as it is to work from home, especially for people who have the privilege of doing so all the time, it is crucial to be present. Even if the quality of work has not been affected, as designers, collaboration is such an important aspect of the way we do things. Being present in the office can make all the difference, especially when working with the people on your team. It’s not a team if everyone isn’t present.

If you have any questions about design, message me on LinkedIn and I’ll write about it!

Links to some other cool reads:

• I interviewed at Facebook as a new grad. Here is what I learned about design
• Standing Up as a Design Leader
• Journey Mapping is the Key to Gaining Empathy
• Prepping for Design Interviews (My Microsoft Onsite Experience)
• UX is Grounded in Rationale, not Design
• The Types of Design Research every Designer should know NOW
• When did Design become so Easy?

The big secret about “tech people”, fixing things and how to control your technology

The big secret about “tech people”, fixing things and how to control your technology

Hardik Gandhi   January 15, 2018

Hint: it’s neither hard nor dangerous

In this article, I’d like to talk about the “divide in technology” and how you can become proficient at solving tech problems even if you have never done it before.

The Gap

There is a fundamental divide in how people deal with tech problems. It seems that some people see computers, smartphones and other technical devices as “black boxes”, most of the time doing what they want, but at times showing frustrating errors or just plainly stopping to work.

Others (with a winking eye referred to as “tech people”) see those devices as a system of parts: hardware, software and things that run on the internet. While errors and failures are certainly annoying, they are merely symptoms that some part of the system is malfunctioning. And since it’s technology, the various components can be fixed.

The difference between those groups is that the first group is intimidated by technology — you might hear someone say “Oh, he (the computer) doesn’t like me”, as if it’s a personal thing and the technological system can be blamed. The other group doesn’t put the blame on the system as a whole, vicious entity, but instead treat it as it is: a collection of parts.

It’s no shame to belong to group one, after all, technological education and systems thinking is rarely taught and if you never had someone else introduce you to the topic, you were likely never exposed to the ideas behind it. However, I encourage you to read on and discover it’s quite easy to understand and to switch over to the “tech” side in no time.

Why should you do this? Because it gives you power and control over the things you own. You are absolutely capable of fixing and repairing both software and hardware problems, once you understand the basics. And each time you succeed in fixing something, you will gain confidence and experience. Plus, it’s actually pretty fun.

Everything is just a collection of parts

As mentioned in the intro, every piece of technology is a quite elaborate collection of parts, divided into hardware and software. The hardware is the actual thing that you carry around, most of the times small boards or chips that fulfill a certain function.

Two good things: those components are similar on almost all systems (I’m talking about computers, tablets and smartphones).

They all have a processor unit (doing the computations), a permanent storage (where all your photos are for instance) and a temporary storage (supplying the files that are in use right at the moment to the processor).

Those three are absolutely necessary for the basic functions. Then, of course, you have things that support everything else: batteries, screens, sensors, input devices (keyboards, trackpads), wireless chips and a series of boards connecting everything together.

The second good thing is that you don’t need to understand how each of those components work (or even how the system works at all) and you can still fix the system as a whole.

On top of this, there is software: an operating system and applications running on this system. Again, you don’t need to understand how this all works, just be aware of its existence.

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

It seems like a tired old joke, but it’s quite true. More than half of all errors on almost all systems can be “fixed” by turning off the system and restarting it.

This allows the system to begin with a blank slate, it reloads the software and starts all calculations afresh.

It is truly the one thing that a “tech person” will do first when trying to fix a problem. Switch everything off (completely, ideally also disconnect the power), then back on. You will be surprised how many errors are never showing up again! This technique can be adapted to resetting and reinstalling software, but we’ll get into that in a later article.

Turn it off. Turn it back on. Fix most of your errors.

You can’t really break something

I find that most of the time, people are not trying to fix things because they are afraid to damage those things permanently.

Another good thing (this article is full of positivity): you can’t really break something as long as you don’t physically break part of the system. Keeping your technology dry and reasonably clean is a good way to start.

It’s also quite unlikely that you damage your software beyond repair. Rest assured that there is almost always a way to completely reset everything. Which brings us to the next point and then we will go into the details.

Store your files securely

As mentioned above, your files are stored on the permanent storage (hard drive) of your device. Luckily, in the last decade it has gotten incredibly easy to also store all your files in the “cloud”, meaning a separate computer somewhere on the internet, owned by a company.

The most famous of these services, like Dropbox, iCloud, GoogleDrive and OneDrive are reliable and widely used, while alternative might be suited to special needs.

I won’t go into any detail on how to choose the best service, you should be fine with typing “best cloud storage providers 2018” into Google.

The point is: while I said you can’t break anything on your system, you might lose your files, programs, settings and achievements if you don’t save them on another device first.

Use a cloud storage, external hard drive or another computer to move important documents out of your system for the time of the repairs.

Things change, for better or for worse, it’s never just you

You know the saying: never change a running system. Many software developers don’t seem to heed this, they are constantly updating, improving, iterating and changing.

Most of these changes are benign, while sometimes they break the very thing that you rely on for your work. It is annoying, it costs energy and time.

Yet, we all have to accept it, sort of the price we pay for getting accelerated technological progress.

And despite the myriads of different technological configurations, operating systems, smartphones and programs there are, there is a high chance that someone, somewhere has already had the same problem and found a solution and shared it with the world.

Which brings us to…

The big secret

This is the big one. The secret you have been waiting for. How do “tech people” actually fix things?

The answer, of course, is a simple process.

They google the error and then follow whatever other people have tried.

Yes, that’s all. That is how most of the errors get solved and how most things get repaired and in fact, how most things are learned.

You just google what you are trying to do and then spend some time going through the answers. It might not be the first answer that helps you, but chances are that somewhere in the first five answers, something will.

The art is within the right phrasing of the question. I’ll walk you through an example: recently, my 3D software “Blender” started to display black boxes instead of the usual interface. It was mildly annoying, so I tried to fix it.

Here is how you construct the google query: type the program name first, then add a short and succinct description of what’s wrong. For instance: “blender 3d displaying black user interface”. Here is what Google gives me:

Click on the first answer.

And I simply go to the first answer, which is a site called stackexchange.com. It is a platform/ community where lots of tech questions are answered and it is quite trustworthy. Reading the question that someone else asked, I think that they have the same issue. And behold, below there is an answer.

Turn off nVidia shadowplay, thanks J. Larsen!

I know that shadowplay is a program for my graphics card, so I turned it off.

It fixed the issue, no more black boxes.

If I didn’t know how to turn it off, guess what: I’d google it (“turning off nvidia shadowplay”). There are tutorials for everything online.

This principle works with any error message, too.

Just don’t click it away angrily, look at it, read it and if you don’t understand it, copy the exact words into Google, combined with the software from which it came, for instance “windows 10 error 0x80200056”. It looks like gibberish and I have no clue what it means, but other people do!

Put it into Google, read the first answer (like seriously, read it like a really good recipe) and follow it.

Remember, you are quite unlikely to break anything, so just follow the steps.

And then there is this case:

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wisdom_of_the_ancients.png

Yes, there is a chance that your problem is absolutely rare and unique. It happens to all of us. We live with it. We reinstall the whole system. We buy a new computer. But we can always say that we tried.

I’ll probably go into a little more depth on this next week, but for now, you have a basic understanding of your tech!

The more you fix and try and change, the more confident you will become.

Soon, you will be one of the “tech people”.

Lenovo’s warranty upgrade is a SCAM

Lenovo’s warranty upgrade is a SCAM

Hardik Gandhi   January 14, 2018

I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad with a Next Business Day Response warranty upgrade. The laptop I received was faulty. After 100 days, 51 mails and 27 calls, I still don’t have a working laptop. This is a story of unbelievable disorganization, amateur support and endless customer struggle with the largest PC maker in the world.

---

I am a PhD student at Imperial College London, and my department bought me a Thinkpad T470 earlier in 2017. When I first powered it on, the monitor was not working. Nothing. Black. I was a bit disappointed to see that my new business laptop had not even been tested before being delivered, but I was not too worried: the laptop was bought together with a On-Site service-Next Business Day Response warranty upgrade, meaning that Lenovo is supposed to come and fix any problem within one business day.

So on the 2nd of October I sent a service request. I had no idea of what was awaiting me.

DAY 1. The day after, Lenovo informs me that

the part required to repair your product is currently unavailable

and that

typically we are able to reschedule within 5 working days.

Ok, I paid for a warranty upgrade and they are not delivering what I paid for. But fine, it’s only 5 days after all. No? No.

After the 5 days, the display has not yet arrived. So I call and send emails to Lenovo, but nobody knows where is my display. Ok, no problem: you can simply send me a new laptop. You know, one of those things you sell in thousands of units every day? Maybe you could save one for me and take back your faulty one which was never able to boot? No way. I have to wait for the display. One more week.

Ok, one more.

You know what? No rush. Seven more days.

Oh, you actually need your business-oriented laptop for work? Ok, fine, we’ll come and fix it. But give us three more days, we have to buy costumes for Halloween.

DAY 29. The technician finally comes to change my display. And here starts one of the funny parts of the story. While the guy is replacing the display, I notice that he’s installing a glossy display instead of a matte one (like the original one). WHAT THE FUCK. Now, if you are a bit into computers and technology forums you know how glossy displays can be actual deal-breaker for some people (including me). And this guy was installing one without even asking nor noticing! Yes, it took one month to send the fucking wrong display. So I make him notice and…long story short: Lenovo has to send a new display. But at least, for sure, this time it will arrive in one business day! Right? My ass.

DAY 31.

I regretfully inform you that the part required for the repair of your product is currently unavailable. It should not take longer than 5 business days until our stocks are replenished.

You gotta be fucking kidding me. I live in London and I own one of the most popular business laptops produced in 2017. Are you seriously telling me that in ONE MONTH you could deliver only ONE display to the fucking biggest city of EU? Do you actually deliver a SINGLE display FROM CHINA every time someone needs a replacement? If so, how can you even expect to be able to deliver the next-business-day warranty you charge 150 bucks for? For me this has a clear name: SCAM.

Ok, ok. But at least it’s only 5 days. No? No:

ETA updated 5 times

The ETA keeps being postponed. In the meantime I call Lenovo about 6 times, but nobody seems to be able to do anything, nor let me talk to someone with higher decision-making power. For example, the decision to simply send me a fucking new laptop, as I’ve been requesting for more than a month. Nothing to do, Lenovo’s support is a stonewall. Same story for emails (many emails).

DAY 37. A guy from Lenovo Complaint Management contacts me. His name is Kim. Of course Kim doesn’t help at all, he just tells me what the ETA is, something I could easily lookup myself.

DAY 51. We are 6 days past the last ETA. I make calls and send emails. Nobody has a fucking clue where the display is and when it will be delivered. But still they don’t want to give me a new laptop.

DAY 56. Kim hasn’t answered my emails for one week. Once I tell him that I will move the discussion to public social networks, he immediately replies and offers me a laptop replacement. About fucking time! Finally I will have a working laptop within one business day!

…

Did you actually believe that?

The turn-around-time for the delivery is up to 4 weeks. We will keep you updated on the progress.

OMFG how the fuck can they be so slow at EVERYTHING? Ok fine, it doesn’t matter. I can wait. Just send me the fucking laptop and let’s forget this whole mess.

Of course I have to send them the faulty laptop before they ship the new one. So I give them the address, and in a few days a courier comes to pick up the laptop (DAY 58).

DAY 71. The new laptop has been dispatched! It’s still in China, but China is not too far off nowadays, right?

DAY 72. Ok, apparently they don’t have planes in China. The laptop needs to go to South Korea first. Oh, wait. No planes in South Korea either. Kazakhstan is the next stop.

DAY 73. OMG what is that? My laptop is already in Germany! It’s actually in my same continent now! I’m so excited!

DAY 74. UK! Go go go! It’s Friday though, it won’t arrive in time for the weekend :( Ok whatever, I will spend the weekend doing a backup of my old laptop.

DAY 77. LONDON! YES! This time it feels so real! I just need to sit and wait for my laptop to be delivered today. Fuck yeah!

Wait. WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT???

What the fuck does that mean? They’ve already used the address to come and pick up the old laptop. What’s the problem?

I call UPS. They tell me that the address given by Lenovo is completely fucked up. This is how it looks:

Andrea Gadotti, Andrea Gadotti, London, SW7

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK THEY COULDN’T EVEN GIVE THEM THE COMPLETE POSTCODE.

Ok, relax. I can simply give UPS the correct address, no? No. They have an agreement with Lenovo by which nobody but Lenovo can change the address, nor go and pick up the package at the UPS center. At this point I seriously stopped and checked if I was dreaming. Once I verified I was not, I started again with my favorite activity: making calls and sending emails to Lenovo.

Of course nobody at Lenovo can do shit, because everything is now managed by my old friend Kim. Too bad Kim doesn’t answer my email.

DAY 78. I send Kim another email. This is what I get:

Christmas holidays! Yeeeaaaahhhh. 3 fucking weeks of Christmas holidays. Note to self: after the PhD look for a job at Lenovo.

DAY 79. I send an email to Alexandros, as suggested. No answers. I slowly start to feel my laptop getting farther from me.

DAY 86. I’ve sent like 4 mails to Alexandros and Kim, apparently they are both too busy with Christmas to answer.

DAY 87. My laptop left London. Of course. It’s going to Netherlands. New emails to Kim and Alexandros. No answers.

DAY 93. The laptop has been delivered to Lenovo’s HQ in the Netherlands. Happy new year btw!

fuck

DAY 94. New emails to Kim and Alexandros. No answers. They really don’t like me :(

DAY 99. It’s January 9! You know what’s special about January 9? It’s the day Kim’s supposed to be back to work after his 3-week holidays. Great! I’m sure now he will fix everything and I will receive my laptop in one (+99) business day(s)! Right?

Mail from Jan 9

Fair enough. I don’t have a laptop, but at least I have a warranty on it. How could I possibly complain?

TO BE CONTINUED

UPDATE: After reading the comments I feel the need to point something out. I’m a long-time Thinkpad user: this laptop will be (hopefully soon) my fourth Thinkpad. I love Thinkpads and I believe that laptops from series T and X are the best portable PCs one can buy, especially if one runs Linux. For this reason, I’ve always recommended them to everyone who asked me for advice on which laptop to buy (which is a lot of people). And, in turn, this is the reason why I’m so sad that this is happening. After this bad experience I still believe Thinkpads are amazing, but it’s now clear to me that Lenovo’s customer support is simply awful. If you’re thinking about buying a Thinkpad, you should keep that in mind.

Learn mobile app development with these 10 online courses

Learn mobile app development with these 10 online courses

Hardik Gandhi   January 12, 2018

Top 10 online courses to help your learn mobile app development plus some advice from the experts on why app prototyping makes all the difference!

Thinking about becoming a Mobile App Developer? You’re in luck! There’s never been a better time to learn mobile app development. Take a look:

• The market for apps is soaring. Apple’s App Store and Google Play global downloads reached nearly 26 billion and global mobile app revenue was estimated at $77 billion in 2017.
• App Developers are some of the hottest prospects on the current job scene, with the average Senior Mobile App Developer in the US on $80,013/year.
• Looking ahead, the app business is expected to do even better, with global mobile app revenue forecast for 2020 at $189 billion.

For budding developers, it’s time to hop aboard the gravy train. But what’s the first step in learning mobile app development? What courses should you sign up for? Should you teach yourself app development? We’ve got you covered.

And yes, the first step is learning how to prototype a mobile app. Learn why here — plus get our top 10 online courses on mobile app development to get you started right away, no matter where you are!

10 free and paid online courses to help you learn mobile app development

Here are our top 10 online courses to help you learn mobile app development:

1 — Android Development Tips Weekly series on Lynda

Teach yourself app development with this series of Android development tips by David Gassner.

Each week, David shares techniques to help you speed up your coding, improve app functionality or make your apps more reliable and refined.

The tutorials cover developing the app’s user interface, backend processing and open source libraries, to get your coding knowledge off the ground even quicker.

• Level: Beginner — Intermediate
• Commitment: approximately 3h per video
• Price-point: 30-day free trial, from $19.99 thereafter

2 — Mobile App Development for Beginners on Udemy

Dee Aliyu Odumosu’s mobile app development course is ideal if you’re looking to break into iOS.

Learn how to create and customize 10+ iPhone apps (using Swift 3 and Xcode 8) with easy step-by-step instructions. The course begins with implementation of basic elements — UILabel, UIButton, UITextField etc. — Auto Layout and multiple-sized icons, with more advanced classes covering memory issues, storyboarding and displaying rich local notifications.

Note that this course requires you to own and already be familiar with Mac.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: approximately 33 hours
• Price-point: $10.99 (New Year discount, was $50.00)

3 — iOS App Development with Swift Specialization on Coursera

This is the ultimate Swift for iOS development course, brought to you by Parham Aarabi and the University of Toronto.

Using XCode, Parham will teach you how to design elegant interactions and create fully functioning iOS apps, such as the photo editing app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The course also includes best practices to help you become proficient in functional Swift concepts.

Note that this course requires you to own and already be familiar with Mac.

• Level: Intermediate (some previous experience required)
• Commitment: 6 weeks
• Price-point: 7-day free trial, $49 per month thereafter

4 — Introduction to Mobile Application Development using Android on edX

Learn mobile app development and the basics of Android Studio in Jogesh K Muppala’s introduction to the Android platform.

In this 5-week course, you’ll explore the basics of Android application components as well as Activities and their lifecycle, some UI design principles, Multimedia, 2D graphics and networking support for Android.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 6 weeks
• Price-point: free

5 — Full Stack Web and Multiplatform Mobile App Development Specialization on Coursera

If you’re learning mobile application development for Android and found the above course useful, try this course out next.

Here you’ll have the chance to build complete web and hybrid mobile solutions, as well as master front-end web, hybrid mobile app and server-side development.

• Level: Intermediate (some previous experience required)
• Commitment: approximately 20 weeks
• Price-point: 7-day free trial, $39 per month thereafter

6 — iOS 9 and Swift 2: From Beginner to Paid Professional on Skillshare

Mark Price’s online course for iOS Swift is everything you need to know about iOS 9 development.

This is another great set of classes for novice iOS coders. Build 15+ apps for iOS 9, learn swift 2.0 and publish apps to the App Store. Warmups, class projects and exercises will help you keep on top of the workload.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: approximately 37 hours
• Price-point: from $15 a month

7 — The iOS Development Course That Gets You Hired on Career Foundry

Jeffrey Camealy presents the iOS Development course to get your hired.

1-on-1 mentorship from industry experts and real-world projects complement a set of 6 structured modules. The course covers the very basic principles of iOS development and takes you right to the point of submitting an app to the App Store.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 6 months
• Price-point: $4000 (payment plans available)

8 — Get Started With React Native on TutsPlus

Markus Mühlberger’s course for React Native is perfect for anyone who wants to code for multiple mobile platforms.

Learn how to create and customize UI elements, build user interaction, and integrate third-party components into apps for both iOS and Android. Upon completion, you’ll be able to write mobile apps in React Native.

• Level: Intermediate
• Commitment: 1.2 hours
• Price-point: $29 a month

9 — Build a Simple Android App with Java on Treehouse

Ben Deitch’s course will help you build simple mobile apps for Android with Java, without any prior knowledge.

Best-suited to budding Android developers, this course will explore programming in Android and some very basic concepts of the Android SDK. By the end of the course, you’ll have a working knowledge of how a basic app works.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 1.5 hours
• Price-point: from $25 a month

10 — Try iOS on Code School

Gregg Pollack’s tutorials on iOS app development from the ground up and requires only basic coding experience.

Write your first iPhone app code and learn about different UI elements, such as buttons, labels, tabs and images. Upon completion, you’ll be able to connect to the internet to fetch data, build out table views and navigate between different areas of your app.

• Level: Beginner
• Commitment: 6–8 hours
• Price-point: $29 a month

It’s an exciting time for mobile app developers. And as you can see, there are plenty of resources out there to help get your career off the ground. But don’t forget to look at the big picture.

Prototyping is an integral part of the mobile app life cycle. Download Justinmind now and explore a prototyping tool that’s made with the entire product team in mind.