How to Lead High-Impact, Cross-Functional Projects

How to Lead High-Impact, Cross-Functional Projects

Hardik Gandhi   January 11, 2018

Even When You’re Not the Boss

This past summer I managed the largest acquisition campaign in my company’s history. I work at HubSpot, a marketing software company that popularized lead-gen campaigns and the whole idea of “inbound marketing,” so this is no small feat (we’ve run massive campaigns over the years).

The campaign, Four Days of Facebook, drove 10x the number of average leads of a typical acquisition campaign and 6x the lifetime value of projected customers.

But I didn’t do it alone. This campaign involved 11 teams and 33 people who directly contributed to the work.

Cross-functional campaigns like this can be big, complicated, and challenging which is why they so often take a boss or recognized leader to make them happen. So I wanted to share my experience as a “non-boss.” I hope it encourages other individual contributors out there to get their co-workers in other departments excited about working on high-impact, cross-functional projects.

Pre-planning: create alignment

You won’t have all the answers on day one, but make sure every conversation you’re having at this stage focuses on one thing: impact. You’ll be asking a lot of people to work hard on something outside of their normal day-to-day, make it clear that your asks will translate into business results.

• Meet with senior leaders of each team before you ask for their employees commitment on helping. Again, make it clear that you won’t be wasting anyone’s time, you’re out to generate big results.
• Have a kickoff meeting with the team who will be responsible for delivering the work. At a high-level, you want to let everyone know that you have senior leadership buy-in and the project will be worth their time. On a more tactical level, you’ll also want to get people up-to-speed on the tools you’ll be using to manage the project.
• Go the extra mile to develop a team culture for your team. You know how developers name their projects crazy-sounding names? It’s surprisingly effective! Give your temporary team a name that makes people feel like they’re a part of something, set up an email alias, and create a Slack channel. Get people excited!

Throughout the pre-planning stage, keep your vision front and center. For Four Days of Facebook we were partnering with Facebook, a fact I repeated constantly.

If people are excited and engaged with your vision, they’ll put up with the inevitable bumps as you achieve lift-off.

During: maintain momentum

The Progress Principle is the idea that humans love the satisfaction of wins, even if they’re small. It’s your best friend as you seek to keep multiple teams and dozens of people aligned and moving in the right direction–constantly show (and celebrate) forward progress.

• Display it: I put together a registration goal waterfall chart that was updated everyday to show progress. It’s motivating to close-in on and cross that goal line.
• Never shut up about it: I linked to information about this campaign in my email signature, Slack rooms, wherever I had the attention of my co-workers. And that information was short, sweet, and up-to-date.
• Be a good partner: You’re not technically the manager of the people on a cross-functional team, but you should implement some management best practices: give people autonomy, figure out how they like to work and what kind of support they need from you.
• Ask for feedback: I asked questions constantly– Is this system or process working for you? Can I set up these reports in an easier way? At one point during this campaign I asked the senior manager of a few folks working on the project if she had thoughts on how I could run it better, she told me she would love to see weekly updates sent to her and other senior managers. I was avoiding this as I didn’t want to clutter inboxes, but it ended up being one of my best tools for building internal momentum around the campaign.

Don’t overlook the fundamentals of good project management. A framework like DARCI makes roles & responsibilities super easy so you the project lead can just say, “This meeting is for people who are Responsible and Accountable only, we’ll be covering deadlines for next week”, or “This meeting is for people that need to be Informed, it’ll be a milestone check-in.”

Find a project management framework, and stick to it.

Wrapping up: close-the-loop

I run 4–5 acquisition campaigns at HubSpot every quarter and running a campaign of this size and impact was a complete rush and I can’t wait to do it again. But before jumping into the next big project, it’s important to do a clean wrap-up, I want people to be excited to work with me and my team again in the future.

• Say thank you: Do it publicly via a company announcement or email, and privately. I wrote handwritten notes to every person who contributed to this campaign.
• Share results soon: Share the quantitative results, but don’t miss Twitter comments from attendees, feedback from partners, or the accolades of your co-workers. This is your chance to make it clear that you promised impact and delivered it.
• Look for improvement opportunities: Because no matter how successful your campaign was, there are opportunities to do better — Were any deadlines missed? Why? Did any team members not work well together? Can this be addressed?

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut of executing one marketing campaign after the next, and it’s scary to think about leading a big cross-functional project that could potentially fail publicly.

But so often the answer to higher impact is better collaboration. Learning how to lead across teams 10x’ed the impact I was having at my company, I hope it does the same for you.

The Video Game Experience

The Video Game Experience

Hardik Gandhi   January 09, 2018

 

Table of Contents:

1. Top Three & Honourable Mentions
2. First Person & Third Person
3. Roleplaying & Strategy and Tactics
4. Independent & Virtual Reality

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Independent

Best: Rumu

Rumu is a very unique game, and of all the games on this list, I think it’s the one that has the most unique UI. This is most likely due to the fact that Rumu has pioneered the ‘Sentient Vaccuum Cleaner’ genre, and there’s simply no game similar enough to pull inspiration from. Because of this, I’ll briefly summarise the elements I liked the most, so you have an idea of what I’m talking about.

It’s fitting, then, that Rumu’s UI pulls from a number of different genres and also remains quite unique. Rumu (The titular vacuum cleaner himself) has a radial menu to manage it’s quest log and inventory. That’s about where the traditional UI ends, and you start to see some bespoke elements.

Tutorial tips for controls appear outside the environments. This is a nice detail, as it serves not only to communicate the key bind but also as a hint of what you’re supposed to do in any given space.

A similar method is used for doorways or vent spaces — each is earmarked with text or iconography to indicate whether the player can pass through. The difference is actually really important, because it serves to split how the player treats information throughout the game — if the information is inside the room, it’s something to be learned. If it exists outside of the game space, it’s something that little Rumu already knows.

There’s a ‘Datavision’ function that allows Rumu to see how the various smart devices and intractable objects connect. It’s a great way to declutter the environments when the player is being task oriented, and it also often hides hidden easter eggs or gadgets.

One of the smartest UX features of Rumu is how it uses it’s palette and art style to generate emotion. A clean, white kitchen feels calm and simple, while crawling through vents on a sinister dark background gives the game a sense of urgency and danger.

Rumu is beautiful, functional, unique, and incredibly evocative. It’s UX blends perfectly with the narrative of the game, and aids in the storytelling.

Conclusion:
Independent developers are constantly coming up with new, interesting ways to interact with their games. There’s even a few on this list: Hand of Fate 2 and Tooth of Tail both innovate in a well-trodden genre.

Rumu’s a little different, because the robot vacuum cleaner genre isn’t quite as mature as, say, first person shooters. Despite this, the interactions in Rumu feel natural; the spacial and diagetic elements are what I’d expect a robo-vacuum to see in the world, and the meta UI tips help move the player along without breaking the (sometimes literal) fourth wall.

I look forward to seeing the robot vacuum cleaner genre evolve.

Worst: Stationeers

Picking this game sparked an internal debate in my mind over having a ‘Worst’ section at all, but in the end I decided it’s always better to get your feelings out than internalise them.

I really enjoyed Stationeers; I played almost six hours straight in my first run through. It’s an incredibly complex space space station construction game. Most of it’s UI is inoffensive: a simple HUD with your vitals and atmosphere stats, and a slot-based inventory system.

It all falls apart for me in the item management. Rather than go into specifics, I’ll give you an example: I need to take the empty battery out of my welding torch, and replace it with a full one.

I have to press 5 to open my tool belt, use the scroll wheel to highlight the torch, press F to put it in my hand, press R to open the torch’s inventory, press E to change hands, press F to move the batter into my free hand.

Now I press 2 to open my suit inventory, scroll wheel to an empty slot, press F to place the flat batter in there. Scroll wheel to the full battery, press F to place it in my off hand. Press E to change hands. Press R to open the torch inventory. Press E to change hands. Press F to place the battery in.

That’s…15 key presses. I can see what they were going for with this system, but there’s got to be a better way.

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Virtual Reality

Best: Lone Echo

If UX as a practice is still in it’s infancy, UX for VR is a single-celled organism attempting mitosis for the first time. Nobody really has any idea what’s going to work and what’s not going to work, and so many games have great executions with a poor UX.

Lone Echo feels like someone looking at what VR will be doing five years from now, and dragged it screaming back into 2017. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Lone Echo’s UX will help define the future of virtual and augmented reality interfaces.

There’s no HUD in Lone Echo, instead opting to have your UI displayed from various arm-mounted gadgetry. Jack, the player character, has a number of controls and panels along his suit, each of which the player can interact with to reveal various elements interfaces.

This actually annoyed me at first — I wasn’t sure why a robot need any sort of interface at all. However, the interactions available are just so neat and genuinely enjoyable, it becomes a very small nitpick. You will also witness other characters in the game use the same interface, which gives some internal consistency to the game.

Talking to someone, for example, is a matter of simply looking at them and tapping a button the controller. This spawns a list of dialogue options that you select with your finger. It’s a simple thing, but being able to quickly interact with the object your looking at feels great.

Any panels you summon are intractable with your hand. You can scroll and tap like you would on an iPad. It feels completely natural to work with, and there were very few times after the opening minutes where I had trouble with this interaction style.

Similarly, Jack’s wrist holds a number of functions and features that are activated using your opposite hand. Slide across your forearm to open your objectives. Tap the top of your wrist for your scanner, or the side of your wrist for your welder. The interactions are so second-nature after having used them a few times that I found myself not even looking at my hands as I did these simple tasks.

Most of what you see in Lone Echo comes from somewhere. The locomotion, the dialogues, the tool interactions, are all borrowed from games that have come before it. Lone Echo proves that these interactions are unequivocally the right way to do them, and if done right, can be so immersive and intuitive that the player doesn’t have to remember them, they just become the way things are done.

Just like the brilliant writing and slick graphics, Lone Echo’s UX is the reason it’s such a successful game. It keeps the player completely immersed in everything they’re doing, no matter how complex the task. At it’s best, the interactions in Lone Echo are actually fun to use. Menus that are fun! If that’s not a revolution, I don’t know what is.

Conclusion:
The most immersive experience I’ve ever had in a video game. Lone Echo bends over backwards to put you in the moment with objects that behave like the user expects they should, and an environment that is consistently interactive.

Lone Echo isn’t held back by trying to fit it’s UI into it’s narrative — it’s built it’s entire user experience around the narrative, instead. Lone Echo sets the standard for VR UX to come.

Worst: None

It’s a cop out, I know. Truth be told, I haven’t played a VR game that released in 2017 that had any truly awful UX. There’s plenty of games that make some missteps, or the occasional obvious error, but this is going to happen with a still-growing genre like virtual reality. For now, VR gets a pass.

If you got this far, thanks for reading! Hopefully you found something interesting in my choices. Please feel free to comment with your opinions, especially if there’s something great that I missed.

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Who owns the internet?

Who owns the internet?

Hardik Gandhi   January 09, 2018

Six perspectives on net neutrality

This week, the Federal Communications Commission will vote on the future of net neutrality. Whether you’ve been following the political back and forth, skimming the headlines, or struggling to decode acronyms, the decision will have an impact on what we can do online (and who can afford to do it). Because the internet has effectively been free and open since the day it was born, it’s easy to lose sight of the impact this vote will have.

The reality is, the internet is a fragile thing. Open, crazy, weird spaces where people swap stories and secrets, create rad digital art projects, type furiously and freely with people seven time zones away — these spaces are rare. People build them, people sustain them, and now, people are trying to restrict them. If this week’s vote passes — which is looking increasingly likely — the internet’s gatekeepers will have more control over their gates than ever before.

Because we live and breathe the internet, laugh and cry on the internet, connect with people who’ve tangibly changed our lives on the internet, we decided to gather some perspectives on this moment in time. Why it matters, how we got here, and what the future may hold. Here are some of the most insightful essays we’ve found on Medium to help us make sense of the fight to keep the net wild and free.

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In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. Now, he’s defending it. “I want an internet where consumers decide what succeeds online, and where ISPs focus on providing the best connectivity,” Berners-Lee emphasizes. Content and connectivity are two distinct markets, and they must remain separate. Conflating them risks blocking innovation, free expression, and the kind of creativity that can only thrive online.

What’s happening now is not just about net neutrality, law professor Lawrence Lessig argues, but about the foundations of our democracy. Tracing the history of the concept from its origins in the aughts (one of his students, Tim Wu, coined the term “net neutrality”), Lessig sees the rollback of Obama-era regulations as a symptom of a larger issue: a democracy that doesn’t serve its people.

Through statistical analysis and natural language processing, data scientist Jeff Kao shows that millions of pro-repeal comments submitted to the FCC were faked. Organic public comments, according to Kao’s analysis, overwhelmingly supported preserving existing regulations. The report calls into question the legitimacy of the FCC’s comment process, and the basis of chairman Pai’s intention to roll back regulations.

In part one of a five-part series on net neutrality, computer scientist Tyler Elliot Bettilyon takes us back to FDR’s New Deal. Piecing together the history of “common carrier” laws — those that govern everything from shipping to telephone lines — Bettilyon contextualizes today’s fight for a free and open internet.

Social psychologist E Price interrogates the idea that the internet we’ve grown to love is really as “free and open” as we’d like to think. “Internet activity is already deeply centralized,” Erika writes, and major social media sites are today’s answer to the Big Three TV networks of a few decades ago. The internet is closer to cable than we think, and it’s (probably) about to get even closer.

Why should the internet be a public utility? Economist umair haque debunks the “competition will lower prices” argument against internet regulation, and makes a compelling case for why going online, “just like water, energy, and sanitation,” should be a basic right: “It dramatically elevates our quality of life, best and truest when we all have free and equal access to it.”

Visit battleforthenet to write or call your congressperson in advance of the vote. You can also text a few words of your choice to Resistbot.

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What we learned about productivity from analyzing 225 million hours of working time in 2017

What we learned about productivity from analyzing 225 million hours of working time in 2017

Hardik Gandhi   January 06, 2018

This post was originally published on the RescueTime blog. Check us out for more like it.

When exactly are we the most productive?

Thinking back on your last year, you probably have no idea. Days blend together. Months fly by. And another year turns over without any real understanding of how we actually spent our time.

Our mission at RescueTime has always been to help you do more meaningful work. And this starts with understanding how you spend your days, when you’re most productive, and what’s getting in your way.

In 2017, we logged over 225 million hours of digital time from hundreds of thousands of RescueTime users around the world.

By studying the anonymized data of how people spent their time on their computers and phones over the past 12 months, we’ve pinpointed exactly what days and times we do the most productive work, how often we’re getting distracted by emails or social media, and how much time a week we actually have to do meaningful work.

Key Takeaways:

What was the most (and least) productive day of 2017?

Simply put, our data shows that people were the most productive on November 14th. In fact, that entire week ranked as the most productive of the year.

Which makes sense. With American Thanksgiving the next week and the mad holiday rush shortly after, mid-November is a great time for people to cram in a few extra work hours and get caught up before gorging on Turkey dinner.

On the other side of the spectrum, we didn’t get a good start to the year. January 6th — the first Friday of the year — was the least productive day of 2017.

Now, what do we mean when we talk about the “most” or “least” productive days?

RescueTime is a tool that tracks how you spend your time on your computer and phone and let’s you categorize activities on a scale from very distracting to very productive. So for example, if you’re a writer, time spent in Microsoft Word or Google Docs is categorized as very productive while social media is very distracting.

From that data, we calculate your productivity pulse — a score out of 100 for how much of your time you spent on activities that you deem productive.

On November 14th, the average productivity pulse across all RescueTime users was a not-so-shabby 60.

How much of our day is spent working on a digital device?

One of the biggest mistakes so many of us make when planning out our days is to assume we have 8+ hours to do productive work. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

What we found is that, on average, we only spend 5 hours a day working on a digital device.

And with an average productivity pulse of 53% for the year, that means we only have 12.5 hours a week to do productive work.

What does the average “productive day” look like?

Understanding our overall productivity is a fun exercise, but our data lets us go even deeper.

Looking at the workday (from 8am–6pm, Monday to Friday), how are we spending our time? When do we do our best work? Do different tasks normally get done at different times?

Here’s what we found out:

Our most productive work happens on Wednesdays at 3pm

Our data showed that we do our most productive work (represented by the light blue blocks) between 10 and noon and then again from 2–5pm each day. However, breaking it down to the hour, we do our most productive work on Wednesdays at 3pm.

Light blue represents our most productive work

Email rules our mornings, but never really leaves us alone

Our days start with email, with Monday morning at 9am being the clear winner for most time spent on email during the week.

Light blue represents our busiest time for emails

Software developers don’t hit peak productivity until 2pm each day

What about how specific digital workers spend their days?

Looking at the time spent in software development tools, our data paints a picture of a workday that doesn’t get going until the late morning and peaks between 2–6pm daily.

Light blue represents when we’re using software development tools

While writers are more likely to be early birds

For those who spend their time writing, it’s a different story.

Writing apps were used more evenly throughout each day with the most productive writing time happening on Tuesdays at 10am.

Light blue represents when we’re using writing tools

What were the biggest digital distractions of 2017?

It’s great to pat ourselves on the back about how productive we were in 2017. But we live in a distracted world and one of our greatest challenges is to stay focused and on task.

Here’s what our research discovered about the biggest time wasters of last year:

On an average day we use 56 different apps and websites

Depending on what you do, this number might not seem that bad. However, when we look at how we use those different apps and websites, things get a bit hairier.

When it comes to switching between different apps and websites (i.e. multitasking), we jump from one task to another nearly 300 times per day and switch between documents and pages within a site 1,300 times per day.

For Slack users, 8.8% of our day is spent in the app

There’s been a lot of talk about how much email and communication eats into our days. But what do the numbers look like?

What we found is that for people who use Slack as their work communication tool, they spend almost 10% of their workday in the app (8.8% to be exact).

We check email or IM 40 times every day

What’s more telling is how often we check our communication tools, whether email or instant messengers like Slack or HipChat.

On average, we check our communication apps 40 times a day, or once every 7.5 minutes during our 5 hours of daily digital work time.

Almost 7% of every workday is spent on social media

I’m sure most of us try not to spend time on social media while at work. But our data showed that almost 7% of every workday was spent on social media.

It’s not only time spent that’s the issue, however. On average, we check in on social media sites 14 times per workday, or nearly 3 times an hour during our 5-hour digital day.

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So, what does all this tell us about how we spend our days?

Well, first off, we need to remember that averages shouldn’t be treated as universal truths. Everyone works differently. But having a high-level look at productivity and the things that get in its way is a powerful tool in improving how you work.

The biggest piece of advice we can pull from all this data is to be aware of the limited time you have each day for meaningful work, and spend it wisely.

Our days are filled with distractions, and it’s up to us to protect what time we have.

I Was Supposed to be an Architect

I Was Supposed to be an Architect

Hardik Gandhi   January 04, 2018

I’m leading a VR development studio, but the truth is I’ve been navigating a series of epic career learning curves that have taken me far outside of my comfort zone, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mainstreet, Mall or Modem

On my quest to start sharing more about our process and lessons learned on the virtual frontier, I thought I’d start with a bit of background on how I arrived here in the first place.

I studied and practiced architecture, but I’ve been fascinated with virtual technologies as far back as I can remember. In fact, my architectural thesis project in grad school (image above) focused on how VR and digital technologies would someday revolutionize architecture — specifically retail architecture. This was 17 years ago, when VR was very expensive, and largely inaccessible, but the brilliant pioneers at work innovating in this field were demonstrating the massive potential. It was only a matter of time before VR would find a way to mainstream.

Like so many other physical manifestations, from music to books and beyond, I believe buildings are subject to a similar digital transcendence. It’s already happening in a pretty big way, and this is just the beginning of a major architectural transformation that might take another decade or two to fully surface, but I digress… I’m saving this interest for a future pivot, and almost certainly another epic learning curve to go with it.

I tried using Everquest to visualize architecture.

I had a level 47 Dark Elf Shadow Knight in Everquest, but spent most of my time wandering around, exploring the environments. What I really wanted to do was import my own architectural models to explore them inside the game.

If they could have such elaborate dungeons and forts to explore in Everquest, with people from all around the world working together in the game virtually, why couldn’t the same technology also be used to visualize a new construction project, with the architect, building owner, and construction team exploring or collaborating on the design together?

This quest to visualize architecture in a real-time world became a ‘first principle’ in my career path that I’ve been chasing ever since.

I met my amazing and tremendously patient wife, Kandy, in grad school, and after studying architecture together in Europe and graduating, we practiced architecture for some time before starting our own firm, Crescendo Design, focused on eco-friendly, sustainable design principles.

Then one day in 2006, I read an article in Wired about Second Life — a massively multi-player world where users could create their own content. Within an hour, I was creating a virtual replica of a design we had on the boards at the time. I had to use the in-world ‘prims’ to build it, but I managed.

I was working in a public sandbox at the time, and when I had the design mostly finished, I invited the client in to explore it. They had 2 young kids, who were getting a huge kick out of this watching over their parent’s shoulders as they walked through what could soon be their new home.

The Naked Lady, the Sheriff Bunny, and Epic Learning Curve #1.

We walked in the front door, when suddenly a naked woman showed up and started blocking the doorways. I reported her to the ‘Linden’ management, and a little white bunny with a big gold sheriff’s badge showed up and kicked her out. “Anything else I can help with?” Poof.. the bunny vanished and we continued our tour. That’s when I realized I needed my own virtual island (and what an odd place Second Life was).

But then something amazing happened that literally changed my career path, again.

I left one of my houses in that public sandbox overnight. When I woke up in the morning and logged in, someone had duplicated the house to create an entire neighborhood — and they were still there working on it.

Architectural Collaboration on Virtual Steroids

I walked my avatar, Keystone Bouchard, into one of the houses and found a group of people speaking a foreign language (I think it was Dutch?) designing the kitchen. They had the entire house decorated beautifully.

One of the other houses had been modified by a guy from Germany who thought the house needed a bigger living room. He was still working on it when I arrived, and while he wasn’t trained in architecture, he talked very intelligently about his design thinking and how he resolved the new roof lines.

I was completely blown away. This was architectural collaboration on virtual steroids, and opened the door to another of the ‘first principle’ vision quests I’m still chasing. Multi-player architectural collaboration in a real-time virtual world is powerful stuff.

Steve Nelson, Jon Brouchoud, and Carl Bass delivering Keynote at Autodesk University 2006

One day Steve Nelson’s avatar, Kiwini Oe, visited my Architecture Island in Second Life and offered me a dream job designing virtual content at his agency, Clear Ink, in Berkeley, California. Kandy and I decided to relocate there from Wisconsin, where I enjoyed the opportunity to build virtual projects for Autodesk, the U.S. House of Representatives, Sun Microsystems and lots of other virtual installations. I consider that time to be one of the most exciting in my career, and it opened my eyes to the potential for enterprise applications for virtual worlds.

Wikitecture

I started holding architectural collaboration experiments on Architecture Island. We called it ‘Wikitecture.’ My good friend, Ryan Schultz, from architecture school suggested we organize the design process into a branching ‘tree’ to help us collaborate more effectively.

Studio Wikitecture was born, and we went on to develop the ‘Wiki Tree’ and one of our projects won the Founder’s Award and third place overall from over 500 entries worldwide in an international architecture competition to design a health clinic in Nyany, Nepal.

These were exciting times, but we were constantly faced with the challenge that we weren’t Second Life’s target audience. This was a consumer-oriented platform, and Linden Lab was resolutely and justifiably focused on growing their virtual land sales and in-world economy, not building niche-market tools to help architects collaborate. I don’t blame them — more than 10 years after it launched, it still has a larger in-world economy of transactions of real money than some small countries.

We witnessed something truly extraordinary there — something I haven’t seen or felt since. Suffice it to say, almost everything I’ve done in the years since have been toward my ultimate goal of someday, some way, somehow, instigating the conditions that gave rise to such incredible possibilities. We were onto something big.

Top 3 Mobile Technology Trend, You Can’t Miss In 2018.

Top 3 Mobile Technology Trend, You Can’t Miss In 2018.

Hardik Gandhi   January 04, 2018

Credit: BOD

Before I kick-start this article, please allow me to wish

“ A Very Very Very… Happy New Year 2018” To all you lovely readers and my well wishers.

It has been an amazing journey so far being a part of this mobile app revolution since 2006, I feel blessed to see both pre & post smartphone evolution era and having experienced the change myself being the developer, leader and now a father of my own mobility startup. So thought to analyze the trend setters which kind of will rule this new year.

So here is my Top three technology trends you all should look out for in your endeavors in this new year 2018, which as always, will offer you loads of new opportunities to rock this world. Being a part of this mobile app ecosystem I feel immense pride while writing this piece of article for all you visionaries and future mobile apprenuer.

1. Augmented Reality/ Virtual Reality:

Wiki Defines AR as :

Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are “augmented” by computer-generated or extracted real-world sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, haptics or GPS data.

As per Wiki VR is :

Virtual reality (VR) is a computer technology that uses virtual reality headsets or multi-projected environments, sometimes in combination with physical environments or props, to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or imaginary environment.

As Per Digi-Capital New Report in 2017:

Mobile AR could become the primary driver of a $108 billion VR/AR market by 2021 (underperform $94 billion, outperform $122 billion) with AR taking the lion’s share of $83 billion and VR $25 billion.

In 2017 a lot has happened in this AR where Google & Apple invested heavily to harness the true potential of it. Apple has launched ARKit & Google has come up with ARCore, for developer to innovate and create some meaningful mobile solutions for the smartphone users.

source

As AR helps in adding a digital layer over virtual information to give a more realistic and unambiguous outlook. AR intertwined apps will gradually empower retail, life science, manufacturing, and many other domains through a wide range AR apps being developed to cater these sectors.

I Feel :

AR will take a huge leap forward to further revolutionize the ever progressing gaming industry and will stretch beyond it to empower the digital marketing world where gamification will be employed to attract & acquire new consumer for brands . All marketers need to adopt this tool to target their customers beyond conventional physical marketing. With most of the marketers seeing augmented reality as a way to provide a compelling user experience, we will soon be seeing a plethora of creative AR apps alluring consumers to buy their customized offerings

Virtual Reality technologies will be more focused on the game and events sphere as it is already doing so in 2017 and will go beyond to add more evolved app usage experience to offer an elevated dose of entertainment for the gaming user.

I find:

With iPhone X, Apple is trying to change the face of AR by making it a common use case for masses. Also A whole bunch of top tech players think this technology which is also called a mixed reality or immersive environments — is all set to create a truly digital-physical blended environment for the people who are majorly consuming digital world through their mobile power house

Some of The Popular AR/VR Companies(As reported by Fast Company):

1. Google: is using VR to analyse your your living room
2. Snapchat: Helping their app suer to control of their own augmented reality
3. FACEBOOK: For gathering IRL friends in VR
4. NVIDIA: For providing the power to process VR

& Many More …..

source: statista

2. Internet Of Things: A Connected World Of H/w & Software:

source

With Gartner predicting 26 bn connected devices by 2020 which ranges from LEDs, Toys, Sports equipment, medical equipment, to controllable power sockets.We will be privileged to witness the world where everything will connected with these small devices thereby bringing information right where you are standing. Also these information will be tapped right were it is being generated to empower the data centre using Edge Computing tech.

The smart objects will be interacting with our smartphone/tablets which will eventually function like our TV remort displaying and analyzing data, interfacing with social networks to monitor “things” that can tweet or post, paying for subscription services, ordering replacement consumables and updating object firmware.

Big Tech Gaints Are Already Bullish On IoT Connected World:

• Microsoft is powering their popular IIS(Intelligent Systems Service) by integrating IoT capabilities to their enterprise service offerings.
• Some of the known communication technology powering IoT concept is RFID, WIFI, EnOcean, RiotOS etc….
• Google is working on two of its ambitious project called Nest & Brillo which is circled around usage of IoT to fuel your home automation needs. Brillo is an IoT OS which enables Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and other Android stuffs.

Established companies such as Microsoft, with its Intelligent Systems Service, and enterprise software vendors likes SAP, with its Internet of Things Solutions, are also adding Internet of Things capabilities to their offerings.

• Amazon launched ‘Amazon Echo’ a amazing tech which works on your voice command to answer your queries, play songs and control smart devices within certain range.

I Feel:

IoT & IoT Based Apps:

Is here to stay and will be playing a very crucial rule in helping you navigate this world with more ease & comfort, making your commuting safe, your communication smart, your shopping productive, your learning more engaging and much more.. to make your living effective and efficient. In fact, IoT is slowly becoming part of every aspect of our lives. Not only will IoT apps augment our comfort, but they will also extend us more control to simplify routine work life and personal tasks.

Internet Of Things Evolution:

source: aig

Most of IoT powered devices are already relying on mobile devices to syndicate data, especially in case of consumer IoT. With the surge in overall uses of Internet of Things , I feel more mobile apps will be developed for management of these smart devices.

3. Blockchain: Powering the World Of Cryptos:

As Per Investopedia:

A blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks (the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in chronological order, it allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without central recordkeeping. Each node (a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain, which is downloaded automatically.

To know more about blockchain, please refer

1. Blockchain Technology Part 1 : What and Why ?
2. Smart Contract A Blockchain Innovation for Non-Techies

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As per recent study by IBM

9 in 10 government firms are planning to invest in blockchain for financial transaction management, asset management, contract management and regulatory compliance purposes.

Another research by Infosys says:

One-third of banks are expected to adopt commercial blockchain in 2018.

So it is quite clear that secured transactions based mobility solution will rule the fin-tech & other industry where security lies at the core. App developers will have a crucial role to play where they will be expected to develop more innovative app solutions to cater the need for secure & connected world. Your mobile phones are generating lots of confidential informations which needs to be secured from the third party breaches. So techies gear up and pull up your socks as, I feel Blockchain-based security mechanism are expected to be developed on mobile apps in the coming years and will needed in all kinds of industries ranging from fin-tech, eCommerce, Insurance tech etc….

Blockchain powered cryptos like bitcoin, ripple, Ethereum is already a rage in the technology & investment world. It has fascinated the imagination of many tech innovators leading them to adopt blockchain tech to develop wallets & currencies and most of them are being developed on mobile devices & computer systems, thereby offerings lots of opportunities for techies to adopt it as futuristic career options.

Using the blockchain tech entrepreneurs will be developing a solutions mostly over mobile to validate transactions securely, manage contracts smartly, store digital currencies(like bitcoins ,XRP etc), manage voting, secure hassle free shopping, powering banking transactions and many more innovative solutions which will be targeted towards making consumers life more resourceful and productive eventually.

Blockchain Use Case By R3:

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There are many more trends which will be disrupting the mobility world like

• Artificial Intelligence : Where Machine learning , Deep Learning all will play a crucial role in fueling intelligence to the machines to help them make smart decisions without human interventions. Mobile chatbots is one of the prime example of one such use case of AI. Apps like Siri, Google Now are already harnessing AI technology and will be inspiring many more voice based and Images based AI innovations to be made by mobile appreneurs. Mobile data will be tapped giving it more intelligent forms by app developers to make our life smarter with time.
• Mobile computing/Cloud computing :Based mobility solutions will be in high demand specially for big enterprises where business decisions are made based on intelligent data analytics . All these will be stored over the cloud and mobile will play a major role in harnessing the power of those data to serve consumer in real time.

Some of My Other Relevant Tech Article Which Can be Useful:

1. All About Edge Computing- How It Is Changing The Present Past & Future Of IoT?
2. Top 3 Technology Trends For 2018, Which Will Be A Game Changer !
3. All You Wanted To Know About BitCoin?
4. NLP Fundamentals: Where Humans Team Up With Machines To Help It Speak

Summary:

Having seen the world of mobility, changing from feature phone to a smartphone era I feel amazed how it has transformed the life of humans. Now we can communicate in split seconds, transact in no time, buy what we need with one touch, get entertained when & where we want, shower our love to our closed ones without being physically present and do many more things which one can imagine just over this tiny powerful device.

So as a developer and as a tech visionary you have, the greater responsibility to make sure that you are creating tools which complements user needs and impacts them deeply. It’s your duty to entertain them, educate them, and to make them feel safe & secure on the go.

Ending by, extending my sincere gratitude to all you awesome readers for showering all your love & constantly inspiring me to write more & learn more eventually.