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”.

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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How Uber was made

How Uber was made

Hardik Gandhi   January 05, 2018

Uber has transformed the world. Indeed, its inconceivable to think of a world without the convenience of the innovative ride sharing service. Tracing its origins in a market which is constantly being deregulated, Uber has emerged triumphant. Operating in over 58 countries and valued roughly at US$ 66 billion, Uber has rapidly expanded to established branches in over 581 cities in over 82 countries with the United States, Brazil, China, Mexico and India being Uber’s most active countries.

If that wasn’t impressive enough, in 2016 the company completed a total of 2 billion rides in one week. When you consider the fact that the first billion rides took Uber 6 years, and the second billion was garnered in a mere 6 months, it’s not surprising to see Uber emerge as a global business leader. This worldwide phenomenon is built on a simple idea, seductive in its premise - the ability to hail a car with nothing but your smartphone.

It took the problem of hailing a taxi and gave everyone an equitable solution while further capitalizing on the emerging market. And smart people are asking the right question: How do I build an app like Uber for my business needs?

Humble Beginnings

It all started in 2008, with the founders of Uber discussing the future of tech at a conference. By 2010, Uber officially launched in San Francisco. In 6 months, they had 6,000 users and provided roughly 20,000 rides. What was the key to their success? For one, Uber’s founders focused on attracting both drivers and riders simultaneously. San Francisco was the heart of the tech community in the US and was thus the perfect sounding board for this form of technological innovation to thrive.

In the beginning, Uber spread their App through word of mouth, hosting and sponsoring tech events, and giving participants of their events free rides with their app. This form of go-to-marketing persists today - giving 50% discounts to new riders for their first Uber ride. This initial discount incentivized users to become long term riders, and the rest was history. As more and more people took to social media to tell the world about this innovative new App - the sheer brilliance of their marketing strategy paid off.

Product Technology Cohesion: How Uber Works

What makes Uber, Uber? For one, it’s the ubiquitous appeal, or the way in which they streamlined their product, software and technology. It was, at the start, fresh, innovative, and had never been seen before. So if one were to replicate the model, they’d need to look at Uber’s branding strategy.

To use Uber, you have to download the app, which launched first on iPhone, then extended to Android and Blackberry.

Uber’s co-founders, Garret Camp and Travis Kalanick, relied heavily on 6 key technologies based on iOS and Android geolocation. What really sold it though, was its clear core value - the ability to map and track all available taxis in your given area. All other interactions are based on this core value - and its what sets Uber (and will set your app) apart from the crowd. To build an App like Uber, you’ll need to have:

1. Registering/Log-in features: Uber allows you to register with your first name, last name, phone number and preferred language. Once you’ve signed up, they’ll send you an SMS to verify your number, which will then allow you to set your payment preferences. Trip fares are charged after every ride through this cashless system.

2. Booking features: This allows drivers the option to accept or deny incoming ride requests and get information on the current location and destination of the customer.

3. The ability to Identify a Device’s location: Uber, via CoreLocation framework (for iOS platforms) obtains the geographic location and orientation of a device to schedule location and delivery. Understanding iOS and Android geolocation features is crucial for this step, because that’s what your App is running on.

4. Point to Point Directions: The Uber App provides directions to both the driver and the user. Developers of the Uber App use MapKit for iOS and Google Maps Android API for Android to calculate the route and make directions available. They further implemented Google Maps for iPhone and Android, but cleverly adapted technology from other mapping companies to solve any logistical issues that might come up.

5. Push Notifications and SMS: You get up to 3 notifications instantly from Uber when you book a ride.

• A notification telling you when the driver accepts your request
• One when the driver is close to your location
• One in the off chance your ride has been cancelled

You further get the full update on your driver’s status, down to the vehicle make and license number, and an ETA on the taxi’s time of arrival.

6. Price Calculator: Uber offers a cashless payment system, paying drivers automatically after every ride, processed through the user’s credit card. Uber takes 25% of the driver’s fare, making for easy profit. They paired with Braintree, a world leader in the mobile payment industry, but other good options avaible are Stripe, or Paypal, via Card.io.

Here are few more much sought after features for the user’s side of the App:

• The ability to see the driver’s profile and status: Your customers will feel safer being able to see your driver’s verification, and it’s makes good security sense to ensure you know who’s using your App for profit.
• The ability to receive alerts: Receive immediate notifications about the status of your ride and any cancellations.
• The ability to see the route from Their Phones (An In built Navigation system): This is intrinsically linked to your geolocation features, you want to be able to direct your taxis to the quickest, most available routes.
• Price calculation: Calculating a price on demand and implementing a cashless payment system.
• A “spilt fare” option: Uber introduced this option wit great success. It allows friends to spilt the price of the ride.
• Requesting previous drivers: It’s a little like having your favourite taxi man on speed dial, and is a good way of ensuring repeat customers.
• Waitlist instead of surge pricing: Avoid the media hassle of employing surge pricing by employing a wait list feature, so your users can be added to a waiting list rather than be charged more than they should, and to keep them from refreshing the App during peak hours, reducing the resources required by your backend infrastructure.

Another key to Uber’s success, that should be noted by potential developers of similar Apps, is the way in which Uber operates. They tap into more than one market which equates to more riders, more drivers, and more business for the company. Uber has mastered the art of localization - the ability to beat out pre-existing markets and competitors, which further retains their customer base by improving their own business strategy.

They’ve taken local context and circumstances into consideration. For example, they partnered with Paypal in November 2013 to provide as many people in Germany don’t use credit cards, and switched to services based on SMS messages in Asia as there are more people but fewer smart phones per capita. This helps them cater to various markets and and optimize profits.

The Uber marketing strategy isn’t static - it’s dynamic. Expansion was necessary, and the business model reaps profits from saturating the taxi market with their customers and drivers, driving their exponential growth. What aspiring App developers can take from this is that you need to design your App for flexibility.

Design your App in a way that’s going to let it take a hit and roll with punches. Having a system in place that allows you to build and integrate changes effectively within the App and allows team members to communicate effectively is of paramount importance.

What made Uber so successful was its ability to reshape how we think about technology and its operation. Indeed it made the market a better, more efficient place through the innovative on-demand service.

What Technology is Uber Built on?

The tech side of the App is written largely in JavaScript which is also used to calculate supply and predict demand. With the real time dispatch systems being built on Node.js and Redis. Java, as well as Objective-C is used for the iPhone and Android apps. Twilio is the force behind Uber’s text messages, and push notifications are implemented through Apple Push Notifications Service on the iOS platform and Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) for the Android App.

How much does Uber make?

Actually, it’s a lot less than you think. The $66 billion valuation, after the 25% commission (which rounds out to about $0.19 per ride) mostly goes towards credit card processing, interest, tax, compensation for employees, customer support, marketing, and various anti-fraud efforts.

How much does it take to build Uber?

Uber’s not just one App, it’s two - one for the rider and one for the driver. The cost of developing an App like Uber is dependent on a number of factors

• the cost of building an MVP
• product development and acquisition
• getting the economics of marketing sorted
• the constant cost of building on and improving your App’s analytic capabilities

When you make an App like Uber, you’ll invest a fair bit into design services, backend and web development, project management, not to mention Android and iOS native app development. The total man hours round out to around 5000 hours for similar on demand taxi Apps, which puts the cost of developing such an App to around $50,000 (assuming that your team works for $50 dollars an hour). However, since hourly rates roughly range from $20 to $150, median costs could be higher or lower.

Conclusion

To wrap up, Ubers success was due to several factors, including a clear business model and interaction based features, and not the other way around combined with a marketing strategy focusing on attracting users.

The question on everyone’s mind of course is how can you reduce the overall risk of failure by making sure that your idea and product are viable when you’re developing an App?

One way is to use a Mobile App development partner (such as Octodev) that has worked on many such Apps and understands the processes involved. An advance of using such a partner is they’ve worked on many such App development projects and have the practical experience in product development to avoid the pitfalls and make the most of your vision.

Octodev App Development Process

Another important part of ensuring that your App development project is swiftly and smoothly executed is having a clear road map and regular communication during the project. There are many approaches to achieve this and we, at Octodev, use a consultative approach to App development. We draw from our successful App implementations. Get in touch with us now if you want an accurate cost for your own Uber like App idea.

This article was originally published on the Octodev Blog.

2018 Best Running Headphones

2018 Best Running Headphones

Hardik Gandhi   January 03, 2018

As we’re getting ready to ship your Axum earbuds next month,

we still get lots of questions from customers about the sound quality.

How’s the highs? what made your bass so good?

So I’ll try to explain in 2–3 minutes how implementing Qualcomm’s technology helped us achieve CD-Quality sound.

For those of you who’ve been living under a rock, Qualcomm is the world leader in mobile technologies.

Several years ago they’ve acquired a company from the UK that changed the game in wireless audio.

What’s so special about them?

Well, let’s just say they took the CD-Quality sound and were able to reproduce it over wireless connectivity-

Yes, I know it sounds simple but it’s quite a big problem.

As we said in the past, we’re using it in Axum and that’s 1 of our secrets.

Now for those of you who want to get technical and learn more (I’ll be honest with you, once the engineer told me about it I spent the night digging into it) I’ll explain how it works:

When sending music over wireless connectivity,

it breaks as the bandwidth isn’t big enough.

So what they did?

They split those files into smaller ones,

this way you can stream it over wireless connectivity.

But the best part?

You’ll get the same wired sound quality!

As for the bass, what made it so good is:

1. Our custom made driver, that we’ve been testing over and over for the last 14 months
2. Maybe you saw those $1 speakers that you place on your table and suddenly the entire table starts shaking from the bass (I’ll ignore their joy-risking horrible sound quality)? as it turns into the kind of bass box for the speaker. Great, so one major factor with sound is the acoustics and shape of the earbuds and that’s why we had to do so many tests with the plastics and internal design. We knew that every 1mm change (especially with such a small product) will have a huge impact on the sound.

In production, like in life, there are no shortcuts.

You want to achieve the best?

You want to make an awesome product?

You want to beat the competition?

Well, in such case you’ll have to outwork your competition!

We knew the ONLY way to achieve success was to push our limits

and make another test, another prototype, another upgrade,

and when we thought “that’s it, Axum is ready…” to try another change,

another solution to make it even better.

And trust me, we wish we could make it on the first try and ship it.

But that’s the beautiful world we’re living it,

full of surprises and great rewards for those who go all-in with their goals.

These kind of things (and hundred more) is what turns Axum,

into the 2018 best running headphones!

In conclusion, I don’t think we ever said it,

but we are proud to have you on board!

We know that you’re real pusher, winner,

the kind of person who can’t quit and always raising the bar for others!

And that’s what Axum is all about.

Next month we start shipping and you better in get in shape!

Apple Apologizes for iPhone Speed Cuts to Prevent Crashing

Apple Apologizes for iPhone Speed Cuts to Prevent Crashing

Hardik Gandhi   January 03, 2018

Apple Inc. apologized to customers for software changes that reduced the performance of older iPhones in order to extend their battery life, while saying the company hadn’t intentionally set out to shorten the life of the products.

Aging batteries in the older iPhones contributed to the performance issues after a software update about a year ago, the Cupertino, California-based company said in a statement posted online. In response to customer complaints, Apple said it’s cutting the price of replacement batteries for iPhones no longer covered by warranty.

Apple has been confronted by a slew of lawsuits over the software tweak, which had led to noticeably slower performance in iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s models. Some accused Apple of intentionally slowing older iPhones to encourage consumers to replace them with newer, more expensive models. The retail price of the iPhone X, which went on sale last month, starts at $999.

“We have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades,” Apple said in the statement. “We’ve always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible.”

Apple said it introduced the software in late 2016 because phones with older batteries were prone to shutting down when more energy intensive processes created greater power demands than the batteries could handle. That fix reduced the demand on the batteries, and limited the shutdown issue, but Apple said in recent months users found the slowness of their iPhones had become intolerable.

Anyone with an iPhone 6 or later will be able to replace the battery for $29 instead of the current $79 beginning in late January, Apple said. The company also will roll out an update to the iOS operating system that lets users see whether their battery’s condition is affecting performance.