UX – the strategy for successful mobile solutions

[caption id="attachment_804" align="aligncenter" width="432"] UX – the strategy for successful mobile solutions[/caption]

“Mobile is the new face of Engagement” says Ted Schadler and John McCarthy, in their White Paper on ‘How enterprise mobile systems are going to empower customers and employees with context-aware apps’.  They estimate, by 2016, Smartphones and tablets will put power in the pockets of a billion global consumers. I am seeing wide range of articles and discussions on Enterprise mobility management, Enterprise Content access and collaboration solutions, and also on mobilizing UCC (Unified Communications and Collaborations) with Mobile Office Development.

It clearly shows the extensive range of opportunities for Mobile solutions development, and numerous start-up companies already started to work on cutting edge technologies to provide solutions.

As a part of my strategist profession, I also do reviews of many beta versions of such solutions; and I found a surprising gap between the requirement and solutions. It is nothing but End-User-Experience. The majority of the Mobile solutions are developed to solve the functional requirements of a business cases, but unfortunately they are missing the User Experience part of it.

[caption id="attachment_805" align="aligncenter" width="700"] The User Experience wheel [Image Courtesy: Diego Lago][/caption]Well, what is User Experience? Wikipedia says “User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership, but it also includes a person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system.”

Being a mentor to many mobile development teams, I strongly suggest developers to use basic standards of User Experience in their solutions. Most of developers do ‘Coding’- and they think that’s all their job is. In my cases, I involve the developers in UI design phase too. They should understand at least the basics of clickable parts of the app, the application navigation from the end-user point of view, searchable content design, styling the UI components and visual feedbacks. In one of the recent discussion with an android app development team, I explained how they can design apps with multi-device compatibility using UI factors – which is an important strategy to reach more users.

The best User Experience makes the application user friendly, and it improves the usage of the application compare to other similar apps for same purposes. The User Experience is a business strategy too for impressing many users.  The organizations should focus to train their developers on User Experience through their designers or though a design expert. This cross functional training will definitely help in improving quality standards of mobile solutions.

Well, share your thoughts friends.

How foursquare can help branding?

[caption id="attachment_798" align="aligncenter" width="432"] How foursquare can help branding?[/caption]

I am using foursquare. I use it in every important place I check-in. It may be offices, client places, public meeting places, vacation sports, restaurants, shopping spots, business seminars and sometimes even on the way to a relaxing location in weekends. One of my business clients noted and followed all my check-ins in foursquare [Thanks to Facebook Activities] and showed interest about it. He wanted to understand how this tiny app can be used for his Smallbiz brand promotion. Well, it’s an opportunity for me too – by explaining about personal branding and Smallbiz branding strategies.

Let me share few key points I discussed, and I am sure this will be useful for any personal branding and Smallbiz branding practices.

I am using the status message of foursquare check-in to mention about my business services mostly. For example: if I am in a client place for UI design assignment, I ‘Check-in’ and put status as “Working on UI Design of a brand new mobile application here”  - that messages helps me to advertise my services in all foursquare connected social networks too (mainly Facebook). Friends & Friend of Friends notice it, and through that I get more business connections.

I create places in foursquare, and I frequently check-in to those places. I post photos of that place, advertise information about that place (well, free of cost) – and that makes me the “MAYOR”. The Mayor badge is not having any special benefit from foursquare (looking for some impressive offers J), but It helps me to access the management of that place and introduce myself, mention about how I am promoting their place and services. Many times, I received positive feedbacks – and this improves my connection strength high. Of course I get official discounts too along with business opportunities.

Promoting “YOU” as a brand is very important in social media – for various purposes. What is your life-style, what you do, what you like, what you say – everything is having a meaning in social media. It improves followers and friends. It improves your personal and business value [For ex: Robin Sharma – my Guru]. Foursquare is a way to track our business / personal activities and share a thought though it. Remember – your brand value is your value in business and now days, it is also your personal value.

So, that’s about it. The recent good news is, today morning I got a new opportunity to build a personal branding website for the client and that will be used to display his social activities too.

Microsoft ASP.NET - Platform for Mobile WEB Apps

[caption id="attachment_794" align="aligncenter" width="432"] Microsoft ASP.NET - Platform for Mobile WEB Apps[/caption]

Mobile WEB Apps – the next big business word for Start-up Smallbiz communities. Well, everyone is talking about these web apps, accessible through mobile devices for quite long time – but how many Indian start-ups really made business out of it. There are few mini social networks and shopping sites showing good growth but very less in other areas for example: productivity, travel, etc.

Mobile Web App is not just porting the existing Web app into mobile device for flexible access. I see many products are not considering about benefit able UI for mobile device, performance issues, etc. When I discussed in forums, many companies accepted that they are using the same web development strategy for their mobile web apps development too.

Recently I met a small team of developers at Coimbatore. They are in .NET programming for past 3 years – pretty fresher community, and I discussed with them on best practices in mobile web apps development through ASP.NET / SQL Server as technical background.  They invested for a Windows Web Server hosting and their products are mostly on LBS + M-Commerce.

Microsoft ASP.net for Mobile is an excellent platform - you can download Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Express or Microsoft Web Matrix for Development and start developing apps. Build you knowledge in HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript / Jquery for advance Mobile Web Forms Development and rest all with ASP.net & SQL server programming  [of course you have to do a little study on mobile web controls too]. I used Microsoft visual web developer 2010 express for my practices. MSDN support is always available and developer community meetings provide great help.

The UI and performance strategies should be improved and there, I am supporting the Smallbiz teams. They take care of development of a product and my job is to make it perfect for users. For more information on using Microsoft ASP.NET Mobile WEB development – send me an email and follow me on twitter.

Mobile Marketing – The Analysis for Strategy

[caption id="attachment_787" align="aligncenter" width="432"] Mobile Marketing - The Analysis for Strategy[/caption]

Couple of weeks before, I was invited by a team of well-known marketing management company in Coimbatore, for a discussion on Mobile marketing strategies. The mobile marketing is not a new buzz word anymore, because there are many business teams started to build success stories in metro markets.

We discussed about all available opportunities to reach the target crowd through mobile marketing – based on various constraints, and content styles. I suggested them a strategy which was cost effective – at the same time, can produce a measurable response. I would like to share some points; we came across in the discussion – to give an idea about how mobile marketing can help you in business marketing services.

The important understanding required about Mobile Marketing is ‘understanding the attitude’ of Mobile Users. We referred some study reports before finalizing the strategy, and we found some interesting facts. Almost 65% of smartphone owners are interested in receiving offers, deals in their phone. 15% of users are interested in upgrade plans, top-up discounts etc from their mobile operator. Nearly 50% of users are fine to receive mobile advertisements and offers from third parties [shopping, entertainment, education and life style].

The next question is – the advertisement should be in Mobile Internet or in Mobile Apps? You are right – Mobile Internet is the preferred choice for many users whereas SMS is still dominating the mobile marketing business, along with email, twitter DM etc.

My suggestion to mobile marketing professionals is understand the attitude before you build content. Plan the frequency of advertisement delivery and track the responses every time. Build different channels to track responses, it can be the number of replies, hit-rate of a website, number of purchases in e-commerce or even visitor count with token number from advertisement.

Let’s discuss more about this in coming days – meantime, share your points and questions with me.

How to be a Specialist in Technology

[caption id="attachment_781" align="aligncenter" width="432" caption="Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist"][/caption]

The Indian Information Technology (IT) industry always respects the professional certificates – even though the candidate is having experience and knowledge in his respective technical domain.  There are many professionals I see around me, are having brilliant knowledge in technical domains, especially in Microsoft technologies. There are designers, programmers, administrators and many – while discussing with them, I found that, they have very good knowledge to become a professional and improve their career values, but not having an idea about it.

So, what should be the next step – from a career strategist point of view? Well, go for a certification in your technical sphere of influence – right, but what to choose! I suggest starting with Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist Certificate.

If the candidate is having one or more years of experience, and knowledge in implementing, troubleshooting, and debugging a specific technology – the small medium size enterprise owners should push the candidates to go for a certification – because, it not only improves the career value of candidate, but also the business value of SME.

Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist certifications are for Windows Operating System, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Project and Project Server, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and even for Microsoft Biztalk and Microsoft Dynamics.

“Earning a Microsoft Certification validates your proven experience and knowledge in using Microsoft products and solutions. Designed to be relevant in today's rapidly changing IT marketplace, Microsoft Certifications help you utilize evolving technologies, fine-tune your troubleshooting skills, and improve your job satisfaction” – says Microsoft.

So, what makes you waiting? Start your career in right path with an industry standard certification to prove your knowledge values to the world around you.

All the best dear friends

Professional Certificates and Career – How to Plan

[caption id="attachment_772" align="aligncenter" width="432" caption="Professional Certifications"][/caption]

Professional Certificates are keys for your Career growth in any industry. A certificate confirms your professional knowledge to your organization, clients and opportunities. In a recent discussion with group of students and professionals from various businesses, for a social media purpose – we discussed about this topic elaborately. I experienced that, many of them were not having information and plan regarding which professional certificates are suitable for their career growth. Here, I am sharing a quick plan for my readers.

The Plan: It works well with a blank white paper and pen.

• Make a Quick note about you and your current career. Add points about what is your career plan for next 3 years.


• Choose the right professional certification suitable for your career plan.


• Discuss with your mentor, and with the organization which provides the certificate to understand about the possibilities of growth with this certification. [Try to get information about alternatives too]


• Schedule for preparation and follow it. Preparation is not just paid class-room sessions. Learn from Internet, Books, Magazines, Social Media and Friends. Read Case Studies, Articles, Q&A if required. Work-out Templates with real-time data if possible. Ask questions.


• Go for the Professional Certification and earn it.


• Update your Profile, and promote yourself in Social Media and Friends Circle.


• Don’t stop learning – Continues learning helps you keep fit for future. Share your knowledge as articles, Tweets, Social Media Posts with friends and community.


• Build best practices inside your organization with earned knowledge.

All the best..!!

Coming Soon: Information about Professional certificates for various IT Careers in my future posts