Today, many organizations are migrating to mobile while new organizations are adopting a “mobile first” or “mobile only” strategy. Because of the special characteristics of the mobile platform and its user base, usability and the user experience (UX) take on an increased emphasis. With SaaS-based business models, where users can switch applications in a heartbeat and pay by the month, user experience becomes paramount. Currently, there are no formal models describing user experience. Philip Lew explains the definitions of usability and user experience, describes the connections between them, and explores evaluation methods that you can use as the first step toward improving user experience on the mobile platform. Philip uses examples to illustrate the good, bad, and the ugly of mobile UX to build a deeper understanding of how to improve your own app’s UX. Discover key principles for design and evaluation of usability. Develop a methodology for continuous improvement of your users’ experience.
Philip Lew
After working in various management and technical positions in software development and product management, Philip Lew leads XBOSoft’s direction and strategy as CEO. A speaker at numerous trade and academic conferences, Phil has worked with hundreds of organizations to assess the quality of their software, examine software quality processes, and set forth measurement plans to improve software quality using systematic methods. His Ph.D. research in software quality and usability resulted in several IEEE and ACM journal publications and in various trade journals as well. Find out more about Philip at xbosoft.com.
For better or for worse, like it or not, mobile wearables are already changing our lives. Combined with social media, mobile wearable devices form a new generation of personalized technology that knows us better than our closest friends. How many of your friends know how far you walked or what you ate? The challenge for developing applications is correctly incorporating context to add value your users hadn’t considered while being sensitive to their privacy. In the future, our devices will wake us up earlier because of the ice storm last night and contact the people we are meeting to warn them we could be late. Philip Lew covers the most important element of mobile user experience and customer experience―context. Using examples, Phil breaks down context into elements you can incorporate into your design and development. Learn the contextual elements you need to incorporate right now and identify key factors for future generation products based on providing anticipatory services.
As managers, we tend to focus on improving our processes. But have you considered that good people—not processes—are really the foundation of high-quality software? Competent and skilled people—combined with good process—can consistently produce higher-quality software. When we look for a spouse, we go out on a date, then another, and another as part of an information gathering process. We collect several months or even years of information to make this critical decision. So, why do we often make long-term employment decisions with a few brief interviews? Philip Lew shares his ideas on how to find the best testers. Determining what qualities and characteristics to look for, what questions to ask, and which non-traditional activities or exercises to employ can be done as part of the interview process. Phil says that adapting our questions and methods can help us not only find people suited for our development processes but also help us hire for the long term.