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Mobile Applications

Tutorials

TL Mobile App Usability and UX for Developers and Testers NEW
Philip Lew, XBOSoft
Tue, 06/09/2015 - 1:00pm

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 pay by the month and switch applications in a heartbeat, user experience becomes paramount. Currently, there are no formal models describing UX. Philip Lew explains the definitions of usability and user experience, describes the connections between them, and explores evaluation methods you can use as the first step toward improving user experience on the mobile platform. Philip uses examples to illustrate the good, the 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.

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Concurrent Sessions

BW8 Building on Existing Infrastructure for Mobile Applications
Anthony Carlson, Farm Credit Services of America
Wed, 06/10/2015 - 1:30pm

In 2013 Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica) wanted to enter the mobile application arena so their customers could manage their FCSAmerica lending accounts. Anthony Carlson explains that in the previous thirteen years, FCSAmerica had built an SOA infrastructure for internal applications, including services for customer authentication, lending accounts, and remote check depositing. However, mobility had not been considered when the services were created, and these services were internally protected by a firewall inside their DMZ. If your company has concerns of exposing services to a mobile app, yet wants to reuse what already exists in the enterprise, then the concept of designing services through an API Gateway may be your answer. API Gateways are part of an API Management solution to deal with issues of integration and security. Anthony shares the benefits, challenges, and results of designing a system with an API Management solution to expose services to a mobile application.

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BW12 Tips and Tricks for Building Secure Mobile Apps
Jeffery Payne, Coveros, Inc.
Wed, 06/10/2015 - 2:45pm

Mobile application development is now a mission-critical component of many IT organizations. Due to the security threats associated with mobile devices, it is critical that mobile applications are built—from the ground up—to be secure. However, many application developers and testers do not understand how to build and test secure mobile applications. Jeffery Payne discusses the risks associated with mobile platforms/applications and describes best practices for ensuring mobile applications are secure. Jeffery discusses the unique nuances of mobile platforms and how these differences impact the security approach that must be taken when building mobile applications. Topics such as session management, data encryption, securing legacy code, and platform security models are presented. Learn what to watch out for when building mobile applications, and leave with tips and tricks for effectively securing your apps.

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BT3 Cloud-Based, Automated Mobile App Testing for the Enterprise
Joe Schulz, Orasi Software
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 10:00am

Mobile applications are now a required component of enterprise operations, with both consumers and workers relying on mobile technologies for communications and productivity. To ensure a functional, secure, and worthwhile mobile experience, enterprises must stay abreast of growing complexity in mobile devices, applications, and platforms while remaining responsive to unforgiving user expectations for speed and service. To meet this challenge, many firms are turning to cloud-based automated testing, which reduces the complexity and cost of manual, on-premise testing and offers extraordinary flexibility to accommodate a variety of scenarios. Joe Schulz outlines the reasons why cloud-based application testing is beneficial, discusses the role it plays in supporting testing automation, and explores the best practices for adopting this solution. Get a practical grounding in cloud-based automated mobile testing. Learn how this approach helps companies speed time to market, optimize security and performance, increase user satisfaction, and contain costs.

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BT11 The Coming Mobile Wearables World
Philip Lew, XBOSoft
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 1:30pm

From floppy discs to solid state drives and batch computing to mobile apps and wearable devices, we have witnessed lightning-fast advances in hardware and systems in a less than a generation. Today, mobile has become a hub in our lives and wearable is on track to invade every part of our being. Sensors in new wearable devices produce data faster than ever before, and we can now access all this data, stored in the cloud. New systems and applications are leveraging these many data sets in deeper, broader, and more meaningful ways to not only analyze but also predict what we want and will do next. Phil Lew explains how mobile devices will become the data aggregator for wearable applications and explores context—the most important element of mobile/wearable user and customer experience. Phil discusses how to incorporate context into your mobile app design and development. Learn the contextual elements you need to incorporate right now and identify key factors for future generation products.

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BT15 A Wearables Story: Testing the Human Experience
Gerie Owen, Eversource Energy
Peter Varhol, Technology Strategy Research
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 3:00pm

Testing wearable devices is fundamentally more complex than any other mobile device. Wearables become extensions of us, so testing should focus on the total user experience—the emotional, physical, and sensory reactions including the biases and mindset of the wearer. It involves testing in the real world of the wearer―when, where, and how the wearer and the device will function together. Using concepts from human-computer interaction design, Gerie Owen and Peter Varhol provide a framework for testing the “human experience” of wearables. Learn to develop personas by delving into the wearers’ personalities and characteristics to understand their expectations of the wearable. Then learn to create user value stories to test the ways in which the wearers will derive value from the wearable. Finally, learn the importance of human-experience testing as Gerie shares her personal story—a tale of two wearables and her 2011 Boston Marathon run.

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BT16 Strategies for Testing Mobile Applications
Raj Subramanian, Orbitz
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 3:00pm

Mobile testing is still a widely unexplored territory—with no standardized tools or testing processes—where testers often struggle due to lack of guidance and resources. With mobile devices, tools, operating systems, and web technologies rapidly evolving, testers must adapt their thinking in this quickly changing domain. Raj Subramanian is a tester who went through this experience, trying out different testing approaches including paired exploratory testing, blink tests, and tools to get quick feedback on the mobile applications. Raj provides a basic foundation for mobile testing by explaining the mobile ecosystem and device selection strategies. He shares his experiences in testing mobile applications used by millions of people worldwide. He discusses the lessons learned from testing both mobile web and native applications. Finally, Raj shares his vision for the future of mobile testing.

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Keynotes

K3 Lean UX: Turn User Experience Design Inside Out
Jeff Patton, Jeff Patton & Associates
Thu, 06/11/2015 - 8:30am

It’s usually the finer points of the user experience (UX) design that separate good-enough software from really-great software. For companies launching new products or adding new capabilities, how well they understand their users and their needs differentiates the wild successes from the dismal failures. This is user experience design, and doing it well in the past took experienced specialists and lots of time. But the world has changed. Jeff Patton describes how Lean UX turns product design into a team sport in which everyone participates. Learn how Lean UX thinking breaks what we thought were good design rules. In Lean UX design, it’s OK to guess. It's OK for developers to talk to users. It’s OK for bad artists to design user interfaces. And, it’s OK to demonstrate half-baked ideas. You’d think that if we break all these rules, good user experience couldn’t possibly result—but it does. Jeff shares examples of how all this rule breaking is supported by a culture of experimentation and learning—and that makes all the difference.

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