All posts by [x]cube LABS

[x]cube LABS is a leading digital strategy and solution provider specializing in enterprise mobility space. Over the years, we have delivered numerous digital innovations and mobile solutions, creating over $ 2 billion for startups and enterprises. Broad spectrum of services ranging from mobile app development to enterprise digital strategy makes us the partner of choice for leading brands.
Blog, Technology

Make Way For Mobile Sensing Technology In Smartphones

iPhone-Blog

Today’s smartphones not only serve as the key computing device and provide a smart way of communication, but also come with a rich set of sensors enabling applications in a wide variety of domains like social networking, healthcare, safety, environmental monitoring, transportation and home automation, to mention a few. Well that’s what really sets apart a smartphone from laptops and PCs — all of its on-board sensors besides its portability.

As embedded sensor technologies advance with each passing day, mobile sensing gets more powerful. So today let’s discover the world of mobile sensors.

What does a sensor do?

A sensor is a device that detects and responds to some type of input from the physical environment. The specific input could be light, heat, motion, moisture, pressure, or other environmental phenomena.

The input data is then converted into digital signal and processed to display the required information to the user in human-readable format through some graphical interface, in our case on a smartphone screen.

Built-in sensors in iPhones

There are many sensors available on-board in an iPhone. To list a few

Camera: To take pictures, videos and do image processing like QR code, Bar code reading, face/smile detection.

Proximity sensor: Used to detect closeness of physical body to a phone during a call.

Ambient light sensor: Senses the light of outside environment and adjusts the screen brightness.

Magnetometer: Used to detect strong magnetic field and used in the digital compass application of your phone.

Accelerometer & gyroscope: Checks position and orientation of device accurately and device motion.

Microphone: Used for speech synthesis.

Fingerprint identifier: Provides security through local authentication.

From seamless touch sensors on your device screen to GPS sensors to biometric sensors, the mobile smartphones are getting more powerful and secure as mobile sensors are becoming ubiquitous.

Usability

Although smartphones as mobile sensing devices have great potential, there has been little or no advancement in this field until recently. Usage of mobile sensing was perceived early but technology advancement has kept it struggling to evolve. As the evolution has begun, here are a few use cases where it can contribute a lot.

Surveys: As phones can be programmed through applications to share real-time activity of users, it opens a gateway between researchers and common public to make surveys and get volume information in many fields ranging from healthcare and marketing to social networking, and business.

Environmental monitoring: Sensors could enable monitoring environmental conditions like temperature, pressure, humidity, pollution and air quality, and provide more awareness to consumers.

Healthcare: We’ve seen smartphone makers recently plunging into healthcare innovation by enabling to monitor your daily activities like walking, running, heartbeat calculation, etc., through sensors which can dramatically transform how health and wellness data are accessed and treatment is delivered.

Traffic congestion: As population in urban areas continues to grow, traffic congestion generates more complications. Mobile sensing can deliver real-time data of a particular area or city which can be used to analyze and produce better solutions.

However, these are just a few areas and the usability of mobile sensors lays beyond the scope of this blog.

The key driver

As researchers are striving to bring innovation to embedded sensors in devices, the market is gaining momentum propelled by the goal to have a leading market share among smartphone makers.

It’s no secret that Apple is developing new sensors – and has already introduced some – to embrace health and fitness sensor technologies to revolutionize healthcare research field, besides home automation.

While many of the possibilities are still veiled, the requirement of mobile sensors in the future smartphones is about to expand. It is believed that mobile payment will continue to be the primary driver for fingerprint sensors whereas RFID for NFC (Near Field Communication) will expand over the coming years due to healthcare research requirement.

With more than 10 billion smartphones and tablets expected to be shipped in the next five years, related component volumes are about to soar with expected revenue to grow from $3 million in 2012 to $3 billion in 2019.

Something to take over

As the evolution of embedded sensors has begun, we may see many new and powerful sensors in the future. In a public event, Apple CEO Tim cook said: “The whole sensor field is going to explode. It’s a little all over the place right now. With the arc of time, it will become clearer.”

Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

Delivering Quality Mobile Apps

iPhone

What Is Quality?

In simple words, ‘Quality’ means delivering an error-free mobile application which fulfills the user’s expectations.

Why do we need a quality mobile application?

In this world of competence, everyone looks for a quality product. It’s akin to shopping for a product which we use on a day-to-day basis — we, as consumers, first check for its quality, and only then its functionality, durability, look & feel, etc. So ‘testing the product’ is a process that can be done anywhere, anytime. And testing needs to be done perfectly for mobile applications to be of high quality.

What does a tester do to deliver a quality mobile app?

To deliver a flawless mobile application, everything has to be done perfectly right from the time the project starts. This includes continual efforts put in all team members including Project manager, developers, and testers to achieve the common goal of delivering quality application.

To ensure the delivery of a quality application, we need efforts of all team members but testing team members’ efforts will be much more valuable – especially in the final stages – which ensures that the app delivered is a high-quality application.

The following things are needed before starting testing

  • Software Requirement Specification documents (SRS)
  • Application Wireframe
  • Writing Software Test Plan (STP)
  • Writing the test cases, covering all requirements

Firstly, testers should gather all required documents like Detailed Requirements document (DRD) and Wireframe analyzing and understanding the requirements and functionality of all the screens. Then, testers should start preparing test plan and test cases documents by covering all requirements which are needed for doing a testing in a sequential manner.

After receiving the build from the developers, the tester will first check whether the build is testable or not, executing all major functionalities by performing smoke/sanity test. If it is testable, then the following things are to be done:

  • Complete round of testing (Functional & UI)
  • Logging defects
  • Executing all test cases by updating results
  • Preparing traceability matrix document mapping all requirements
  • Performing negative testing on the mobile app which covers non-functional testing types like application with no network, low network, and medium network.

All these things should be covered in the very first round of testing and it’s better to shoot maximum number of bugs in the initial phase itself, so that it is cost and time effective. For the developer-fixed bugs, it is important to perform regression testing because the fixes may sometimes cause side-effects to other features.

Testers will get the confidence on any application quality only if they have done proper testing on the application by covering maximum number of supported devices and versions in all types of supported platforms like iOS, Android, Windows, and Blackberry. There are two types of applications in mobiles: one is native application and other is testing the application in mobile browsers. While doing testing in mobile browsers, the testers need to cover various browsers versions.

By taking care of all the above-mentioned things, one can easily achieve the goal of delivering high-quality mobile app by satisfying the end-user expectations.

Divya Priya works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She is an ISTQB certified tester and has around 2 years experience in testing mobile & web applications for different domains like Education, Social, Gaming, Travel, Finance andHardware Integration.

Blog, Mobility

How Mobility Is Leading To Skyrocketing Growth?

Mobility-672x372

Mobility is disrupting all Industries & accelerating their growth pace. Let’s see how.

1. Mobility- Mobilizing The Economy
268.69 Worldwide mobile app downloads are expected by 2017.

Source : Statista

 

2. Mobility In Retail
13-percent Of Internet users accessing retail destinations (sites and apps) only use mobile devices to do so, thus more mobile-only shoppers than mobile-only Internet users.

Source : comScore.

 

3. (a) Mobility In Banking
27-percent US millennials with $250,000-$1M in liquid assets check their bank balances via mobile devices

Source : Nielsen.

 

(b) Mobility In Banking
32-percent U.S. adults use mobile for Banking purposes

Source : PewResearch

 

4. Enterprise Mobility
35-percent Large enterprises will leverage mobile application development platforms to develop and deploy mobile apps across their organizations in 2015.

Source : IDC

 

5. (a) mHealth
45Percent Of those surveyed said increased access to patient data and technological innovation will present the biggest opportunity for growth in 2015.

Source : Kinnser, Software survey of home health leaders.

 

(b) mHealth
70Percent Of Healthcare Organisations will invest in Mobile apps by 2018.

Source : IDC

 

6. Mobility &Amp; Wearable
175 Global mobile data traffic of wearable devices which amounted to 15 petabytes per month will grow immensely in 2018.

Source : Statista

 

7.  (a) Mobile Usage In Travel Industry
90Percent U.S. travelers use mobile phones on vacation

Source : TripAdvisor

 

(b) Mobile Usage In Travel Industry
55Percent Frequent travelers use mobile phones for planning.

Source : Google.

 

(c) Mobile Usage In Travel Industry
62Percent Travelers use smartphones for searching restaurants

Source : TripAdvisor
App Marketing, Blog

Mobile App Marketing: 5 Tips to Boost Your App’s Visibility & Success

Mobile app marketing is the newest and happening trend now, which seems to be growing at an amazing scale every year. Currently, there are over 2 million mobile apps in major app stores. But not every mobile app released becomes successful. Your app has to be really unique to be successful and should offer real value to users to sustain it.

1. App store optimization (ASO)

Similar to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) we do for a desktop website, App Store Optimization is very important to market your mobile application. It’s also important for a new mobile app to get visibility among the ever-expanding app stores. Consider the below techniques to help your app to get more reach.

  • Title: It must be short, relevant and eye catching. Your app’s search rating can be improved by 10.3% by having a right keyword in your title.
  • Description: Punchy description and targeted keywords improve the ratings.
  • Type/Category: The app should be aptly categorized to help users who do a category search rather than a particular app search.

mobile1

2. Ad Networks

After finding out your target audience, the next step is to find the apps they most likely download to post in-app ads of your app on the targeted app. Though Facebook and other social apps are always a safe bet to post your ads, options like AdMob from Google and iAd from Apple can boost your app on various platforms. Ad networks have a click-through rate of mere 1% but this number can improve your app store ratings.

3. Mobile-Friendly Content

Mobile app experience is totally unique and entirely different from the website user experience. The design should be very simple and minimalistic keeping in mind that entering data in mobile devices is comparatively time-consuming than desktop. Make use of the advantage of other mobile features like allowing users to use the map, GPS and other mobile applications. The screenshot below is an excellent example of how a mobile-friendly design can improve the user experience.

mobile2

4. Sustaining Loyal Users

Retaining existing users is the biggest challenge. It has been found that 90% of the users are gone in 6 months for most apps. To avoid this, you have got to make every user feel special. Following are the ways to sustain a loyal base.

  • Release features and upgrade versions of your app regularly and find a recurring use case which makes users come back to your app again and again.
  • Send push notifications to your users giving them current status, profile look or special offers like discounts, coupons, etc., based on your business.

mobile3

5. Social Media

Last but definitely not the least is the social media. Making your users market your app is the best way of marketing, which is also the toughest to achieve. Social media is one such tool which multiplies your return on investment through word of mouth communication. It also gives a platform to users to give suggestions, and developers to address the queries.

These tips, if followed wisely and diligently, will really grow your app and help you achieve a great success in mobile marketing.

Ebooks, Healthcare

Internet of Things: A Game Changer For Healthcare Industry

Connected Healthcare - [x]cube LABS

A Forrester survey gives us a sneak peak into how the next decade looks for Connected Healthcare and reveals what the future has in store for the healthcare sector. As per the survey, “Healthcare decision makers listed security solutions, cloud services and data analytics as the most important IoT solutions for their industry.”

The changing face of healthcare loops in the Internet of Things to redefine the way people, devices and apps connect and interact with each other in the ecosystem. Connected Healthcare is no longer about fitness trackers or step counters alone. From wearables and insideables to wellness sensors, implantable devices and surgical robots, the IoT has brought about a phenomenal change in the healthcare industry by boosting patient care, improving treatment outcomes and reducing the costs.

All that the healthcare providers need to do is jump on to the bandwagon to capitalize on the opportunities IoT provides to hospitals and providers to optimize their resources and save lives.

As IoT gains more traction in the industry, decision makers have to quickly figure out how best to leverage it as a strategy to fuel innovation in healthcare delivery as well as address various challenges facing them.

Our executive guide “Internet of Things: A Game Changer for Healthcare Industry” aims to impart a deep understanding on the impact of IoT in healthcare, and help decision makers in leveraging the potential of Connected Healthcare in the future.

What is a connected hospital?

Find out how smart devices will enable healthcare professionals to better patient care.

Factors driving adoption

Discover why there’s been a big shift in provider and clinical models driving healthcare, and understand how various factors like aging population, advancements in mHealth, shortage of human resources, SaaS & HaaS are driving adoption of IoT in healthcare.

Opportunities galore in healthcare

Get insights on how healthcare can leverage IoT today and in future in terms of Prevention, Diagnosis, Treatment and Wellness.

Steps to Success

Key success strategies that can help hospitals and healthcare providers optimally benefit from IoT and maximize benefits to patients with better treatment outcomes and reduced costs.

 

download ebook

 

App Marketing, Blog

Sending A Micro-Survey: Industry Metrics & Best Practices

Haven’t we all filled up a survey at least once in our lifetime?  I’m sure most of you have. A few surveys might have got us annoyed, but the key point here is “few” since most of us aren’t annoyed at filling a survey. In fact, it’s a mutual exchange. We want to know what kind of questions are being asked and what our thoughts are about it.

Creating surveys isn’t an easy task. In fact, deciding if you want a survey is a tough decision in the first place. One needs to answer the tough question before coming up with the survey questions. What problems is the survey trying to solve? What are the insights that I’m trying to gain? Who are going to be my Target Audience?

Creating a micro-survey for mobile app users can have its own challenges apart from the challenges which are common to any survey, be it online or offline.

Some of the generic industry rules and best practices for any survey include

  • Pre-planning before the survey is sent out is very important – As mentioned earlier, you need to answer the important questions. What problems are the survey trying to solve and who my target audience are?
  • Decide the type of questions to ask. Surveys can have open-ended questions (what’s your opinion on mobile banking?), or close-ended questions (on scale of one to ten, how would you rate reliability of mobile banking). Questions can be quantitative (how much are you ready to pay for a new feature) or qualitative (how much are you ready to pay for a new feature – low, average or high)
  • Keep your survey short and to the point.
  • Avoid asking multiple things in a question and avoid cascading questions (Do you like to eat dark chocolate and sweets?)
  • Avoid questions which use the extreme words such as “Always”, “Never”, etc.
  • Place your questions strategically; frame the flow of questions with the respondent in mind.
  • Always test the survey by sending it to a select group of people to get an initial idea of whether the survey will provide the desired feedback.
  • Segment the right audience to take the survey.
  • Share the result with the respondents if possible.

These are some of the agreed upon industry norms for sending a survey.

micro-survey

However, micro-surveys in the mobile ecosystem have their own set of challenges. Make sure you take the following points into consideration while automating a micro-survey for app users.

  • Since the size of smartphones is smaller compared to desktop and offline pen paper surveys, designing the look and feel of the survey on the mobile is vital.
  • Avoid surveys that occupy the full screen of mobile as this may come across as an obtrusive ad(d) and user might get annoyed by the survey.
  • Since the general user statistic can be obtained directly by the inbuilt features of the app marketing automation engine, avoid direct questions on demographic details of the user, this may invade their personal space and result in incomplete survey.
  • The survey size for mobile should be even smaller compared to normal surveys.
  • Make use of features offered on mobile platform to create rich engaging surveys which are also creative and fun to use.
  • Avoid confusing the user – the cancel button should be clear and big.
  • If you are not doing your survey right, the other end would be the user leaving the app which will reduce the retention rate.

Surveys are a great way to understand who is using your app, for the specific purpose, under what trigger conditions and reasons the retention is trailing. If your survey is planned and executed well, and the data gathered from the survey is analyzed well, this will help you get crucial insights on user’s mind and help you personalize the experience.

Blog

Mobile App Development: 6 Vital Factors To Consider

mobile app development

Mobile devices have evolved to be one of the best sources for a lot of enterprises. Whether it is Banking & Finance, or Transportation & Logistics, or Healthcare, Education, and Retail, a lot of businesses are dependent on mobile technology. With the increase of interaction of the customers, the demand for new mobile applications, disruptive innovation and advanced technology has been growing exponentially. With the invention of these technologies comes the challenge of testing the mobile applications being developed.

Developing a mobile application which suits the consumers’ needs is the most important aspect for any company which is into mobile app development. So what are the factors to be considered to build a mobile app? Read on to check out about a few factors.

1. Multiple devices and Platforms

In the current open market we have a lot of devices and various platforms on which the mobiles are designed and released. The mobile devices which are designed for operating systems like Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows are of different screen sizes, resolution and screen density. For any company to develop a mobile application which suits all the above needs is going to be a challenging task.

2. User Interaction

User Interaction plays a vital role in the mobile industry, and with a variety of smartphones available in the market, the user should be able to feel comfortable while using the mobile app whether it is for texting, or playing games. Therefore, companies require interactions from users to further enhance the application in terms of improving design, UI and performance. The interactions can be of various types like single touch, long press, double tap, slide – as each of these actions play a vital role.

3. Size

Applications are designed in such a way that they should fit into each of the devices.Sometimes, it may vary depending on the screen resolution as there are different resolutions available like (1200X768, 1280 X 720, 1920X1080) – so it gets difficult at times to make sure that apps fit into these screens.

4. Screen Density

We have devices with a screen density range from 120 dpi to 240 dpi and depending on these density ranges, the app’s look and feel varies, i.e., sometimes the app looks freezing for a device with 120 dpi as compared to 240 dpi; sometimes the tabs or text may be too small to be visible or to perform any action (like tap on it).

5. Phone Integration

Gone are the days when mobile phones were used to make and receive calls. Now there are a lot of other functions you can perform with your mobile phone besides just calling and texting. Therefore, phone Integration has a very key role to play in the development of a mobile app as mobile devices these days are quite sophisticated, thanks to the evolution of technology, and consumers use their phone for  mailing, browsing and also GPS to not only identify the location but also share their location details from anywhere with friends and family.

6. Processor and Battery Usage

We have multiple processors and the battery consumption is dependent on the processor’s performance. For ex: We have dual core processor , quad core processor, qualcomm snapdragon processor, etc. With the increase of the processor’s performance, the battery usage will be high which leads to battery drain and directly affects the end user. When Android Lollipop version was released into the market, there were lots of complaints by mobile users regarding the battery consumption while using mobile apps. To overcome this and to help optimise application performance, Android introduced Android Runtime. But this optimisation for ART requires more space.

And these kind of issues make users hesitate downloading/using apps on their phones. So companies involved in app development need to keep in mind the above factors, and ensure that end users have an optimal experience.

App Marketing, Blog

The Art Of Strategize-Engage-Retain

(Strategy —> Build —> Acquire —> Analyze —> Engage —> Monetize —> Retain —> Upgrade)!

app-life cycle

The Mobile App ecosystem is maturing and becoming increasingly complex, and to succeed, beyond a killer product and discoverability, a plan is needed for the user’s journey after install. Approximately 50,000 new apps are launched each month, but over half become Zombie Apps (Dead) within the first 30 days. Success or failure is determined by the customer, and to avoid letting your brilliant work, money and time result in a dead-end, it is important to learn how to create a lasting relationship with your audience.

Mobile Strategy

Setting the right mobile strategy that can provide solutions to user needs, help realize business goals and can transform with evolving mobile technologies is very important. Every app out there is trying to solve one or the other problem and if your app has to stand out from them, start the journey with the right mobile strategy.

Design & Build

Building a bug-free app with aesthetic UI and intuitive experience is always important for an app. There can be tens of apps trying to solve the same problem like the Chatting Apps, Taxi Apps, Photo filtering apps, etc. However, the ones which are successful are the ones with the simplistic design and intuitive experience.

Acquire

Most apps have stopped charging people upfront because it is tough to start a relationship on a transactional note – you have to establish a connection first. Most people will not do everything you ask of them unless you start the right dialogue and conversation. Spotting the right audience and making your app discoverable to them are equally important. Another vital aspect you need to consider is installs cannot be the only measure of success; you have to factor in the ROI on the money spent.

Analyze

Keep in mind you are training for a marathon, not a sprint. Long-lasting customer relationships are what make businesses successful. Analyzing and understanding consumer needs and feedback will make the consumer feel listened to and will increase loyalty towards the brand If you get to know your users and understand their habits, they are more likely to reward that effort with loyalty. When it comes to the mobile market, there are hundreds of thousands of fish in the sea. While recently it seemed like the Wild Wild West, the landscape is rapidly changing and rules are emerging. Therefore, using the right tools to learn about your audience is very important.

Engage

Just understanding who your users are and what they do will be proved useless unless you act on the data. Around 46% of users discontinue using an app after a month. By promptly showing interest, asking the right questions and investing time in your users, you will minimize drop off with an increased mutual understanding and rise in significant interactions. Segment them and deliver customized content through multi-channel In-App actions. Traditional mobile methods like push notifications are not going anywhere, but given the size and subtleties of the current ecosystem, you need more diverse channels to create a compelling message.

Data is no doubt important, but thinking about the individual rather than the number will enhance the customer experience. No two persons are alike, but do not let a large audience overwhelm you. The more people you reach, the better off you will be, and by grouping users by behaviors and preferences via segmentation, you will be able to create a personalized, relevant experience for them that is not only easy and scalable, but will benefit your business. It is also very important to know the difference between pushing personalized content to users and spamming them.

Monetize

Monetizing techniques such as context-based upselling will increase the app revenue. More engaged users are likely to spend money in the app and, again, the key here is sending relevant offers and ads to make the most of it.

Retain & Upgrade

Engaged users always retain and expect the app the give them more so it is very important to Update the app with enhancements and fixes that keeps the user interested about the app and make them come back again and again.

Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

5 Tips To Build A Testing Centre Of Excellence

Concept-of-Sharng-Content

In many IT organizations the testing runs as a silo under each project team. There is a flip side to this practice; the overall quality is not as expected from an organization standpoint. Many companies are shifting towards a TCoE which is a one-stop shop for all the QA and business testing.

TCoE has also shown a remarkable growth from 4% (fully operational TCoE) in 2011 to 26% in 2014 according to report published by HP, Capgemini, and Sogeti.  Expectedly, there are many challenges in building a TCoE and here are a few crucial tips that should be looked at in setting up the center.

1. Top Management Commitment

The top management plays a crucial role in setting up a TCoE; not only is there a shift in thinking there is a shift in organization methodology of working, delivering the bad news if the project quality doesn’t adhere to new TCoE standards and practices – all these issues should be dealt with at the top of the organization for smooth transition.

2. Independence

The QA leaders should be able to deliver news about the testing without conflict of interest. There can be conflict that arises between the project management and TCoE team, and the problem mechanism system should be defined beforehand without handicapping the independence of the TCoE.

3. Decision Making

While discussions are being held regarding the standards and practices followed by the testing team, a TCoE personnel should participate actively so that all the stakeholders are on the same page and there is no confusion in the later stages of the project.

4. Early Prevention and Detection

Fixing the problem at a later stage can be complex, time consuming and a drain on resources. So it is best to fix the bugs at an early stage – preferably at the design and formulation stage – as this will lead to fulfillment of the overall objective of TCoE which is the overall business process testing for clients rather than just checking for specs and system readiness.

5. Operationalize and Automate Repeatable Tasks

This is one of the primary objectives of setting up a TCoE. All the standard testing processes that can be automated should be automated. Automation should not be just for automation testing; every stage of testing that has scope for automation and repeatability of automation tools across different projects should be looked at. Standard operating procedures should be set up as well.

The above-mentioned are a few top tips for setting up a TCoE. But, remember rule zero is adaptability, and setting up different competencies to adapt to changing situations is equally important.

App Marketing, Blog

5 Tips For Effective User Acquisition For Mobile Apps

If you are starting a business, one of your main concerns is going to be growth. If you fail to gain any traction by attracting as many new users as possible, no matter how disruptive your idea is, how great your product is, you won’t be successful. In today’s world, there are infinite strategies to grow your business, but only a few tactics will really skyrocket your growth and expand your user base exponentially in a short span of time.

So, what makes it so difficult? The tactic which works for one company might not work for the other company. And there is no clear cut route defined to achieve that massive success. One company can try many strategies but zero in on one once you’ve discovered your successful growth channels.

Roadmap for customer acquisition

Many companies have a clear product roadmap for their product, but they don’t have a plan to determine their customer acquisition channels. Software like Agile, Waterfall and Kanban can help us in software development through well-documented processes. And through the defined process in customer development and the lean start-up methodology, finding product market fit has never been easier. Selecting the effective customer acquisition channel is as important as software development and finding product market fit. Here are five useful tips to user acquisition for mobile applications.

1. Understanding Your Position in the Market

It’s important to assess where your organization is in your sector before launching your acquisition strategy. Find your unique selling point (USP) which differentiates your product from the fellow market competitors. Assess the difference between how your company is defined online and how it is perceived by customers and suppliers.

It’s wise to keep your enemy closer and watch them closely if you have any defined competitors. Find out their USPs and analyse how they interact with the market. Track their activity if they try something new and analyse the impact of it. Their failures can be converted into your success with some careful and wise modifications.

2. Setting up an Objective

To succeed in any short time or long-time strategy, it’s important that objectives are defined clearly. It should express what you are looking to achieve and why. This is where the step 1, understanding your position, will help you in setting up a suitable objective. If the objective you have set doesn’t coincide with your current position, this won’t succeed as much as it would have been. This set objective should give a specific number or percentage that you are looking to achieve and the time-frame to achieve it.

3. Targeting the Right Audience

It’s imperative to find your target audience you plan to attract through this acquisition strategy and to understand how they currently interact with your brand online. Using your consumer history and third party data, like Experian Hitwise and Web analytics which use big data for instance, would be very useful source of information to understand your customer’s purchase patterns, products sold, geography and repeat visit rate.

4. Selecting the Right Acquisition Strategy

To realise the objective you have set, you need to identify the digital marketing strategy to use as an acquisition technique. The conclusions you drew through the evaluation of your existing customers should justify the selected tactics. There are majorly 6 key digital media channels which can be used to increase the brand visibility and to drive more visits to your websites and social media pages.

Mobile-user-acquisition

5. Monitoring the Performance

Every strategy explained above will have a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). By analysing these KPIs we can determine whether the chosen strategy is helping to achieve the objective we have set in step 2. You can follow 3Ms approach to analyse the performance of your strategy.

Measure: Collect all the metrics regarding the number of visits your website gets after the strategy is implemented since the objective is to increase the number of visits.

Monitor: Determine how the reporting is to be done e.g. weekly or monthly for a certain period of time, for ex. January-March, and monitor the results.

Manage: Manage the resources – as in who will assess the overall strategy and to whom the results are to be reported. Periodic feedback should also be given to the rest of your team.

What many companies don’t get is that there is a slight differentiation between Viral Marketing and Viral Growth. Viral Marketing is the latest buzzword which is nothing but “Word of mouth” or “Person-to-person distribution” whereas Viral Growth indicates a K-factor more than 1 (i.e., every new registered user will invite more than 1 registered user on an average). Generally, the actual costs incurred to acquire customers are miscalculated by many companies which make true viral growth so hard to achieve in practice. But by applying the above five tips in User Acquisition Strategy, any company can achieve that dream viral growth.

Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

Challenges In Testing Mobile Web Apps

Business-Women-touching-app-screens

Mobile web app is a website app which runs on all mobile browsers. So any app which runs on all browsers does not need specific memory to use and the mobile phones which are now available in the market have a default browser. Therefore, the audience for a mobile web are more than the users for a native app. Deploying these kind of apps is easy when compared to native apps.

What makes a mobile web app different from a native app?

There are many things which make a mobile web app different from native app. To use a mobile web app, users need not have special memory to install the app because web apps are available in browsers. Web apps are easy to deploy when compared to native apps as we need only to know the URL to use them, and they can be shared easily with a wide range of people via  text messages, WhatsApp, etc.

Mobile web-based applications are increasingly becoming more important, feature rich, and also the most popular means for developing commercial systems. Most of the e-commerce apps like Flipkart, Amazon , Myntra, Snapdeal, Shopclues, Ebay and others are first designed as websites and then the apps came up in native.

Of Performance, User Experience & Security

The more the audience for a web app, the more is the usability for the app. Testing mobile web apps is different because of the many factors affecting the performance and user experience; as these apps are exposed to a wide range of people, there are security constraints which need to be considered.

To make sure that the web app runs reliably under different types of situations, the above points are accounted for testing. As the testing process starts from test plan and test cases writing, they should be written properly – the test cases should be written by covering  network speeds, resolution of the screens and performance test cases along with functional,  and UI test cases.

Challenges for a Web App

Different Paths (Entry and Exit) for a Single App

To access web apps, users will use different types of paths. For example, there is a web app which is an ecommerce app, so different users choose different paths to access it – some may do online shopping without doing registration, some may do so after the registration. Every user chooses a different path i.e., each user may search for different things at the same point of time. So, while testing, all the possible permutations should be covered.

Network Speeds

Depending on the network speeds, the performance of the app will vary. Apps will work fine sometimes in broadband networks, some may work fine in 3G/ 4G network. So, a web app should be tested in all kinds of network types with different sets of speeds.

Different Types of Browsers

Web apps are usually developed by making sure that the apps are not browser dependent. The code written in a browser is independent and every browser is developed using different types of languages including scripting languages like javascript. So if we test the app in just one browser, it may work fine in that browser but it may not work well in other browsers. The web app should, therefore, be tested in all browsers. Even on similar browsers, the app may behave differently based on the screen resolution/ hardware/ software of the device.

Security Constraints

Some web apps will capture secure data from users like credit/debit card information which is needed while doing online payments/transactions. Testing should be done in such a way that users’ data should not get compromised.

To ensure that sufficient test coverage is provided for web applications and to provide a secure, reliable application to the user, the above points need to be considered. Testing is the only way to prove that the web app is a quality product and it is also the last chance to ensure the safety of the data.

(Preethi works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and is experienced in Mobile , Web Application testing. She has expertise in testing different domains like Social, Gaming and Health care.)

Blog, Wearables

How Businesses Put Wearables To Work

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Apple Inc. sold 957,000 Apple watches on the first day; the devices were available for pre-order. Many experts consider this watch to revolutionize the wearables industry just like their earlier devices did. The iPod changed the way the music industry sold their music and it changed the way we consume our music; the iPhone changed the way we use our mobile phone – from using it for regular tasks to using the mobile as a smart device and a trusted ally.

Wearable devices are heading in the same path though they are in their infancy; it’s far from the tipping point but definitely getting there. Wearables are not limited to smart watches alone, various devices such as wearable wrist band, smart ring and other niche items are available in the market.

From Fitness Aids To Handy Accessories

Wearable wristbands are making waves in the international market as they make a handy addition to a smartphone and a must-have for any fitness-conscious, tech-loving person. Companies such as Jawbone and Fitbit are popular in this segment with thousands of wearable devices being sold by them.

Wearable ring might sound like a fancy fashion accessory to have, but in reality it’s an extremely handy accessory. Ringly is the company making this device and they came up with this brilliant idea when its founder missed a lot of calls as her phone was usually in her bag. This device is really handy for women who usually prefer keeping their smartphones in their bags. The company recently got funding worth a million dollar from investors.

The leader of the wearable device is, however, the smart watch. While the utility aspect of a smart watch is questioned by many critics, very few question its potential. The latest Apple smart watch is being compared to a handy smartphone as it can perform most of the tasks a smartphone can. There are a number of smartphones in Android as well, and the market is experiencing a flurry of activity with all the big players coming up with their smart watches.

What Does The Future Hold?

In the years to come, wearable devices which give the experience of virtual reality might gain commercial dominance, and devices providing augmented reality (read Google Glass) have got everyone excited as well.

Wearable devices may be a significant part of our lives in the near future – just like laptops, desktops and smartphones. It is difficult to imagine a life without these devices today, but did we always think that would be the case? No, we didn’t. We can only anticipate what will happen in the future, and bet on wearables, just like the businesses of today are doing!

Blog, Internet of Things

Internet of Things: A web of Connected World

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From childhood we have come across cartoons and shows that depict a future that is quite tech savvy and machine dependent. Most of us might have given some incredulous looks, brushed it off and taken it on a stride — after all, they were fictitious. But how fictitious would one consider the world now for the technological advancement it stands at? No denying it, we are warped and entirely engulfed by the supremacy of the net.

Predicted to be at the Cusp of a fourth industrial revolution, we are far more advanced in the information age than when it started, and have delved deeper into the Big Data age. So what is that crucial factor that has brought about the avalanche of developments in the past few years that has set into action the Connected World?

The internet of things, famously known as “IoT” in the past few years, has almost achieved a biblical status. Such is the fervor and reverence with which the avid digital world foresees it. So what has IoT achieved that we say a connected world is not so far away? First, let’s get a good grip on the core concept. The popular definition is “The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computing concept that describes a future where everyday physical objects will be connected to the Internet and be able to identify themselves to other devices”. Sounds like a feat, right? Not really.

Let’s picture a few scenarios 25 years down the lane:

You’re travelling to a new country for your vacation and you realize you have left your passports at home; but that’s okay! All your healthcare and citizen records are in a database open and accessible to the airport authorities… and voila, check in and your flight takes off.

A person with no ID card on him has a panic attack and falls unconscious. Oh and yes you are the doctor on board, but with no medical history how would you be able to treat the patient? But it’s the connected world, and it’s just a touch away – now with all the medical history and details of his syndrome known, you give the right treatment and become the hero.

Your patient checks in with a chronic syndrome and wants only you to treat him. Why not, thanks to Connected World, you treat the patient all along your journey. Vacation still isn’t disrupted. It’s a connected flight system and your first flight lands late – but you have no hassle of booking another flight, your smart devices – all connected to each other and in sync with your schedule – have already booked a connecting flight and with no waiting period. We can elaborate with any number of example scenarios, but the focus here is to say that the world that we are going to enter is smart and intelligent in every way; led by the innovation of the net, the connected world is an inevitable and most anticipated era.

Let’s look at a few things that have made headway into this phenomenon. Starting with healthcare, IoT has made the current netizens more health conscious. Not only can we now keep a check of our health but also keep an eye on our dear ones and their health. Start-ups like 2mpower health, Ducere Technologies, Diabeto MedTech India have empowered themselves with the IoT and have taken their enterprises and customers’ health to the next level. Diabeto, for example, has created a wireless device that reads and stores blood sugar readings with the help of the Bluetooth technology. This enables the transfer of glucose readings from a glucometer into a mobile device and displays & stores the information on a cloud server. The information is then sent to a smartphone app to be shared with the doctor, hence eliminating the need for a physical visit to the hospital.

Another of those mind-blowing innovations is a product with alter egos. Working on the concept of “hyperlinking the physical world” with the aim of making physical products smarter by connecting them to the web, Linqs has worked on creating digital identities of physical products, what the founder calls “Alter Ego”. The start-up venture “Linqs” has a platform to build a host of micro web services for things It provides a unique identity (ID) to every object and from the object ID serves a Web Service tailored for the user’s context.

Starting with digital business cards, the company hopes to go a long way and innovate more along with the growth spurt of technology. And we have more such innovations and products as a result of IoT that has helped evolve many start-ups. That doesn’t mean that the Giants in the enterprise are behind. Take, for instance, GE implementing IoT in Industrial field. GE’s aircraft engine maintenance business, born out of its jet engine business has moved into preventing maintenance on the whole by expanding and automating aircraft fleet optimization.

Road transport solutions provider Michelin Solutions is one such company that has built a high-tech, high-touch Industrial IoT system to reduce fuel consumption in its client’s truck fleets by including sensors inside the vehicles that collect data on consumption, temperature, speed and location which is then transmitted to a cloud service. Michelin Solutions, after analyzing the data, makes recommendations to fleet managers on lesser consumption.

With many such innovations in various fields ranging from industrial to daily consumer needs, we are inching quite progressively towards a connected world that holds ample opportunities. Be it the first world nations or the third world nations, everyone has had a taste of the future and many initiatives have been taken by the nations to put their country in the forefront of technological advancement.

Not everything, of course, is a rosy picture. With more open information sharing comes the eternal issue of security. With work proceeding in that direction as well to make the IoT more secure, we can conclude with a positive note that the future not only would be more connected but more secure than it is now, provided the net neutrality is not hindered.

Life at [x]cube

Bud Indian Pool-ball League 2015

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‘Bud Indian pool ball’ is a game similar to snooker but the snooker balls are replaced by small sponge footballs and for shooting the balls in, we use our foot instead of stick. The rules are the same as snooker. The game is played between 2 teams and each team consists of 2 players.

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The interesting part of the game is the Beer which is served all through the game, and as a game custom. Such refreshing events are always energy boosters and a halt from the work pressure. We were really excited when the game was played and most amazingly, the event happened during work hours, and this made us feel like we’re back in school with a “Games Period”

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And oh, you get a perfect kick only when a DJ is around… So, we had a DJ who added the real spice to the event taking us all on a mind trip. Cheer girls from Budweiser added excitement to the already charged atmosphere and made the event cheerful, colorful and most happening. We look forward to many such events, whenever possible, to act like stress busters.
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Blog, Healthcare, Wearables

DIAGNOSING THE HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY

Earlier, we could measure only Body temperature, Pulse, Blood Pressure at home but today, we live in an ecosystem which allows us to track almost every human action owing to accessibility to gizmos & Gadgets. Now we are blessed with Smart clothes, insideables , sensors etc., which monitor our daily activities from number of steps we walk, calories burnt, distance covered, sleep quality + smart alarm, blood oxygen levels, blood glucose levels, cardiac fitness, stress, eating habits, ECG, cognitive skills, to brain activities & productivity. There is a drastic shift in the EMR mandates, adoption & personal health apps due to government intervention.

Wearable health and iPhone
Here are some of the trends shaping the Healthcare Industry:-

1. WEARABLES

Smart Clothes: Fashion industry can be instrumental in increasing the awareness & adoption of smart clothes in the audiences, Companies like Hexoskin and MC10 are working to make smart clothes & sensors which can be embedded in clothes . This enables healthcare providers with crucial, lifesaving data.
Insideables: devices implanted into our body or just under the skin. There are people already having such RFID implants with which they can open up a laptop, a smartphone or even the garage door.
Digestables: (Pills), another great invention which will track digestion.
Stickables: The most exciting of all are the sensor-equipped patches designed to be paired with specific drugs to help measure their efficacy. Most of them rely on an app on the patient’s smartphone to transmit the data from the devices.

2. GAMIFICATION: It has been noticed that patients tend to ignore the compliance of treatment regimes as prescribed by the doctor. Gamifying these regimes by giving patient goals, rewards for attaining them will tremendously improve the healthcare process as it will give the patient’s treatment regime an entertainment streak.

3. 3D PRINTING: Doctors can use 3D printers to create customized casts, prosthetics, braces, and implants like knee replacements, & also print off replicas of a patient’s internal organs (from an MRI scan) to practice on before a surgery.

4. AUGMENTED & VIRTUAL REALITY: According to the WHO (World Health Organization) the current estimated worldwide deficit surpasses 4.3 Million. There is a huge demand of medical practitioners but the supply is less. This pose a great threat but solution to this is Virtual & Augmented Reality with which we can enter into a world of improved, enhanced and digitally created features which will be incredibly useful in Healthcare solving the major issue of demand & supply gap of medical providers. Thus, can bring a paradigm shift in Healthcare.

Scenario A: Where working-out means tedious, mundane health regime.
Scenario B: A combo deal of VR + Video games develops not only interest but also makes exercising a lot more fun.
Virtual Reality is encompassing all possible participants of Healthcare under its purview. Its helpful in educating the medical students in much better way as they can perform ‘hands on’ procedures in a safe manner which enables them to make mistakes & learn.

5. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:  Let’s see few ways in which Artificial Intelligence is going to improve the skills of doctors.
Eradicates waiting time– An Artificial Intelligence system will schedule as efficiently as possible by reducing the doctor’s waiting time for a patient, a lab result, etc.
Connect the doctor to crucial patients– An Artificial Intelligence OS could crunch out the most urgent messages from a pool of calls, in-person questions, e-mails and even messages which a doctor receives from social media channels on a daily basis.
Healthcare Industry is witnessing change with everyday innovations & inventions making the society a better place to live in a more healthier life.

Automobile, Blog, Internet of Things

5 ways connected cars are accentuating driving experience

connected car

A car company recently came up with an advertisement where you can see people sync their mobiles to car and instruct it verbally to play songs, show maps, etc. Last year Google unveiled its driverless car. All these advancements are the giant steps into the future of automobile industry; connected cars, where you can remain connected to the world even on wheels and also control all the devices inside your car without risking safety. The basic concept behind connected cars is transforming the vehicle into a node in ‘www’ universe.

IoT enables connected cars to create an entirely new ecosystem of connected services. The car turns into a hub providing customers a lot many advantages and better experience while driving, in the form of enhanced security and safety, and new suite of product offerings.

5 ways in which connected cars technology is accentuating driving experience:

  • 1. Mobile Hotspot: In-vehicle hotspot capabilities is the new thing car manufacturers have introduced for customers’ convenience. Using this, now drivers as well as passengers can remain connected even inside the car. Leveraging IoT, connectivity is being provided for all kinds of mobile devices.
  • 2. Infotainment: So far, people used to make calls and navigate on cars via bluetooth only but streaming apps was never an option. Using the IoT platform, car manufacturers are providing connectivity in cars, where you can easily stream contents, have free trials of services being provided by manufacturers and retailers.
  • 3. Safety and security: The most important aspect for automobile manufacturers is ensuring safety and security of customers. So, while providing connectivity in cars, focus is on making the drive more secure. Many steps have been taken for it like introducing threat alert which alerts the risk of accident if it is anywhere in its range, black box (records the details of accident a few seconds before and after accident so that reason can be known), crash notification (sends accident alert automatically), emergency assistance, etc. These features have low-latency in connectivity and are thus reliable and life saving because even a slightest delay can cause huge loss.
  • 4. Entertainment: The infotainment unit can be synced with phone and it can be used as an entertainment device for downloading music and streaming content. Messages can be received on the screen of the infotainment unit keeping the driver socially active at all times without the need of touching the phone every time.
  • 5. New product offering: Connected cars are embedded with mobile broadband chips and they generate vast amounts of data. These data are being used by service providers to make offerings based on the usage patterns. Based on conclusions drawn from these data, insurance companies can decide what type of insurance to offer, manufacturers can measure real-time on-road experience of customers and improve product quality.

As IoT and other enabling technologies evolve, we will see a lot many improvements in connected cars resulting in further accentuating the driving experience.

Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

Mobile App Testing: How good is your app from a customer’s perspective?

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Ensuring the quality of mobile apps has become an essential part of testing  for the ones trying to stand out in today’s competitive market which is growing exponentially, and probably will continue growing in the next few years. Almost 30% of all apps that are being developed are mobile apps. Eighty-four per cent  of companies which are not currently building mobile apps are planning to do it in the near future. The key to success in the mobile app market is producing quality mobile applications. Around  15,000 new apps get released each week globally, so you can imagine how hard it is for your mobile app to stand out in this enormous market.

There are a lot of companies of different sizes developing apps, from start-up teams of 5-6 people to medium-size companies, and certainly companies with thousands of employees.

So, how can you ensure success of your product?

It has been shown how developers are often sacrificing quality to gain speed in the making of the app, pressured to release new apps and updates as soon as possible. In this process, the things that consumers value the most are generally  overlooked.

For both developers and consumers, the things that matter most for an app with high quality are functionality, speed and simplicity. However, the consumer value is focused on speed when developers might focus on simplicity.

Seeing that most of the characteristics for a quality app are oriented in the same direction, you may think that the average user is pleased with the mobile experience. The truth is far from that– only 1.7% of consumers could not recall ever having a bad experience with a mobile app.

So, what are the common causes to have a bad experience, and what we can learn from them?

When the customers were asked about the bugs found in an app, nearly 50% answer that they would delete the app when a bug is found, and more than 35% would report a bug. But that is not always a good thing for the developer, because the report could be sent to the app provider, social media, or to friends and peers.

Each bug then can cost you not only the customer, but also the spread of negative reviews for your brand, company or yourself. This should be the principal motivation to make a quality product from the beginning.

Since the mobile app should be appealing to anyone who uses it, there are a couple of questions, and if answer is “yes”  then app is going in right path.

If you use your app when your friends are near:

  • Does their attention get drawn to your screen?
  • Does it look so good that they ask you what that app is for?
  • Then, do they take a moment to go to the app store so they can try it themselves?

Conclusion

Use the only chance you have to make a first impression and make it the best.

According to the survey on how to best keep users engaged, many answers suggest that “the app must simply be easy to use and avoid frustrating customers.” It all comes down to usability.

Take advantage of usability testing and work with the feedback from a group of people who mimic your real user base before your application goes into the hands of actual users. Then continue testing to be sure your application will continue to impress them.

At the end, the app needs to be usable by your target market, and it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world finds it usable. When the people in your target group are not able to use the app, then your application is a failure. A quality approach to every stage of the application life cycle can help you avoid that.

(Shravani Keerthi works as Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She has over 4 years of experience in Mobile and Web Application testing.)

Blog, Cloud Computing

5 Ways of Monitoring Performance in Cloud

cloud performance monitoring

Performance monitoring in Cloud can take place from two vantage points. One is from the vendor’s point of view and another from the user’s point of view. Here are 5 ways of cloud performance monitoring:

  1. Infrastructure performance: This performance is more important for the vendor. The metrics analyzed in this report are related to the infrastructure required to keep the cloud up and running. Performance of Virtual machines, storage, and network are calculated in this report. Analysis at individual components may not show the entire report of the cloud infrastructure. Therefore Infrastructure Response Time (IRT) is examined to monitor the entire cloud environment. IRT is defined as the time it takes for any workload (application) to place a request for work on the virtual environment and for the virtual environment to complete the request.
  2. Resource Utilization metrics: A few resource utilization metrics include:
    • CPU usage
    • Disk Usage
    • Disk Latency: In batch operation disk latency may not be of much importance but in interactive operation disk latency is important.
    • Percentage Busy
    • Percentage ready
    • Memory used
    • Swap activity: If the swap activity is very high then increasing the memory is one of the solutions.
    • Network usage
    • Host system state
    • Host system resource usage
    • VM configuration
    • VM state
  • Virtualization performance: Similar to performance data collection of physical servers, it is also important to collect performance data of the virtual machines. A few important parameters are:
    •  Number of VMs used by the application
    •  Time taken to create a VM
    •  Time taken to migrate an application from one VM to another
    •  Time taken to allocate additional resources to VM
  • Transaction performance: This collects data related to the transactions of a specific application. Some metrics are:
    • Success percentage of transactions
    • Count of transactions for a particular application
  • Application performance: This performance parameter is important from the user’s point of view. The user would deploy the application in the cloud and would collect data to monitor the application performance in the cloud. The main metric here is application response time. It calculates the time taken for the application to respond to user requests.

Keeping track of the above parameters will result in smooth and reliable cloud operations and meeting the SLA.

Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

4 Benefits of Implementing Automation in Testing

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Testing is the backbone of every software project. It is more a tedious task than a one-time job to check the quality of the application and the software for every release. Hence test engineers actively participate in identifying glitches in the application. However, with even best manual testing processes, the problems keep appearing, leaving no space for testers to focus on actually improving the application’s performance.

Automation testing as an alternative to manual testing is the best way to rise the effectiveness and efficiency of software testing efforts. Automation Testing means using an automation tool to execute your test case suite. It breaks all the barriers of manual testing, ensuring better usability, coverage, security and scalability.

Most of the companies have started implementing automated testing for accomplishing their regression testing cycles to come out with flawless applications using various test automation tools like Selenium.

Based on the experiences of testers working on automation, we have listed a few pointers on why we feel projects will benefit from automated testing.

Saves Money and Time: This is one of the biggest benefits for me, especially when it comes to regression testing. As we all know, the aim of regression testing is to confirm that the application still works as expected when new features have been introduced or a change is made to an existing feature. In order for us to verify this, we need to run all test scripts associated with the change. There is a risk here – due to time constraints, we may not run all tests associated to the change which may result in undiscovered defects.

These issues can be overcome by setting up our automated tests to run after each deployment – this creates time for the tester to perform exploratory testing, concentrate on areas which cannot be automated and concentrate on other tasks, which, in turn, reduces the investment spends on the resources.

Sufficient Test Coverage: After you’ve designed some test suites for the application, and gotten them all to pass, you may wonder, “Do I have enough tests to cover all the possible scenarios? Am I missing anything?” One way to help yourself answer that question is to measure the coverage of your tests – that is, how thoroughly your tests exercise the application’s code. Automation is one of the ways to achieve the test coverage of the application in a short span of time.

Reusability/Repeatability: Reusability should be built-in in all areas of Software Testing. We’ve outlined a possible set of such areas here – designing test cases, churn out generic test cases for some of the major areas of your project, build frameworks that are modular and can be easily reused. Spend that extra time upfront to decide what kinds of reusable data can be created.

Increase Efficiency and Productivity: Testing efficiency is the average number of tests you can run for an hour of tester time.The developer may spend some time to implement the tests, and run the tests with tools like Selenium; the developer can see how the buttons and links in the browser are clicked. And this is done much faster than manual testing. Higher testing efficiency reduces the product development time and cost.

Automation testing does not mean we are totally eliminating tester’s role. Even if the system is fully covered up with automation suites, you still need to perform some manual testing to identify bugs like UI issues which will not be fully covered in automation. Overall, automation is faster and cheaper than manual testing and it helps to ensure quality in a better way than manual testing does.

(Shiva Dasoju works as a Senior QA Engineer at [x]cube LABS. He has 3+ years of experience in Mobile, Web Application, Automation testing and is an ISTQB, SeeTest(Mobile Automation tool) certified tester.)

Life at [x]cube

Just Relax, Paint the Office Wall

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It was an amazing fun project we did in our office.

As a designer it’s always fun working with colours and when a designer gets a laaarge canvas to paint, it’s like heaven. I always get fascinated by looking at large graffiti and painting on walls. I just thought of doing something great for my office pantry area where employees have tea/coffee and chat for a few mins to just relax. And so I gave the wall this theme I call ‘Just Relax’.
As a doodler I thought of making a large doodle on the wall and some typography. In a few hours, I came up with a concept and sketched it on paper.

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After finalising the sketch, my wife (she is also a designer ☺) and I went to the office at 11:00 PM to see how we can start it. And we started by sketching on the wall right away.

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On the second night we started with colouring. We bought exterior paints, brushes and other required materials from a local paint shop. While working on the project, a few of our colleagues joined us in this project and helped us to complete it sooner – special thanks to Sanjana (Finance team).

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On the whole, we spent 3 nights and a full day to complete the project. It was really fun to do all this amid pizzas, coffees and chats while working. We had closed the pantry door for a few days but a few employees did manage to peep at the work (in progress) and amazed to see a transformation of the blank white wall to a colorful painted wall. The smile on their faces and ‘wow’ & ‘amazing’ remarks were kind of boost for us.

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Working in open pantry on the 12th floor became a challenge with bad weather. It was raining heavily and so we wrapped our colours and brushes to save them from rain and fast wind. The sound of the wind was horrible and was not congenial for painting.

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Overall, it was great fun. We really loved it and were showered with great/lovely remarks and praises by mates. The new look is amazing and now we don’t have a bland pantry area. It’s now a perfect blend of fun and relaxation.☺
And, oh, we hope to do similar projects in future!

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Blog, Internet of Things

8 Statistics on IOT which shows how it is encompassing all Industries

IOT is no more a buzz word, it is rather a gigantic wave of disruption bringing in improvement in almost all sectors of the economy. All industries are now welcoming the IOT revolution, leading to increased efficiency & effectiveness.These stats signify how it is being anchored in Industries.

1. IOT gaining traction.
  Internet of Things (IoT) Market, will grow at a CAGR of 31.72 percent from 2014-2019.

Source: TECHNAVIO
2. IOT in Manufacturing
  Firms look to IoT solutions as improved customer experience by enabling things such as supply chain optimisation, visibility, loss prevention and cost efficiencies.

Source: ECONOMICTIMES
3. IOT in Automobiles
  Cars will be connected to the internet by 2020, as compared to 10% in 2012.

Source: GARTNER
4. IOT & Consumer devices
  a) Savings in food & beverage industry by 2020 owing to connected kitchen .

Source: GARTNER
  b) U.S. consumers will own smart refrigerators .

Source: GARTNER
  c) Predictive adoption of Internet-connected clothing.

Source: GARTNER
5. IOT in Energy Sector
  Energy costs can be reduced by equipping street lights with sensors and connecting them to the network.

Source: John Chambers, CISCO.
6. IOT in Energy Sector
  Energy costs can be reduced by equipping street lights with sensors and connecting them to the network.

Source: John Chambers, CISCO.
Life at [x]cube

Teamwork through Sports

“All work and no play is not good for the soul.” – Felix Sabates

At PurpleTalk we know that it’s important to have our PurpleTalkies hopping and skipping to work. We believe that employees here should have plenty of opportunities to have fun at the workplace. Some of the ways we make that possible is by organising sports, intra-company tournaments, Zumba workshops, etc.

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History of Sports at PurpleTalk
At PurpleTalk we started off with intra-company games. Sports like Cricket and Volleyball were widely popular among employees and the effects of introducing these activities were almost immediately palpable. The morale improved and there was more networking across various departments in the company.

We started taking part in Inter-company tournaments like Corporate Flag Football Tournament, ACE Connect at IMT Hyderabad and Corporate Football Hyderabad Tournament 2. Along with this, the sports activities within the company almost doubled to include Badminton, Cricket, Volleyball, Table Tennis and Soccer.

Sportsmanship at PurpleTalk
Now sports has become such an integral part of the company’s culture that we have events happening almost every month, and we are supportive of Events such as the Airtel Hyderabad Marathon organized by others. Along with our team volunteering at the Aid counter of the AHM, we also had others who participated in the marathon. Vinod Nair from the engineering team successfully completed the full marathon of 42.5 Kms within 5 hours. Another such notable event was the Pink-a-thon, a women’s only marathon which focussed on raising awareness of Breast Cancer and other lifestyle disorders.

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Sports activities organized throughout the year naturally brings out aspects like teamwork and team spirit that permeate through the cultural fabric of our company. The friendships forged through competition, sweat and cheers stand strong through tough projects and tight deadlines. Sports teaches important lessons about the need for teamwork and gives a thorough understanding of our culture where we believe we can accomplish anything, and help each other recover from mistakes by showing acceptance, encouraging each other and laughing together.


 

Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

Testing Challenges: Hardware Integration with Mobile App

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Mobile app hardware integration has opened up new possibilities in enterprise mobility. A hardware can be integrated with the app by connecting to audio jack, pairing with bluetooth and WiFi.

Our main approach while using the app is simple: to collect the data that we want to pick up from the hardware and display it on the mobile app. Based on this logic, we build an application and the communication is established between hardware and the application via protocols depending on the type of integration such as bluetooth, audio jack and WiFi. It is also equally important to notice and overcome challenges we encounter while integrating the hardware and the software. Here are a few testing challenges commonly encountered in hardware integration with mobile apps:

Hardware and software compatibility with various devices and OS: The most complex is integrating the hardware with an array of handsets and versions of the mobile platform available. It’s important to test the application in possible devices which are mostly used by end user. Hence we need to make sure that the hardware integrated with a particular handset with one OS is working well with another handset with a different OS.

Verifying audio file compatibility: It is very difficult to identify that the integrated audio file in the mobile application for hardware is working fine with all mobile devices including iOS and Android devices with different OS versions. So the tester has to verify that the hardware is responding well and the data displaying in the mobile application in different mobile devices is correct/ accurate.

Verifying battery status of hardware: It is most important to verify the battery status of the hardware which is displaying in the mobile application. So the battery should get tested first – how much voltage it has – using the multimeter and make sure that

  • The same data gets reflected in the mobile application as the battery status.
  • While using the same battery in different hardware components, it should display the same battery status in the mobile application and should not fluctuate.
  • When the battery is about to die, the hardware response to the mobile application is very poor.

Verifying data bits using protocol document: To ensure proper functionality and data response from the hardware to the application, the tester needs to take the help of a hardware engineer to collect the data bits response of the application when the hardware is connected to the device. And those data bits should be compared with the protocol document to check whether values displayed in the app are correct or not.

Another way to verify the data is — the tester should go through the original hardware components and play with those to see how the hardware is working, the display of values and functionality, etc., so that the tester can easily understand the application and test it thoroughly with all possible scenarios.

(Devi durga Potluri works as a Module Lead QA at [x]cubeLABS. She has over 6 years of experience in Mobile handsets(MRSF), Mobile and Web application testing and Hardware integration testing.)

Blog, Cross Platform HTML5

PhoneGap vs. Titanium: A comparison


 PhoneGap- Titanium-Comparison

PhoneGap (created by Nitobi) was the first and notable framework that captured the attention of the mobile application development community and was eventually acquired by Adobe Systems.

Titanium (from Appcelerator), which was already providing tools for cross-platform application development for Desktops, started supporting iOS and Android around the same time as PhoneGap was announced.

Now, let’s see how PhoneGap and Titanium compare in cross-platform app development and when to choose one of these for your application needs.

PhoneGap / Cordova

PhoneGap is an open source project maintained by the Apache Software Foundation as Apache Cordova. Applications built using PhoneGap are a mix of native functionality combined with most of the business logic built in Javascript and the UI rendering in HTML5/CSS. PhoneGap does not have a UI library of its own, but provides an architecture for communication between the JS layer and the Native layer of the application. The Cordova development community contributes plugins that add to the base framework and modules of Cordova. Cordova’s aim is to build a sub-set of functionalities that are common to all the mobile platforms and expose them through the Javascript interface to a web application. This helps developers by eliminating the conditional programming (coding based on the underlying OS / platform) and focus on the app functionality. But this also causes developers to put in the extra effort and create their own plugins if they need any platform specific functionality.

Titanium

Titanium is also an open source project, which helps build native applications through a Javascript interface. Unlike PhoneGap, the UI of the app will be native but it is generated by Titanium after interpreting the Javascript code. Javascript being a well-known language and web developers being already accustomed to it, Titanium can help create native apps without much training. Developers still need to understand how native applications are created and how native controls or concepts are mapped to the Titanium SDK. Alloy is an MVC framework built on top of Titanium SDK, which uses XML and TSS file formats to define and style the UI of the app. Alloy uses Backbone.js and Underscore.js frameworks to provide tools and architecture needed for the MVC pattern in javascript.

Choosing the right toolchain

  • Control on app release: If you want absolute control on the app release and bypass the review processes of the platform specific app stores, pick PhoneGap. Since PhoneGap apps are more like app enclosed websites, you can release/update websites as frequently as you would want to and the app is instantly updated for all of your users.
  • Porting an existing web app to mobile: If you have the business logic built and the website already working, then PhoneGap route is the quickest, provided you can quickly make most of your web pages / website mobile friendly.
  • Need native UI, but do not know platform specific languages: Titanium wins, because your app can be deployed to all platform specific stores that are currently supported by Titanium. With PhoneGap, your app UI will not be native and performance will depend on the web browser of the platform and its limitations.
  • Support all major mobile platforms: PhoneGap is the choice here, it supports iOS, Android, Blackberry 10, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Amazon Fire OS and Tizen. Since the framework and the architecture of PhoneGap are simple, they can be quickly ported to any new platform that may be announced in the future. Titanium, on the other hand, currently supports iOS, Android with BB 10 and Windows (recently added). Adding a new platform to the list supported by Titanium takes a lot of effort and Titanium may or may not choose to support it.
  • Software and Hardware needed (infra): PhoneGap applications can be built on any system with just a browser. But tools like Dreamweaver, etc., can be used to help in the process. You would need to have the platform specific OS, SDK, and IDEs only if you want to build the application for deployment on your own machine. You can use a service called PhoneGap Build to build your apps for all supported platforms on the cloud and get the binaries. Titanium, on the other hand, requires platform specific hardware/software/SDKs to be installed to develop and build the apps.
  • Programming Languages and Technologies: Although Titanium uses Javascript, XML, etc., to create the apps, the development team must understand the terminology and the constructs of the native applications to build the UI of the apps. PhoneGap does not need this. As long as you are good with HTML/CSS and Javascript you can go ahead and build the UI using any JS framework you like (JQuery Mobile).

This blog does not intend to show one tool is better than the other, since there is never a “one shoe fits all” scenario. Your project requirements and priorities should help you choose the tool.

Blog, Cloud Computing

4 key cloud migration challenges and solutions

cloud_migration

The adoption of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well as the advent of social media platforms and popularity of mobile is resulting in data as well as processes migrating out of the firewall into the cloud. The migration to the cloud presents a lot many opportunities but at the same time there are many challenges which enterprises need to address for successful adoption, deployment and implementation. Here are 4 key cloud migration challenges and solutions:

  1. Security: With more information out of firewall and presence of more third party service providers, there is a risk of data security. To solve this, the integration must be able to authenticate and authorize access to enterprises’ resources, in the cloud as well as on premise. The ability to store encrypted data is another essential to ensure security. Accessing data securely without compromising the firewall, requires security mechanism that will assure cloud users in SaaS integration.
  2. Flexibility and scalability: While moving forward with migration, multiple integration flows moving both across the enterprise and the cloud are necessary. The solution needs to be flexible. In addition, it must also be able to scale up.
  3. Less visibility and Control by Users: Cloud based applications offer great convenience and ease of usage for enterprise users in the meantime, transferring the burden of upgrades and maintenance to the SaaS provider. But this again has drawback as users will have much less visibility and control over their own SaaS applications. Therefore, solutions need to include rich monitoring capabilities to offer the visibility and control over key information flows and performance attributes to the users.
  4. Closed Platforms: To address the challenges of cloud strategy deployment, vendors have begun offering creative solutions but using integration solutions from third party limits the enterprises’ ability to freely select and manage the solutions that are best suited to their needs. To resolve this challenge, integration solutions should be offered with open platforms that would enable enterprises to easily move on/ off whilst seamlessly integrating their applications and data.

These challenges need to be looked upon before going ahead with migration but once cloud migration is attempted, many other difficulties also arise in the road to successful migration.

In simple terms, the migration process can be broken in 3 steps:

  • Plan: In this step, key goals are determined and accordingly objectives and guidelines are then set. Key metrics for measurement are then developed.
  • Execute: While execution, it is very important to stick strictly to the plan and follow the best practices.
  • Monitor: The whole process of migration needs to be monitored and reviewed periodically.

The issues regarding integration can be addressed quickly by adopting a well-defined architecture and comprehensive strategy. A well thought plan on migration and implementation only, will help in avoiding the inconveniences that arise due to unpreparedness.

Big Data & Predictive Analytics, Blog

Big Data in Travel: Leveraging data to boost customer experience

wearableblog2

It’s your first visit to a city and you have no one to guide you, imagine the tragedies that might befall: the hotel you check-in has worst facilities, you don’t have enough information to go around the city. In short, your whole trip gets ruined and the reason being lack of real-time information. But with big data entering into the picture, online services have come to rescue.

The biggest opportunity for the application of big data in travel industry is in the extensive personalization of offerings to match customers individual needs. Travelers always want unique destination matching their preferences, comfort of home and now travel companies can provide it with the help of insights gained from big data. Some companies are even gathering the data of browsing movements of customers on the website in real time to better understand their needs and cater to them.

CURRENT STATE

Current state of Big Data in the travel industry:

  • Now it has evolved from just profiling to personalization. Eg. Recommending specific hotel based on wants and previous purchase patterns.
  • Google has developed a high speed restricted version of web for premium services.
  • Processing of data via cloud has been recent development. Travel is complex and increased bandwidth is necessary to support

Few attributes which make big data important:

  • Millennials visit 10.4 sources of online information before buying.
  • 75% have social media profile
  • 83% sleep with mobile by bed-side
  • 57% update their social media while traveling

(Source: Tnooz & American express Insights)

USAGE AND POSSIBILITIES in TRAVEL INDUSTRY

  • Revenue Management: Travel industry can offer optimized pricing for perishable commodities such as seats and hotel rooms.
  • Increase in personalization: This can be done based on consumer’s behaviour, social media relationship, location, etc.
  • Travel Management: Big data can be used to profile a traveller and henceforth provide them with itinerary management and other related services.
  • New Revenue Models: Big Data can help in exploring new revenue models according to your current performance and can impact the margins.

BENEFITS

  • Better decision support: Big data not on speeds up decisions and data processing but also helps to make more customer focused decisions.
  • New products and services for customers:  With the use of big data the wants and needs of people have clearly in focus so new products and services can be developed to serve them better.
  • Big data also helps in better engaging with customers and developing long-term relations.

With services such as travel increasingly getting personalized and customers creating more data than ever, it makes perfect sense for companies to leverage technologies like big data and analytics to boost performance, customer experience and profits.

However, it’s not just enough to collect and process piles of data. The real value lies in making sense from the data and turning it into actionable insights and then implementing it with a strategy. Big data is set to change the face of Travel in future.

IoT-xconnect-cover

     

    Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

    Let’s Explore – Think Beyond Traditional Testing Boundaries

     

    iPhone

    Just Explore, Explore, Explore the application – these are words we commonly come across when a new tester enters into the team. Basically by exploring, testers are able to learn,discover and investigate the product while testing the same. In advance ET can be used for finding some critical bugs which are not found using scripted document.

    One of the real-time examples we generally face during release time is ‘while playing with the product we are free to do what we are not supposed to do; we may get a critical bug which delays the product release that too after completing the last round of regression which was not a result of any documented test case. Here, Exploratory Testing plays a major role.

    What exactly is Exploratory Testing?

    The product should do what it is supposed to do and it should not do what it is not supposed to do.

    Exploratory Testing is like playing Chess. A good chess player plays his next move depending upon the opponent’s move and the stage of the game. The focus of ET is more on testing as a thinking activity.

    It is the most important part of test lifecycle. Limiting our testing boundaries makes us an incomplete tester. Most of the time testers think that their duty is over if regression testing is done and bugs are reported. But it is the moment when tester’s real job starts. In regression we only cover test scripts using the Scripted Test Execution but there are some situations where we cannot document each and every small scenario. By using ET we not only find defects but also provide confidence about the product quality. It also improves the tester’s analysis skills and enables the tester to become more innovative.

    Most of us may think that Exploratory Testing comes under Ad hoc testing, but it’s not true. Ad hoc testing is done with a perspective that we know the product and its functionality, and randomly check its functionality.

    Simply put, if an expert bike racer is checking his bike randomly, by applying full acceleration and brake simultaneously, it’s called Ad hoc Testing as he is somehow aware about the end result and knows how it works.

    If a person who never rides a bike tries to check a racer bike randomly, he learns while exploring what is an accelerator and what is a brake, and then tries to apply both simultaneously, it’s called Exploratory Testing.

    Who should perform Exploratory Testing?

    Informal Exploratory Testing can be done by anyone in the team including testers, developers and business analysts. It is an excellent way to know both strengths and weaknesses of the product. The more we explore, the better it is as we then cover the product in every perspective and verify the defects. But for formal Exploratory Testing, we require a skilled tester who has the following qualities:

    • Passion for testing
    • Critical Thinking covering the out-of-the-box view
    • Quick Learning
    • Communication (both Oral and Written)
    • Bug Hunting and Bug investigation

    How to look at a product from different perspectives?

    • Understanding the Customer: We need to check the purpose of the product. But how can we understand the customer’s point of view? Simple. We should think like the customer. Thinking just like a customer is not enough. We should think how different customers handle the product because no two customers who bought the same raw materials will prepare the same recipe as they have different mindsets.
    • Mindset: We shouldn’t set any expectations when we start exploring the application as it stops our thinking to a certain limit. So open up and think beyond the expectations as every bug can’t be found by a scripted test.
    • Know the Competitors: Everyone wants to have something extra for what they pay. As a tester, finding bugs is not our only responsibility. Our focus should be to make the product qualitative. So even if we cannot find something, we can definitely suggest a useful functionality we observed in a competitor’s product to make the product better.

    Exploratory Testing is like a Crime Scene Investigation i.e., solving the case just by exploring clues. Moreover, it is better to test well enough in many ways than to test perfectly in just one or two ways.

    (Vikas Donkeshwara works as QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. He has 3 years of testing experience in domains like Education,Healthcare and Finance.)

    Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

    Ad hoc Testing: How to find defects without formal testing process

    formal-testing-process-02

    In Software testing the term ‘Ad hoc testing’ is commonly used, which does not follow any structured way of testing. This type of testing is performed after the formal test execution. The Tester has the freedom to use his creative testing skills, and a better output can be obtained if Ad hoc testing is performed by only those who are more knowledgeable and experienced in specific domain/ system/application.

    By performing this type of testing with well-experienced, domain expert tester we can find out new issues/bugs apart from formal test execution bugs as this testing has no boundaries or no structured plan. Ad hoc testing can be achieved with the testing technique called Error Guessing. Error Guessing can be done by people who have enough experience on the system to “guess” the most likely source of errors.

    When do we do Ad hoc Testing?

    When the testers do not have enough time on hand to do a detailed testing with proper test plans and test cases, they can do an Ad hoc Testing. By performing this type of testing on any application, one can get better output in terms of the product quality and can raise some design questions.

    Types of Ad hoc Testing:

    Buddy Testing: Two buddies work on the same module to identify defects. Out of the two, one is from the development team and the other from the testing team. This will help the tester to develop better test cases and also development teams can make design changes early, as time plays a major role in the IT industry.

    Pair Testing: This testing is similar to buddy testing but here, both people are from the testing team but with different experience levels. While performing the testing, both should share their ideas depending on their experience levels and find the defects. Here one is a tester and the other is a scriber.

    Monkey Testing: Testing an application randomly without any test cases with a goal to break the system comes under this testing.

    Advantages:

    • The main advantage of this type of testing is to check the completeness of testing and find more defects than the normal planned testing because the tester applies various innovative methods to test the application. While performing this type of testing, the tester can get some defect catching cases and those can be added to our normal planned test cases.
    • As the time factor plays a major role in the IT industry, this testing method helps testers by saving a lot of time as it does not require an elaborate test planning, documentation and test case design.
    • Those who are new to the testing field should use this as a platform to gain as much knowledge as possible to design better Ad hoc scenarios.

    Drawbacks:

    • As this type of testing does not follow a structured way of testing and no documentation is mandatory, the main disadvantage is that the tester has to remember all scenarios.
    • The tester will not be able to recreate bugs in the subsequent attempts, should someone ask for issue reproducibility.

    Ad hoc testing gives us knowledge on applications with a variety of domains.  And within a short time one gets to test the entire application, it gives confidence to the tester to prepare more Ad hoc scenarios, as formal test scenarios can be written based on the requirement but Ad hoc scenarios can be obtained by doing one round of Ad hoc testing on application to find more bugs, rather than through formal test execution.

    (Venkatapavan Guptha works as QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. He has over 4 years of experience in Mobile and Web Applications and has expertise in testing domains like Healthcare and Gaming.)

    Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

    Mobile Testing: Achieving quality for Android applications

    android unit testing

    In Play Store, everyday thousands of new apps are being uploaded making it extremely important to concentrate on the quality of the application.

    A good quality application is bound to increase user ratings, better rankings in Play Store, and more downloads over longer periods of time. Going by these facts, the testing of Android applications is more complex and time-consuming when compared to the testing of iOS applications.

    The Quality of Android app can be achieved when the application is tested on various Android devices with different OS versions, screen sizes and resolutions available in the real world because some applications which work properly on one Android device may create new UI or functionality-related issues on another and customers (end users) tend to use different mobile phone(s). Mobile App development companies can’t guarantee that their applications will work properly on the entire Android devices in the market.

    So before initiating the development phase, the product team in the company will have to decide on the compatibility of the application with base devices and base operating system versions and create a list of most-used android phones and tablets with various android versions, screen sizes and resolutions, after a thorough market analysis.

    Based on the list of devices, the testing team will ensure the application functionality is consistent across all devices with different OS.

    The next major challenge in testing is network testing, and almost all android applications depend on network connection to get user data from the server or to use the network-dependent functionality like sharing on Facebook & Twitter, and email. The QA team will test all client-server communication scenarios to validate the end user experience and the app behaviour under different network conditions (Wi-Fi and 2G/3G/4G networks), through which we can eliminate the network connectivity or performance issues in the initial stage of testing.

    To deliver an issue-free app to the market is a challenge, so the testing team also needs to focus on each and every component of the application and make sure the application has no functionality crashes or UI issues before going live.

    (Raghuram works as a Senior QA Engineer at [x]cube LABS. A ISTQB certified tester, he has over 3 years of experience in Mobile, Web Application, Performance testing.) 

    App Marketing, Blog

    Mobile App Engagement: A Solution Kit for App Publishers

    Brand Kinesis

    Scenario 1: A customer has come all the way to the purchase page navigating through various other pages but is leaving without actually making any purchase. He knows all about the product, the app and is very keen but is somehow unable to make up his mind. Now we have the data, we know that activity and we may even be able to predict the user’s intention, but how can we help him to take that step, push him to make that informed choice of purchasing the product?

    Scenario 2: It’s Level 10 of an addictive gaming app. Of the 25 users who opened the app on a specific day, only a single user finished the level but 24 users didn’t. Or vice-versa! So we can understand that this level is too difficult for regular people to complete in one attempt. Backed by this data, we can now think of putting in a tweak or a ‘Life’ option or give a tip on how to finish the level.

    Strategy on data & trends: A daunting task
    App publishers have always had trouble understanding what they should do to engage their current users, and retain them. They have been using various analytical tools like Flurry and Google analytics to trace their users’ behavior but strategizing on what should be done next with the data and trends available is a challenging task to them.

    Publishers ponder upon what they can do to get regular feedback, get 5-star ratings, upsell/cross sell, etc. They constantly dig out modes and methods to nurture core community of its users,derive rich insights into product usage, enable stronger brand engagement which keeps their customer loyalty base intact.

    Of delays and time lags
    App publishers get to know a lot of details about the end-user’s online activities based on the events that get computed continuously in the background. So far, despite knowing this information, clients generate Analytics reports only periodically, see all the events and then decide what they want to do with that data. Thus, there’s a delay between the actual event and the response time.

    Push an offer or a tip in real-time
    Scenario 3: Now imagine a scenario where they can use the available data and push a discount offer to encourage their customers to purchase a product, or a tip that helps end-users complete a difficult level in a gaming app! And all this in real-time – well, almost immediately – while the end-user is still on the app, unable to make up his mind about the purchase or the level.

    How is real-time customer engagement done?

    The SDK integrates with the application, captures all the data and presents it on the dashboard of the app publisher, where he can access all the reports and accordingly segment the users besides performing actions like
    Tutorials: Both On Launch tutorials that explain the purpose and the usage of app and also Featured tutorials that guide users to perform certain actions.
    Ratings: Allows publisher to get a quick feedback. If user provides a 5-star rating, then it pushes it to the app store ensuring visibility, and if the rating is less, then it asks for a feedback.
    Notes & FAQs: Helps in managing the content from a singular backend eliminating the need of updating again and again.
    Micro Surveys: Enables to get both qualitative and quantitative data via opinion polls, which engage and retain customers by providing useful insights.
    Offers: Accelerates revenue flow by offering relevant discounts and deals, and also context-specific offers in app promotions, Interstitial ads, etc.
    Cross app promotions: Assists in deriving more mileage from existing user base by targeting existing users discover & download other apps.
    Badges: Acknowledge and reward loyal users.
    Notifications: Notify users about events and features that allures them.
    Trivia: Engage users with contextual interactive games.

    Why Brand Kinesis is the right solution?

    What if we had one platform which not only helps app publishers to keep a check on the real-time data but also empowers them to take relevant actions.

    Brand Kinesis is one such product which resolves the problem by increasing customer lifetime value through an immersive mobile engagement model. It is a platform which does all the above and more, which engages the users and retains them by gathering rich insights which assists in better product planning, leading to increased customer loyalty base.

    This analytics platform not only helps tackle the time-lag issue better, but also helps identify trends, prospective customers/users and push a campaign almost immediately. And with this platform, publishers get to know their customers well and can offer special privileges only to those who’re really keen on their product(s) instead of to everyone/ all visitors.

    Brand Kinesis will build the roadmap to success for app publishers. It encapsulates benefits from analyzing the performance of the app, and taking follow-up actions which accelerate the performance and enables the app to outshine.

    So, we say, ACQUIRE>ENGAGE>MONETIZE>ANALYZE>RETAIN is the way to go as it is the future pipeline to success.

    Automobile, Blog, Internet of Things

    Connected Cars: Redefining the driving experience

    Remember Samuel Jackson in ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’, controlling his car just by talking? Imagine how exciting it would be to do the same with your own car; no hand-eye-leg coordination, just simple verbal instructions! Although that’s something a long way away, the first step towards that has been taken in the form of connected cars.

    When we remain connected to everyone always, why disconnect while driving? Efforts are being made to keep us connected without risking our lives. Connected cars is the latest revolution in the field of automobiles.

    Technology on wheels

    According to McKinsey, connected car is a car which can optimize its own operation & maintenance as well as convenience & comfort of passengers using onboard sensors, mobile apps & internet connectivity. Safety-related systems are likely to be based on a new fast, secure & reliable technology called Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) which is similar to WiFi.

    Embedded Telematics Control Unit (TCU) offers a host of functions including e-Call, fully automated accident alert, remote control locking, etc. GPS tracking system & GSM module are enabled in it to help provide those services. TCU also acts as data modem for other devices in the car connected to MOST (Media-Oriented Systems Transport) bus. TCUs are also bluetooth enabled so one can simply switch on the apps they want to connect to their car and connect with the infotainment unit where all the apps will be displayed just like on the mobile screen. There is an option to type in that same screen so you can have social connectivity. Voice has also been enabled to help in navigation and reading out messages while driving so that you don’t risk your life by looking, and yet receive messages, send mails, etc.

    connected cars

    What’s driving the connected car market?

    The McKinsey report further predicts an increase in global market for connectivity components & services to almost €170bn by 2020 from the present €30bn. A few benefits behind surging demand for connected cars include:

    • Complete information to driver about car performance so that proper maintenance can be done.
    • Makes driving seamless & safe.
    • Real-time data helps in smooth flow of traffic by providing information beforehand about traffic jams, etc., and also simultaneously suggesting alternate route(s), thus saving time.

    But there are challenges ahead…

    Cars take longer to develop than smartphones. Since phones get updated frequently, it’s important that cars’ software be simultaneously adopted and upgraded as well. Also, carmakers need to partner with mobile makers like the way Chrysler partnered with Sprint Nextel for Dodge Viper, for example. The additional cost of frequent services & updates will have a negative effect on demand, especially in the price-sensitive markets. Data security and privacy are also a concern for many buyers.

    Renault, Ford, Lexus, Nissan, and Audi have already adopted connected technologies for cars and the future seems to be of connected cars. However, for its rapid and broad adoption, manufacturers have to address the challenges and make the car affordable to a large number of buyers.

    Blog, Healthcare, Wearables

    Applications of Wearable Technology in Healthcare

    Healthcare Wearable technology

     

    Year 2000: You have just been discharged from a hospital but as a precautionary measure you’ve been asked to visit the hospital every second day because the doctor wants to keep a tab on your health. And you have no option but to take that long boring drive to the hospital, wait for your turn, undergo routine check -up and be back.

    Fast forward to 2015: Your doctor has a tab on your health developments 24*7 because of that little band that you have been wearing on your wrist. You don’t have to drive all the way to the hospital, and wait for your turn to get attended.

    Welcome to the world of wearable technology!

    Consumers have lapped up the wearable technology that has monitored everything from heart beats to sleeping patterns. According to a report from Tractica, the global wearable device market will increase from 17 million devices shipped in 2013 to 187.2 million units annually by 2020. This is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34 percent. With Apple now officially into the fray, wearable technology is likely to get a powerful thrust in acceptance.

    The healthcare industry has always been at the fore when it came to consuming the latest technology. To put it right, it has been an ‘early adopter’. Wearables have now made it into the operation theaters and gyms, helping in live monitoring of one’s health. Wearable technology is making quick headway in the healthcare because all the three stakeholders – doctors, patients and insurers see a lot of upside potential in terms of providing better service.

    To the doctors,

    1. Wearables like smart watches and bands help in monitoring and capturing the real-time data of patients to improve diagnosis and deliver better treatments.
    2. Doctors do not need to refer to a physical file each time a patient makes a visit, he can simply have the patient history before him, courtesy Google glass. Google glass in particular can also be used to read to integrate various scans and x-ray reports.
    3. In cases of critical surgeries, wearables help in exchanging critical information on how the patient is responding thus giving more thrust to efficiency.
    4. On a grander canvas, wearables can be used to collect data and predict health trends which eventually help in taking better precautions.

    As we move more towards an age where more number of health providers are discouraging people from visiting their hospitals to reduce costs, wearable technology can go a long way to achieve the same because wearables empower the patients to monitor themselves.

    To the patients,

    1. Wearables will help patients keep an eye on the state of their health. This will lead to prognosis of diseases and ultimately a better care.
    2. Wearables will give the patients the power to monitor important parameters like blood pressure, blood sugar levels, heartbeat rate etc. This will help them take important decision regarding health to stay fit.
    3. Patients can communicate key data to the doctors in case of any abnormality with one push button. This saves time and timely action can be taken if needed.

    To the insurers,

    1. Insurers can use the data collected by wearables to make a better risk profile and come up with more innovative products.
    2. Insurers can also make customized products according to the health pattern and risk profile of the patient.

    Healthcare industry surely has exciting times moving into future as wearable technology is making the experience of delivering care more customised, simpler and in-time.

     

    Blog, Retail

    Connected Retail Stores: The future of the high street

    IoT in retail

    Source- www.wsj.com

    Is the age of physical retail stores over? This seems to be the question in everyone’s mind these days. It is true that with the advent of online retail, brick and mortar stores have been affected and the sales declined severely. We have seen big companies like HMT and Blockbuster going bankrupt. However, all is not lost. A recent survey by PwC has found out that consumers overwhelmingly still consider physical retail stores an essential part of the overall retail experience – but it must be connected to a company’s entire offering across multiple channels. The success for retailers lies in understanding what each customer wants and offering them personalised products and interactions to satisfy their needs.

    What exactly is connected retail?

    Connected retail technology is linking consumers, devices and data leveraging Internet of Things for smarter shopping experiences, from the high street to online, in-store to mobile applications. Retailers who use the right mix of offline and online experiences for their customers will have the biggest advantage in the future. A connected retail landscape can include everything from apps, analytics to augmented reality.

    The connected retail landscape:

    For physical stores to survive in this digital era, retailers must provide a much more interactive customer experience. The retail store should be much more than a simply place to browse and buy. The retailers should aim to deliver an experience that is personalised for the customer, gives them added value and generates brand loyalty.

    Providing a connected experience through free Wi-Fi in the store can be a good way to increase footfall in the store. Free in-store Wi-Fi gets the customers online and if the customers can get online easily, the uptake for the retailer’s app would increase. This enables a two-way communication with the customer and enables the retailer to collect data that can be used, often in real-time, to offer deals and deliver a more targeted personalised experience. For example, customers in Debenhams, a UK-based retailer, can use its mobile app to scan barcodes to order things for home delivery, read reviews and ask friends what they think about a product from the comfort of the changing room.

    Augmented reality and digital sign are other ways to keep the customers connected. One emerging technology which the retailers are exploring is beacons, small Bluetooth devices deployed in stores to communicate with the customer’s Smartphone. Beacons give the retailers an opportunity to communicate real-time personalized marketing messages and deals to customers while they are shopping. It also enables to collect data that can give valuable insight into consumer behaviour.

    Digital labels can display the latest real-time information on products, including things like the number of likes an item has received on Facebook, while virtual reality mirrors can display images of what garments will look like on customers and allow them to share those images with friends over social media.

    Potential to revolutionise retail

    Wi-Fi connected stores, augmented reality apps, etc., are just the tip of the iceberg. Connected retail has the potential to revolutionise the industry and transform how retailers operate and how they connect with consumers. It has the potential to a) Improve service delivery through linking consumer data and research to purchase phases b) Deliver a personalised experience by tailoring products to consumers’ personal requirements and c) Enhance the brand experience by creating meaningful experiences that move the consumer from transacting to conversing with brands and thereby improve the in-store experience and breathe new life into the dying brick and mortar stores.

    Blog, Wearables

    6 examples of businesses leveraging wearable tech to charm customers

    From smart watches and smart glasses to fitness gear and headsets, the penetration of wearables in our lives and the umpteen possibilities it opens up for enterprises seems baffling. Wearable technology not only connects the dots between online & offline channels while bridging the gap between these channels and the mobile platform, but also reaps heaps of benefits to brands.

    The biggest advantage of wearables is that these products let users go hands-free, thereby increasing their usability tenfold. High-tech smart wearables will prove to be particularly beneficial to technicians in the construction industry, miners, search and rescue teams, sales teams, firefighters, and disaster management teams, among others.

    Below are a few examples where businesses are using wearable technology to entice their customers.

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    1. Fitness: If you’re a fitness enthusiast, then there are a bunch of wearables for you in the market. Look, for instance, at fitness trackers like Fitbit Flex, Nike+ FuelBand and Jawbone Up which help you track your all-day activity, monitor your fitness 24X7, check your progress, share statistical data and tidbits with friends and family, keep tabs on your food with calorie estimator by logging the calories consumed through the day, record your workout sessions and set goals based on current data. Fitbit Flex takes the idea of fitness to a newer level by recording your sleep and indicating your sleep patterns as well.

    With a long-lasting battery life, these wrist-worn bands let you stay connected wirelessly to your smart phones. While Nike+ FuelBand syncs easily with iPhone 5s or above versions, Fitbit Flex connects to all smart phones across different platforms . With other players like Under Armour now tying up with HTC to bring out an entire range of wearable gear, fitness trackers have now become a most-sought-after commodity and consumers can now expect good products in the market and stay motivated.

    2. Healthcare: Wearables have definitely changed the way we look at healthcare. Be it Augmedix using Google Glass to transmit patients’ health reports and related data to their smart phones or tablets, or Droiders connecting Google Glass and augmented reality via their MedicAR app that can assist surgeons during complex and complicated surgical procedures, or other renowned healthcare companies helping patients tackle chronic illness like diabetes, and heart diseases by promoting self-management of diseases using healthcare apps.

    And then there are apps like Director, a post-operative healthcare app by Wearable Intelligence, that takes care of procedural checklists by providing a digitized workflow system for therapists who can use the camera to record the specific set of exercises that patients are made to do as part of the physical therapy during their post-surgical recovery period to speed up their recovery process. From monitoring heart and pulse rates to tracking personal health data, from bringing all Emergency Health Records of a patient together under one app to bridging the gap of distance and time between the doctors and their patients, the possibilities and the miracles that wearables can do in the healthcare sector are unimaginable and endless.

    3. Sports & Athletics: With the launch of their biometric shirts, Ralph Lauren paved the way for sporting goods retailers to think disruption. The fashion brand’s new smart sporting wear, the Polo Tech smart shirt, was launched in time for the US Open Tennis Tournament 2014 and was worn by ball boys. OMsignal’s technology renders the outfit the capability to transmit data about the wearer’s heart rate, respiration, performance, stress levels, etc., to a connected device like a smartphone or a tablet. The information is collected and relayed by a small recorder which can be removed before washing the smart shirt.

    4. Gaming & Virtual Reality: With the launch of its virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift takes gaming to a whole new level. Thanks to the headset’s custom tracking technology, gamers can now be part of their virtual worlds. The Rift provides ultra-low latency 360° head tracking enables users to look around the virtual world by tracking even the subtlest head movements in real-time. Its stereoscopic 3D view presents unique and parallel images for each of the user’s eyes, making his/her visual experience as natural and comfortable as in the real world, besides offering a wider view by widening the scope of the virtual world beyond one’s peripheral vision.

    5. Retail: Britain’s leading fashion retailer Topshop has gone a step further in using wearable technology to offer its loyal customers a thrilling experience. The retail brand partnered with Intion to design a headset that enabled customers to watch the Topshop show at the London Fashion Week without moving out of its Oxford Street store. While the five lucky winners won a chance to have a front row experience in virtual reality, the brand got a chance to boost its sales by gently coaxing users to buy clothes, accessories and makeup worn by models during the catwalk, just with the click of a button.

    6. Travel & Hospitality: The hospitality industry has so far offered us a few digitized experiences like smart access cards and keyless entries. However, Disneyland’s MagicBand holds your key to a pleasurable dream vacation and a carefree visit. Now visitors can choose to travel light as the MagicBand – a colorful, waterproof wristband – comes with a number of benefits. The sensor-based wristband is an all-in-one device that allows users to unlock their Disney Resort hotel room, secure an entry into theme and water parks, check in at FastPass+ entrances, purchase food and merchandise – all this as quickly and easily as touching the keypad of your smart phone.

    Users can customize their MagicBands by creating a Disney account and linking their Reservation or Annual Pass, and their MagicBand, to their account. The wristband also strengthens Disneyland’s relationship with its customers via personalised interactions – the MagicBand uses the collected/saved data not only to send customers personalized offers based on their choices, preferences, and behaviour but also enables Disney characters to greet visitors by name.

    Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

    Quality Assurance: Achieving Quality through Domain Knowledge

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    In the whole Star Wars series, Master Yoda is the most respected character and he is the expert whom everyone approaches for advice. Why? It is because he has mastered the “Force” around him. In other words, he has “Domain Knowledge”.

    Though many start-up companies come into existence every year, only few sustain and survive the test of time. So, what is it that makes them stand apart from the rest? The reasons may differ from one company to another. But the common reasons for their survival include understanding of their customers’ needs and knowledge over the domain in which they are operating. And that is the power of having “Domain Knowledge”.

    When one applies this concept to Quality Assurance in a project or application, the individual involved in the Quality Process needs to be equipped with Domain Knowledge. A tester who has domain knowledge about the functionality, the component or the module can perform the testing process effectively and also with ease.

    Identifying bugs gets easy

    Domain Knowledge is not only limited to the type of the application, but also to the environment it is built on, and the technology used for development. Consider an application being built in Java environment using SQL server as backend database. A tester who has some knowledge in Java or SQL may identify the bugs much more effectively – like testing for database related issues or performing white box testing, for example.

    To have knowledge about the domain does not effectively mean that the knowledge is gained from the Requirement Documents, Testing Methodologies and Strategies implemented or regular KT sessions. Such knowledge may be helpful in achieving better quality but to deliver a product with the best quality requires the individual to understand the domain in which the application will be used and is being developed.

    For example, an individual who has knowledge about the Healthcare domain may understand the requirements of a health application with respect to the terminology, process and health standards with ease and execute testing much more effectively when compared to the individual who has limited domain knowledge in that specific area.

    Knowledge is wealth

    This stands true in enhancing Quality Assurance as well. Domain Knowledge not only helps in achieving best quality for the application but also helps the individual in terms of career growth. It helps in achieving recognition in the organization, and in increasing the scope of one’s abilities to go beyond testing. He may exploit opportunities in Consulting, Business Analysis, etc., thus becoming a critical resource for the Project and also for the organization.

    (About the Author: Bhargava Yellamraju works as Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. He as 5 years of experience in Mobile, Web Application and Security Testing and has built significant expertise in various domains like Health Care, Finance, Banking and Procurement.)

    Blog, Quality Assurance/Testing

    Back To Basics: Why Software Testing and what exactly does it refer to?

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    Questions make us learn things. Every Question deserves a satisfying answer. So, let us pose a few questions more here.

    • Why is Software Testing necessary?
    • What is Software Testing?

    Why is Software Testing necessary?

    When we are testing something we are checking whether it is working well. So, why is testing needed? Testing is necessary because everyone makes mistakes. So we should assume that our work contains mistakes, and must check our own work. While some mistakes are small and can be ignored, some may be expensive.

    As consumers of products (home appliances like washing machine, for instance) and services like e-payment systems at shopping malls, we would certainly get annoyed when they don’t work or work with reduced performance. Who would be happy if the washing machine tears our clothes? How do you feel when you’ve to wait for a long time to make payment at a shopping mall?

    Sometimes defects like these occur in the software systems. Therefore, Software Testing is necessary to find and rectify defects, and to avoid system failure. Now comes our next question:

    What is software testing?

    Wikipedia defines ‘Software Testing’ as “an investigation conducted to provide stakeholders with the information about the Quality of the product or service under Test”.

    Quality: Testing helps us to find the Quality of software in terms of the number of defects that are found in Functional and Nonfunctional attributes. Quality of software can only be assured when the found defects are fixed. Software systems are designed to deliver customer specifications. Quality, in other words, also points to validating the functionality of software to the desired specification and should be assured in following terms of:

    1. Functional requirement
    2. Nonfunctional Requirements (or) User Interface
    3. Security
    4. Compatibility/Integrity

    So, What does Software Testing exactly refer to?
    Is software testing all about Quality alone? The answer is a resounding ‘No’. Software testing is about Simplicity, Ideas/Approach, Thinking like an end user, Coverage, Documentation, Finding defects, Time management.

    Simplicity: Testing is about building simple applications as preferred by users. So testers should recommend ideas to simplify applications in terms of functional and nonfunctional attributes – like simplifying labels, buttons, alerts and appearance – to make them user-friendly.

    Ideas/Approach: Testing is about the approach to find defect(s). No two persons can look at a issue in the same way and will have different ways of approaching a problem. Similarly, different applications need to be tested differently. An application operating with a large amount of data (ex: Railway tracking system) should be tested differently from an application which involves a large number of users.(ex: social networks).

    Think like an End user: This is one common suggestion that we testers hear everyday. Applications should be designed in such a way that the user navigates the application with ease and convenience. Testers should check whether attributes like buttons, warnings or alerts are user-friendly. Thinking from the user perspective also involves handling negative scenarios which is equally important because we cannot expect every user to have perfect knowledge about the application. Thinking out of the box would help testers to find defects and enhance the quality of applications/software.

    Coverage: More coverage ensures better quality of the application. Coverage involves listing of all the possible scenarios, negative conditions, and boundary conditions, prioritizing the test cases, and preparing the RTM (Requirement Traceability Matrix). Prior preparation of these ingredients results in better Testing recipe.

    Documentation: Documentation not only guides testers to perform effectively but also helps in tracking test status and enhancing flexibility. Adapting good Coverage, and listing all the test cases, test scenarios, test data and defect logs along with screenshots & videos helps other resources to perform further testing in the absence of initial testing resource. However, different models of testing like V model and Agile model involve different types of documentation styles.

    Finding defects: When we encounter a mismatch between the expected result and the actual result, we consider it a defect. Every defect fixed adds to the quality of the application. No defect should be ignored, however minor it is. Defects can be observed significantly while considering negative scenarios or when performing an adhoc testing. These can be raised effectively when the Tester is fully aware of every bit of functionality and requirements of the software.

    Time Management: We already know that Quality of software is measured in terms of the number of defects found. But it is equally important to realize that Defects found after the test cycle has negative impact like increasing cost. Testers are prone to tight schedules, which makes us overlook a few defects sometimes. Appropriate Testing in available time should be the objective for every tester. Considering attributes such as Requirement analysis, Scope of testing, Defining test strategy, Estimating Test effort & test team, and Defining test schedule will definitely yield best testing results.

    If there is something else which is of utmost importance for software testing, it is ‘Attitude’. No work makes sense when the base approach lacks its objective. Testers need the right attitude to do the right job in the right place.

    Collaboration within the team and with other teams would be of great help. Testers should approach findings on the application/software positively, in a fact-focused manner, rather than criticizing the person who made the app. Finally, Testers’ attitude should be about working towards a common goal of “delivering better Quality systems”.

    (Subha kanth is a Software QA Trainee at [x]cubeLABS. He graduated in Electronics and communications engineering from SASTRA University. When not chained to work, he loves exploring Software​ Testing practices and blogging on various aspects of QA.)