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What's the first discussion about while building a new digital product? Is it about marketing strategies, sales, resources, or technology? No, it's about the problem, people, and their needs. Once you get clarity about these you start designing the accurate framework to serve your audience well. That's where design thinking comes into the picture to make product development easy and precise. Let's dive deeper into it. Quick overview of design thinking In simple words, it's about putting yourself in the customer's shoes. Design thinking is a framework that shows the human-centered path to innovation. It modifies early thinking for the product managers by having a deep look at customers’ needs, aspirations, and frustrations.  Its approach includes redefining the problems, asking questions, challenging decisions to develop strategies, and building solutions. Some advantages of applying design thinking Design thinking is a process on loop. UI/UX designers can conduct usability tests frequently to reduce variability in design concepts and prototypes. Reduce variability: It gives priority to user requirements, emotional state, and behavior, not just qualitative data to develop product design. People-focused, not product-focused: It inspires product managers and designers to build design specifications and test them early during the process. The solution in the form of product: Why design thinking is important in new product development? The quality of good product designers and managers is to keep personal perception aside and understand the target audience’s daily workflow deeply to gain new ideas and insights. Navigating the analytical and tactical information from the beginning is secondary: What total time do we have? What features are to be developed? The revenues benchmark in year one to declare it as successful. What roles should be given to what teams? This is what the design thinking framework tells us. There are two key mistakes in traditional thinking of product development: You started by focusing on the product instead of finding the solution for your user’s problems. Your first objective should be user and their needs, not your organization and your internal needs. So what do you get on integrating design thinking with new product development? Exploring various design concepts and specifications. Collect information through usability tests. Understanding your user’s issues with product interface and usability. Remember that design thinking is a non-linear process. So, designers use different processes in parallel or use them repeatedly in their projects. How can you execute design thinking in new product development? Forget the traditional way of product development and apply design thinking to level up your next IT project. Design thinking is divided into 5 ground-breaking steps: 1. Empathize with customers It's about observing and analyzing the expected target users. It can be done in many ways: usability testing, interviews, conducting surveys, preview short tests and recording their feedback. You can ask questions to strengthen your bond with them like: What do they think of your product? How are they using it? In what ways do they use your product? How do they envision your brand? 2. Defining the issues It's time to compile and analyze the whole data you collected during empathize phase. Thus, you can define the main issues observed during the first phase. Defining problems in a human-centric way rather than a product-centric way is really appreciable. Abilities of designers during this phase: Keep analyzing the issues from various angles and think something outside the box. Define these issues as problem statements in the human-centric method. Encourage the team to try various possibilities of the solution by asking questions. 3. Ideate Don’t stop the ideas and keep them striking. Awake your creative selves and think about design concepts that can solve the user’s issues. It is better to organize brainstorming sessions with your team including stakeholders, designers, developers, and other people of interest to build on each other’s creativity. Note all the relevant and innovative ideas for reference later. 4. Prototype Among all the solutions and ideas, you have formulated, choose the best among them and begin with creating a prototype. Developing a prototype in an early stage will ease the testing of the proposed solution. When you are trying to solve multiple issues, execute all the selected solutions on a single prototype to check if they work together smoothly. This practice will also highlight the limitations, if any, in the product and the proposed solution. In the end, you will know which solutions work best and which need to be rejected or improved. 5. Test Now your task is to check the usability of the functional prototype you developed and ensure that it solves the issues you marked during the second phase. This is the final stage, but if you come across any problems, you will have to get back to the earlier stages. In severe problems, you might also have to start with empathizing phase. If you have limited time and budget, go for a usability test. Takeaways: using design thinking Design thinking isn't only for designers - it's all part of the . Its principles can work for anyone in any industry who is trying to build a solution for a problem. Design thinking acts as a gap filler between the users’ needs and the product features for better coordination in the team. product development process

What Is the Relationship Between Design Thinking and New Product Development?

Over the years, software development methods have also upgraded parallelly with technological advancements. Agile software development methods are one approach in the current software development trends. Agile methodology breaks up the project into many phases and distributes the workloads across the teams. We prioritize continuous improvement at each stage rather than working on changes at the deployment stage altogether. Progress is constantly updated with the team members during the daily scrum meetings. The examples of agile-based development methods are Scrum, eXtreme Programming (XP), Feature Driven Development (FDD), Adaptive Software Development (ADD), Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development (DSD), Lean Software Development, etc. The methods are selected according to the type of product/service to be developed. All these agile methods follow a set of dedicated principles. In this blog, we will focus on five crucial principles of agile methodology. 1. Be open to challenges and changes The agile methodology focuses on being highly responsive to changes at all phases of software development. Our teams must be aware of what is going on in the project at any development phase. The agile method splits the tasks and deliverables into iterations to achieve this high degree of clarity. The iterations must be completed in shorter time frames, usually from a week to four. Ensure that the time frames align with the overall time allocated to the project. JIRA is a tool that helps us improve our code by enabling the creation of quick filters. JIRA gives a clear insight into the agile processes via reporting functionalities and custom workflows. We can build, test, and release software using this tool. 2. Embrace user inputs Since agile software development methods adopt a communicative and responsive approach, the customers are on priority. Feedbacks from the customers should be gathered frequently after each iteration, based on which we can improve the product. Thinking from the user’s perspective instead of pre-assuming things helps us develop better products. A new function suggested by one of your customers may turn into a breakthrough for your company’s products! Sprints by Zoho is a tool that helps in this process. It enables the team to comment on the code changes easily. We can also gather product feedback using this tool and work on the changes in the early stages of development. 3. Facilitate live interaction with actionable software for better visualization and feedback We need to create working and actionable software, instead of theoretical representations. Documentation does play a part in software development, but it is for the records only. If you want to gain insights from your customers and stakeholders, create small working pieces of a product. We may question this aspect, stating that documentation is necessary to support our claims and give surety to the clients. Well, to justify the implementation of the ideas which you have proposed in the documentation, there is no better method than to provide actionable products! When a user comes into live contact with the software, their understanding and perception change. It gives room for improvement and ensures that we are on the same page with our clients. For example, you state that you have used JavaScript to trigger a warning on the web page when users enter a weak password while registering. When this feature is displayed in the prototype, it helps the client visualize it and supports our claims. Keep in mind that your documentation should be short and precise. Mention only the things you have implemented in your outputs, instead of futuristic proposals. We can use tools like AdobeXd, InVision, Webflow, Framer, etc. to create prototypes before we move on to the backend coding. 4. Effective communication to step up software development Inculcating effective communication practices amongst your team members may benefit your project more than adopting a high-end technology stack. Agile software development methods keep the team members engaged through principles like daily scrum meetings and pair programming. Daily scrum calls are used to update the project status from each team member’s side. It helps us devise solutions for problems that the team members might be facing. For example, if the tester has not received the deployable code from the development teams, the testing process gets lagged. It is a high priority task for the testing team than the development team, so plans must be made to compensate for the same. The team can get in touch with each other and negotiate, to come up with effective solutions. Risks can be managed better if the communication between the team is on point. We can assist a team member who might be on the wrong track! Pair programming is a technique where two programmers work together at one workstation, either remotely or in person. While one person takes up the driver role, the other can be the observer/navigator. The driver writes the code, whereas the observer checks each line of code as it is typed in. The programmers must switch roles frequently to ensure equality of workloads. Project communication tools like Teams, Slack, Trello, etc. can help in communication between the teams or within the team. Features like channel creation, tasks assignment, messaging, meeting tools boost the collaborative experience for the Agile teams. 5. Quality over quantity While we are engrossed with meeting the deadlines, we may miss the focus on qualitative aspects of the project during the development cycle. We can provide parts of the software that meet the industrial standards for security and stability. The software can be updated and improvised further. For example, if your login system onboards the user in 2 minutes, try to reduce the time by working on the server’s latency. Remember to keep realistic quality goals and standards so that you don’t waste time in high-pressure situations to achieve something out of your reach. Performance testing tools like Selenium, Soap UI, Apache JMeter help to evaluate our work against test cases, to ensure that the quality standards are met. The above agile principles are tailored according to the specific methodologies we choose, the type of projects, and business requirements. We can further improvise our by incorporating DevOps practices. agile software development methods

The 5 Principles of Agile Software Development  

UI and UX design are one of the booming industries in recent times. Companies are investing more in UI/UX design services, as it serves as a bridge to deliver the best user experience through their products. The UI/UX designers are no less than artists, as they put forth their creative and innovative sides to create impactful designs that solve users' problems. To create precise and intuitive designs, using the right tool is very important. Design tools are used at all stages of your UI and UX journey such as creating wireframes, prototypes, rendering MVP (Minimum Viable Product), etc. There are a lot of open sources and paid tools to amplify your UI/UX design. With the help of design tools, the teams can stay organized and work collaboratively. The design tools with respective plugins accelerate the designer’s work. Design enthusiasts and professional designers can make use of these tools. While some tools work both in UI and UX, some are limited to either UI or UX design. In this blog, we will talk about a few UI/UX design tools. Without any further ado, let us get started! 1. Sketch The sketch is a popular UI design tool, that helps work on early ideas to handoffs. With Sketch, you can collaborate in real-time with your fellow designers to create that pixel-perfect artwork. Sketch allows us to gather rapid feedback from the stakeholders, share prototypes for testing, and facilitate a smooth developer handoff. You can create your workspace and design system using Sketch. The design systems include styles and symbols that are reusable and responsive to fit the content. Developers can view, inspect and measure the design in any browser and OS, without installing the Mac app or a third-party plugin. Sketch provides hundreds of plugins, assistants, integrations, and animates interactions to make your design more accessible. 2. AdobeXD AdobeXD is a simple and easy-to-use prototyping and wireframing software that enables designers and developers to create interactive prototypes of websites, apps, and connected products. AdobeXD is unique because it's easy to learn, it's completely vector-based, and it's part of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Also, AdobeXD works seamlessly with other Creative Cloud apps and services, making collaboration across teams easier. It includes Adobe Stock for adding relevant, royalty-free images to prototypes. The tool is also integrated with Behance, a platform for showcasing and sharing your work, for easy sharing and feedback. 3. Figma Figma is a web-based interface design tool that is both simple and powerful. It is designed for teams of all sizes to collaborate on the same project. There are many uses for Figma, including creating screen interfaces for mobile applications, wireframing for web applications, and creating images for user interface component libraries. The primary benefit of Figma is that it allows multiple people to work on the same project at the same time, while giving each person the ability to work on their component or component library, within the context of the overall design. Figma is integrated with Dribbble, a platform to showcase your designs, and build your design portfolio. 4. InVision InVision is the fastest and easiest way to create clickable, interactive prototypes that look and feel exactly like your finished product. You can use Invision to ideate and design beautifully-designed mockups with a dynamic whiteboard. It allows you to collaborate with your team, uncover potential issues, and gather feedback from customers and stakeholders. Invision is also a feature-rich design platform that allows you to add and style your prototypes using CSS and JavaScript while giving you the ability to include rich media, videos, and presentations. All of these functions help you create clickable, interactive prototypes that look and feel like your final product. 5. Miro Miro is an online collaborative whiteboard platform that helps in digital brainstorming, documentation, and managing an Agile workflow. Miro is an interesting tool because it allows the designer to connect through video conferences and screen sharing. Miro allows designers to share projects and ideas, thus making collaboration easier. Miro is also a free unlimited program. This helps novice designers also to explore and experiment with their design skills, without worrying about workspace-related issues. 6. Webflow Webflow is an online platform that allows you to design web pages using a drag and drop interface and without using any code. It gives you the honor to build a website with the power of HTML, CSS, and Javascript in a visual canvas. It is a great tool for both beginners and advanced users. To create a website using Webflow, all you have to do is sign up for a free account on their website, build your website using their drag and drop interface, and publish it. 7. Optimal Workshop An Optimal Workshop is a unique tool that gives you the best research methods to provide an informed user experience. It gives you various research tools such as OptimalSort(card sorting), TreeJack(Tree testing), ChalkMark(First click testing), Questions(Online survey), Reframer(Qualitative research). It helps to improve digital products built by the designer with quality research. I hope this blog helped you learn about a few renowned design tools for UI/UX design. The combination of two or more of these tools will help you step up your Design game. There are various famous UI where designers use these tools to bring out the best designs. UX design studios

The Best UI/UX Design Tools For a Designer

Cloud migration strategies are high-level plans adopted by an organization to move their existing on-premise workloads and data to cloud environments or switch from one cloud service to another. The choice of cloud migration strategies varied according to the levels of agility, scalability, technical experimentations, and ownership that the organization wants to achieve. There are many cloud service providers in the market such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Provider (GCP), Microsoft Azure IBM, Alibaba, etc. which provide a wide range of tools and services for cloud migration. In this blog, we shall use AWS as our immediate reference. Amazon Web Services was inspired by Gartner’s 5 Rs model that defined all options available for cloud migration. The AWS cloud migration framework further modified this model into 7 Rs of cloud migration strategy about which we will be discussing in this blog. 7Rs of Cloud Migration Strategy 1. Repurchase: The Updated Newbies In this strategy, we withdraw an existing application and replace it with a cloud-based version from the AWS Marketplace. Here. We start a new license agreement in the cloud, which requires lesser effort in comparison with the “lift and shift” strategies. Applications such as CRM, HR, finance, ERP, etc. can be migrated using this option. The applications are published by different vendors in the AWS Marketplace and categorized according to the delivery modes, pricing, categories, etc. The popular categories provided by the AWS cloud migration framework include Operating Systems, Data Products, Machine Learning, Storage, Networking, DevOps. 2. Relocate: Switch Up Locations Relocate is the option where we move our infrastructure to the cloud without purchasing new hardware, rewriting applications, or modifying existing operations. This can be done with the help of VMWare Cloud on AWS, as it supports compatibility and portability between AWS and the on-premise environment. For example; relocating the hypervisor hosting Oracle Database to VMWare Cloud on AWS. 3. Rehost: Modify None, Lift, and Shift More In this strategy, we move on-premise applications to the cloud environment, without modification. This option is chosen when there is a need to migrate large-scale legacy apps to meet targeted business objectives. We must identify the apps which can benefit from the cloud environment, without major architectural changes. Rehost is also the first stage for performing refactoring or re-architecting apps in cloud migration because rehost makes it easier to spin up realistic development/testing environments. The process is not that easy when compared to repurchase, but AWS provides efficient tools to perform rehosting with ease. Cloud Endure Migration and AWS Server Migration Service (AWS SWS) are two such services. 4. Replatform: Modify Less, Lift, and Shift Extra In this strategy, we replace a few components of the application and host them in the cloud environments. The components are replaced or rebuilt in such a way that they take advantage of the cloud environment. It mostly involves switching from self-hosted architecture to managed services. We should focus on applications that require minimal optimizations if replatforming is the chosen strategy. AWS Lambda, Amazon Cognito, Amazon MQ, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight, etc. are a few services provided by AWS to rebuild parts of the applications. Extensive testing and monitoring are mandatory in this strategy, even if minimal components are modified. This includes testing and monitoring post-cloud migration also. We should pay attention to metrics like security, performance, functionality, and usability because we surely don’t want a crashing application after investing time and effort in the cloud migration process. Amazon CloudWatch can help in application monitoring. 5. Refactor/Re-Architect: Almost Building Them From Scratch This is the most expensive approach to cloud migration. Here, the application undergoes a complete makeover to adapt itself to the cloud environment. We can opt for this strategy when there is a strong business need for cloud-native features. In most cases, the application is broken into independent services and transitioned into a microservices architecture in the cloud. The applications are refactored only after they are rehosted in the cloud. This strategy involves high risk and efforts, hence should be executed with utmost care. AWS offers a wide range of services in areas like servers, databases, cloud environments, migration tools, testing and monitoring tools, batch processing tools, security tools, source code management, workspaces, etc. The refactoring process is done on Amazon Workspaces with collaborative, skilled, multi-location teams. The development environments are responsive, powerful, collaborative, and secure. Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, AWS Directory Services, Active MQ on AWS, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda, Amazon Cognito, Amazon MQ, AWS Glue, Amazon QuickSight, AWS Secret Manager, etc. are a few tools used in the refactoring journey. As much as we talk about cloud adoption, it is not the right option in all circumstances. The 6Rs cloud migration strategy model includes passive options for not choosing cloud migration also. “Retain” and “Retire” are the last two R’s which do not perform cloud migration. 6. Retain: Services Which Can Camp-In Retain is when we opt to keep the items as it is in our existing IT portfolio. We retain applications under circumstances where there are strict regulations to store data on-premises only. We also retain our applications and workloads when cloud migration is not feasible. It is advisable to retain your applications when there are active projects within them, or when the applications and operating systems are not compatible with the targeted cloud environment. Identifying applications which can be retained in the early stages while mapping out the cloud migration can help us make informed decisions. This prevents us from following the cloud adoption trends blindly. 7. Retire: Done and Dusted! Retire is a cloud migration strategy option where we turn of services that are no longer needed. These services are identified in the early areas of mapping the cloud migration. This may include redundant workloads also. Turning off these services enables the organization to focus on areas that provide more business value and saves resources. However, we must be aware of all the upstream dependencies of a workload before retiring them. Bottom Line Organizations can reach out to cloud migration consultancy services to get a clear idea of which strategy would suit their needs the best. Cloud migration consultancies provide insights into the nuances of cloud adoption and provide clearance on factors like payment, ownership, compliance, governance, security, risk management, support systems, and much more. The consultancy services can also help us choose between various cloud providers, for example; choosing between AWS Cloud migration framework or Google Cloud migration framework for our replatform strategy. Also published on: https://dzone.com/articles/what-are-the-7-rs-of-cloud-migration-strategy

An Intro to the 7 Rs of Cloud Migration Strategy

User Experience Design, as the name suggests, is all about the user’s experience of interacting with a product or a service. To design a great UI, one must be aware of the concepts of UX design too. It helps the designer adopt an empathetic approach. When combined with their expertise in tools and technology, proper designs generate profitable results. UX Design revolves around a plethora of psychological concepts, whose conclusions are pretty subjective. It varies according to the industry, demographics, business requirements, and many other factors. The UX design process divides into four key phases; user research, design, testing, and implementation, iteratively. We may be in our testing phase, but we are liable to revisit the first phase of user research. Because new issues pop up, and our perspectives may change from time to time in our UI design journey. Now, let us look at the steps in the UX design process: User Research User research is the backbone of the UX design process. The notion that we do not know our users, helps us create better UX designs! It allows us to adopt a growth mindset and gather direct and indirect inputs from our target audience. In this phase, we interact with several groups of users from different backgrounds and with different experiences, who are a part of your target audience. For example, a social media application may include users from various countries, age groups, disabilities, etc. We try to understand user behavior by conducting interviews, online surveys, and user testing. We may ask questions to the user or allow them to interact with the UI. We get direct answers at times, yet it does not suffice. The real catch lies in the interactions and emotions of the user. We UX researchers must decode this. Based on our observations, we create user personas to refine our results. It helps us to filter assumptions, gain new insights. Now, we can devise a plan that aligns with our capabilities and business requirements. Wireframing and Prototyping In this step, we develop a tangible to test on the live and potential users, based on the inputs from the previous steps. Here we focus on information hierarchy, and most importantly, usability. The wireframes are skeletal versions of the end designs. It illustrates the website or app page with factors like space allocation, content prioritization, functional availability, behavior intention, and accommodation. To put it in simple words, they are the pencil sketches of the final UI. A digitized version of the wireframe is the prototype. We can create prototypes with tools like Figma, InVision, AdobeXD, Balsamiq, etc. We can create more than one prototype to explore which idea works the best for ourselves and our dear users! We use card sorting techniques to prioritize our features in the wireframe. For example, on Instagram, when we open the app, we get the short stories at the topmost part of the page, later we get to see the posts. The chat options, reels, suggested posts, etc. occupy different spaces in the application. Usability Testing Now, it’s the showdown time for our prototype! The deliverable in the previous step is given to the users for interaction and feedback. Here we get to identify the problems and issues encountered by the user. This step may require us to trace back to any of the previous steps. It may seem to be an extra workload, but anything to increase user satisfaction and our company’s reputation is worth the hustle! Usability testing is conducted through various methods. It is carried out by questionnaires, simple observations, surveys, interviews, heatmaps, etc. The tester or moderator asks the participants to perform tasks, using the prototypes of the UI. The interactions are heat mapped; clicks and navigations on the prototype are traced using tools. The person’s reactions are observed for each move. Sometimes, the participant is asked to talk out loud upon each interaction with the moderators, to gain better insights. The tester/moderator should ensure that they do not influence the participant in any way, as it tampers the results. The tasks are planned realistically. The tasks may be direct or indirect. For example, adding a product to the cart from their Wishlist, or getting rid of an error message in the app. The tasks are curated in a way that the task wordings do not distract the participant or lead to misinterpretation. The users can be active people who use the exact product or even people using similar products. Usability testing can be qualitative or quantitative. While qualitative testing focuses more on behavioral insights and analytics, quantitated testing shifts the focus on pre-defined targets and metrics. A few metrics are the number of clicks to complete a task, task time, and success. While qualitative testing results aid in our UX design process, quantitative testing helps to collect benchmarks. Remote testing is when the moderator and participant are in different physical locations. We use video conferencing and screen sharing software like zoom, skype, GoToMeeting, etc. We can also conduct A/B testing to choose between any two iterations. Implementation of the User Experience Design Once the prototype is finalized, the UX designer hands it out to the UI designer, who works on the aesthetics and functional aspects of the UI. The role of a UX designer at this phase depends upon the type of the organization. In the case of a startup, the UX designer works along with the UI designer and can view the final version. If the organization is larger, the User Experience Design team is kept in the loop but isn’t involved in the hands-on part of the design. However, the UX designer constantly works on feedbacks, news, trend analysis, task refining, etc., and documents their findings for future projects.

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