We did not include Headspace and Calm, as these are highly popular and well-advertised applications, instead opting to focus on unique mental health apps recognized across different categories.

Let’s start.

MoodPath

Category: Medical

Moodpath is a mental health app designed specifically for people who have developed challenges with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.

The app was developed with psychotherapists and scientists and is a risk class I medical device according to the Medical Device Directive (MDD).

Here are some of the key features:

• Daily questions about your emotional and physical well-being
• Bi-weekly mental health assessments
• Therapists, psychologists, and other healthcare professionals with whom you can share your assessments

How it works:

• A dynamic monitoring recognizes symptoms of mental disorders
• Receive personalized recommendations based on your answers
• Helpful insights and statistics help you to detect patterns and triggers
• Optionally, you can connect Apple Health data to receive insights about the connection between mood and your physical activity
• Psychological courses and mindfulness exercises can help you with mild and moderate symptoms

Calm

Category: Health & Fitness

Calm is a mental health app for people who combat stress, anxiety, sleep problems and meditation challenges. With their Sleep Stories, breathing programs, masterclasses from celebrities, and relaxing music on the background — Calm is proved to be a #1 meditation and stress relief app.

It is also recommended by top psychologists, therapists, and mental health experts for beginners as well as for intermediate and pro users.

Meditation topics include:

• Calming Anxiety
• Managing Stress
• Deep Sleep
• Focus and Concentration
• Relationships
• Breaking Habits
• Happiness
• Gratitude
• Self-Esteem
• Body Scan
• Loving-Kindness
• Forgiveness
• Non-judgement
• Commuting to work or school
• Mindfulness at College
• Mindfulness at Work
• Walking meditation
• Calm Kids

Some content is only available through an optional paid subscription. If you choose to subscribe, payment will be charged to your Google Account at confirmation of purchase.

Xmed Health

Category: Social Media-Like Apps For Mental Health

Although social media platforms have grown to be stress-inducing for many users, people’s love for socializing online can be channeled to alleviate modern stressors and solve other mental health issues. The Xmed app may be the best example of that, offering users a health and lifestyle mobile ecosystem, a social network, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms in one package.

Here is how it works: AI asks a series of questions to identify a user’s health issue, juxtaposes that data with available medical data and information provided by other app users, and arrives at a conclusion. The user can then start talking with certified mental health professionals to tackle the problem, as well as discuss it with people who have the same issue in the app’s in-built social media network.

Apart from its uniqueness and technological capabilities, the Xmed Health also has a well thought out flow, whose primary focus is to help a user solve their issue, beautiful design and animations, and gamification with levelling up and achievements.

On top of all this, you can use the app to identify other health issues. making Xmed Health not only one of the best mental health apps, but also a solid health app in general.

Xmed Health is available in the Appstore.

My Possible Self

Categories: Mental Health Therapy Apps, Mental Health Tracking Apps

My Possible Self promises to help its users lower stress and anxiety levels in eight weeks with a range of features backed up by clinically approved content. To deliver on the promise, the app offers over a wide range of learning modules aimed at various stress-inducing situations in life.

The modules include:

• Stress and overload management
• Fear and anxiety management
• Overcoming loss and big life changes
• Problem solving
• Happiness and well-being management
• Tackling negative thinking
• Returning to pleasant activities
• Improving daily communication

The list does not end there, as the app’s creators continuously update it with different new modules. The first learning module is free, but to access the rest users need to have a subscription.

Still, the app has a number of other aspects that make it one of the best mental health apps. There is a comprehensive mood tracking tool/dairy, created with the help of the company’s in-house psychologists. A user can track their mood daily, selecting how they feel and pinpointing activities, people, and places that influence their mood and well-being.

Working alongside the tracking tool is the Mood History and Insights features that help users detect mood patterns and act accordingly to improve how they feel. The latter displays mood shifts in a comprehensive chart, showing the patterns and proposing potentially suitable lifestyle changes with the help of custom algorithms. What is more, users can add written notes and images to every mood entry — a small but nice touch that enriches the experience.

The content used in My Possible Self is clinically and statistically proven to lower stress and improve well-being in an eight weeks’ time. To ensure that, the creators partnered with a leading non-profit mental health research facility called The Black Dog Institute.

My Possible Self was warmly received by users and praised by media outlets like London Evening Standard and Buzzfeed. It is available both in the Appstore and Google Play.

Happify

Categories: Event Based Mental Health Apps, Gamified Mental Health Apps

Happify has a lot to offer. The app uses a set of comprehensive features that rely on science-based games and activities to help users fight stress consistently across all life areas.

At the app’s centre are Tracks, a section with stretches of different simple activities that help users improve their well-being on a daily basis.

These include, for example, singling out small moments in your day that made you feel good and choosing a person to be thankful to. Every user has a progression scale for each track as well as six skills they upgrade by completing it: Savor, Thank, Aspire, Give, Empathize, and Revive. There over sixty available tracks for different aspects of life, part of them only through subscription.

For those who want small bits instead of a long progression, there is an Instant Play section. Here, users can complete activities separately for each of the aforementioned skills.

Other features include:

• Happify Daily — articles, videos, infographics, and other types of content related to improving emotional well-being
• Community — a minimalist social network users can choose to be part of and share the activities completed for the skills with others
• Negative Knockout — a game where you bring down your negative emotions in the style of Angry Birds.

The feature list is bigger still. For example, the app offers a twenty-page character strength report for each user, compiled in partnership with The VIA Institute. Meanwhile, Happify’s approaches were developed by leading scientists and experts in positive psychology, cognitive behavioural therapy, and mindfulness.

Happify was widely praised by users and media, including reviews in ABC World News and The New York Times. The company also claims that eight-six percent of their regular users report improved well-being in the two month since they started using the app.

Happify is available for iOS and Android. Part of the features are free, while the rest can be accessed by subscribing.

What Makes Top Mental Health Succeed

There is a pattern to why the aforementioned mental health apps enjoy success — they all tick the same important boxes. Here are the success factors:

• Mental health professionals should be involved in as many stages as possible
• The app should have a diverse set of features for a user to choose from
• The features should be backed up by scientific research
• The app should have its unique feature, or approach a common feature from a different angle
• Mood journal is an important feature
• Gamification helps to keep the users engaged
• The app should have an appealing design

Now that you have taken a closer look at the top apps for mental health and what makes them so, you can start planning your own unique mobile product for those who want to tackle their mental health issues in a handy, clear, and pleasant way.

Good luck!

If you want to learn more about digital healthcare technologies, see some of our recent articles on the topic:

1. Trends in Connected Health & Wellness Devices
2. The Current State of IoT in Healthcare

If you need a consultation about your mental health app or other healthcare project, get in touch with our experts.

The post From Calm to Xmed: 5 Best Mental Health Apps Done Right appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Long gone the days when you had to wake up at the break of dawn to make it to the first lecture. Can’t stop thanking the digital era, as today you can have your schedule and learn exactly what you want with online learning platforms.

So get yourself comfortable, as we’re about to dive into the best platforms to expand your skills and knowledge in 2020.

What is an online learning platform?

Generally, an E-learning platform is a portal or a learning environment that enables a person to get educational content or/and online instructions on a particular topic. The format of the content can vary presentations, video lectures, webinars, quizzes, articles, and even educational jokes. What is more, depending on a platform, you can get access for free with/without registration, or you will need to pay for membership/or courses. In other words, an online learning platform is a space with endless opportunities to acquire comprehensive knowledge via easy-to-use and engaging tools.

What are the best online learning platforms?

In the list below, we have reviewed and picked the best e-learning portals in 2020. The ultimate guide ranks and compares the resources based on the methods and formats of learning, areas of knowledge, recognition, reliability, and pricing plans. Whether you are a freelancer looking to expand your skills, or a professional in need to find a new hobby, or an enthusiast always eager to learn something new, you will discover platforms to suit your interests ideally.

The Ultimate List of Online Learning Platforms

1. Udemy

Educational space for nearly 12 million learners from over 200 countries, Udemy is one of the most popular e-learning platforms, as it is believed to have the best educational content on any topic you can think of: from complex machine learning to extravagant World End of the World (not so odd now, though).

Pros

• It offers a truly wide choice among over 100 000 online courses.
• You can enjoy a great range of free online materials.
• There’s a creative approach to learning.
• The pricing rates are reasonable enough.
• Expert teachers and tutors in any field imaginable, challenging the stereotypes of the educational system.
• Udemy is internationally recognized as a high-quality content online learning platform.
• You receive lifetime access to your courses.
• There is a possibility to request a refund.

Cons

• Teachers have high commissions on most of their sales, sometimes up to 50%.
• The learning experience is a bit inconsistent, taking classes from various tutors on one topic.
• There’s a lack of interaction between a student and an instructor.
• Lessons are in video-lectures format mainly.

Best for: Business-minded students who like engaging lecture material, you will find it all. If you’re looking for a certificate, though, it’s not the place.

Pricing Plans

• Free trial for two weeks;
• Udemy Team – $240 a year;
• Udemy Enterprise – Need to contact a vendor;
• The price of courses start at approximately $20.

Get at App Store.

2. Skillshare

Among learning platforms online, Skillshare stands out combining creativity with the traditional method of learning (that of a class structure). You may be asked to do homework and create a class project to accomplish real growth. You can explore new skills and get first-hand knowledge from expert teachers.

Pros

• The platform offers an enormous range of creative courses focused on photography, art, writing, and freelance work.
• There’s a wide choice of free classes.
• Teachers never stop impressing with interactive videos and activities.
• Pricing is truly reasonable at the platform.
• Convenient community tools that enable one to communicate with instructors in comments, as well as upload the completed homework projects.

Cons

• There is no refund policy. In case you signed up, paid for the subscription, and didn’t find what you need, you won’t be able to get your money back.
• There is a lack of business-based courses in comparison with Udemy, for instance.
• Instructors are not examined; anybody can become an instructor.

Best for: It’s great for creative personalities who know exactly what they want to learn or brush up on. Having no one-on-one classes, users studying at this platform should be great at self-organization.

Pricing Plans:

• Free Trial for three months;
• Skillshare Premium Monthly – $15 a year;
• Skillshare Premium Annually – $8,25 a month.

Get at App Store. 

3. Lynda.com

Another engaging portal to enhance your skills in software development, business, marketing, and other fields. It specializes in video learning format and offers a full scope of courses for those seeking self-study. With flexible and cost-effective solutions, this subsidiary of LinkedIn has a lot to offer.

Pros

• The platform offer certificates of completion once you’ve finished the course.
• Instructors are examined and pre-qualified to teach on Lynda.
• Users can see teachers’ credentials and achievements to choose the first among equals.
• The platform adds more credit to the user’s LinkedIn profile, showing the courses you’ve completed.
• Your LinkedIn profile with Lynda courses will be displayed first to the employers looking for a particular certificate or skill-related candidate.

Cons

• Users cannot review or rate the courses they have completed.
• After the end of your subscription, you will no longer have access to any of the learning materials.
• There is a lack of hands-on experience, as there are few projects given as individual assignments.

Best for: Developers, marketing specialist, freelance photographers, and designers will enjoy fair rates for high-quality educational video content from industry experts who have been vetted.

Pricing Plans:

• Free Trial for one month;
• Basic individual monthly Plan – $29,99 a month;
• Basic individual yearly Plan – $24,99 a month;
• Corporate Plan – $350 a user.

Get at App Store. 

4. Udacity.com

An innovative online learning platform that stands out for its recognized nano degree among employers. The courses are crafted by ultimate demand among companies. That is why the content on this platform is always industry-relevant. The pricing is quite high, though, in comparison with other spaces.

Pros

• Collaboration with companies enables the platform to offer the most relevant content, in turn, providing skills that are in high demand these days.
• The lectures are well-thought-out, high-quality, and genuinely engaging.
• The courses are planned, taking into consideration hands-on experience, so you will be given projects to complete.
• All the instructors are industry experts having first-hand knowledge of the topic they’re teaching.
• There are free materials to enjoy.
• The achieved nano degree after completing the course is recognized among employers.
• There is a possibility to receive a full refund.

Cons

• Many courses include challenges that are too difficult to tackle within a few months.
• Some may consider it a drawback and someone as an advantage; the complexity of courses is University-degree.
• Considerable previous knowledge is needed to take up courses, as they can be almost impossible to handle by beginners.

Best for: Learners with significant basic expertise in the area eager to enhance their education and strengthen their skills. Plus, learners should be ready for rather complex University degree material.

Pricing Plans:

Individual pricing plans for Nanodegrees ranging from $399 to $7000 per course.

Get at App Store.

5. Coursera.org

One of the few online learning platforms providing the opportunity to acquire knowledge from the best Universities. It is a dream come true for those aspiring to attend lectures at Ivy League schools, Harvard or Cambridge, free of charge. Plus, you can receive a certificate of participation after having completed the course.

Pros

• Free lectures from the world’s most recognized institutions.
• There is a possibility to get a paid certificate that you have attended lectures at top schools.
• It offers nearly 1600 courses available.
• The classes are provided in 8 languages: Turkish, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, French, English, Chinese, and traditional versions of the Chinese language.
• Instructors are the leading experts in the best schools in the world.
• Lectures are updated now and then.

Cons

• There are courses for beginners only.
• All the instructors are university professors only.
• The courses are often focused on popularity rather than skills relevance.

Best for: Beginners who can try out, experiment, and find the field that speaks to them. What is more, for those thinking about changing careers, it may be a good start.

Pricing Plans:

• Free general lectures;
• Free 7 day trial for Specialization programs;
• Paid subscriptions ranging between $39-79 per month.

Get at App Store.

6. Edx.org

Another educational portal is offering access to fascinating lectures at top tier universities, Harvard being a priority. You can receive a Micromasters (kind of a slight degree) after completing the course. Employers recognize certificates you receive at the end of a program.

Pros

• Access to 2500+ online courses from the leading institutions worldwide: MIT, Harvard, Australian National University, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and others.
• There is an enormous scope of online courses: from business and management to engineering, from computer science to humanities – you can find any are you are interested in.
• Easy-to-navigate website and mobile app that only has relevant info with no annoying popups.
• High-quality content from expert university professors around the world.
• They offer great corporate solutions.
• Truly reasonable pricing for massive online courses.

Cons

• Disastrous testimonial section that makes user question the reliability of the platform.
• There is a limited selection of Micromasters.
• Discussion forums are not easy-to-navigate.

Best for: Students from modest-income countries can benefit by having an opportunity to explore new skills from recognized professors at top world universities.

Pricing Plans:

• Free online courses;
• Fees for upgrade or professional course enrollment range between $50-$300 per course.

Get at App Store.

7. Futurelearn.com

An innovative space to get up-to-date knowledge studying with online courses, exploring creative programs, and even getting a degree from first-class institutions, business schools, and industry organizations. Enjoy the variety of activities: video lessons, articles, quizzes, and in-depth discussions for affordable rates.

Pros

• One of the most extensive scopes of various methods and activities.
• There is a possibility to gain an internationally recognized qualification after completing the course created by leading institutions.
• Learners can enjoy an enormous scope of free industry-specific videos, articles, as well as take up free online courses.
• Website design and structure are truly pleasing to the eye and easy-to-navigate.
• High-quality content from qualified instructors at top universities.

Cons

• Certifications of completion and degrees must be paid for.
• There is no mobile application.

Best for: Professionals who want to expand their skills, as well as explore a new hobby in humanities mainly. Though, it’s a bit mediocre for software developers.

Pricing Plans:

• Free access for ten weeks;
• Upgrade – $84;
• Unlimited Plan – $269 per year.

No App yet

Top Online Learning Platforms: Final Words

No doubt, E-learning is paving its way to shape the way we see education and is no longer perceived as something trivial. By 2025 E-learning is predicted to reach revenue of $325 billion. The demand for engaging and interactive learning is rising, and these days learning platforms online can rise again sharply, leaving traditional institutions behind.

Among the main reasons why online learning continues gaining its popularity are affordability, interactivity, and relevance. Generally, massive institutions are falling behind, being unable to adjust the curriculum and the scope of knowledge fast. Nowadays, the demand for particular skills can change overnight, and online platforms can tailor the courses way quicker to meet the needs of learners. Not to mention, the new challenge of being isolated and having to study from home during the coronavirus crisis.

Summing up, quarantine exposed people to many problems, and education has become one of them. However, thanks to endless opportunities open online, not only can we tackle the challenge, but we can also reap all the benefits of having flexible schedules and acquiring relevant knowledge. We hope you have found this guide useful and picked the educational platform that is just right up your street.

We are a devoted and professional team that has vast experience in mobile app development. Our developers will offer you the most suitable solutions, give you tips on design and features that might be a great advantage of your application. What is more, we can take the project into work at any time, as we have all the necessary tools and technologies to work remotely.

Help others to become better versions of themselves with your awesome ideas for an app. Talk to our app developers and experts to find out more about the topic and how your business or project can start benefiting from it today!

The post The Best Online Learning Platforms To Give a Try in 2020 appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

We find ourselves limited to our homes, but still, we can look on the bright side. For instance, work from home requires spending at least eight hours a day in front of the laptop, but we save at least two hours every day as there is no need to commute to the office. This extra time gives us a chance to spend some quality time with our family as well as devote it to personal growth and development. Take care of your body and mind by taking up physical exercises.

Apart from being good for our body, sports activities also help to keep peace of mind. It will distract you from disturbing thoughts and make you feel better during the quarantine. Despite unfortunate reasons, it’s a great opportunity to challenge yourself, make your body look better, or maintain your regular routine before lockdown. Luckily, nowadays, we even don’t need to go to the gym to stay fit, thanks to mobile apps.

The statistic shows that the number of downloads of fitness apps has risen within the past few weeks. More people now have a chance to do things they’ve always postponed due to the lack of time or other reasons we come up with just not to exercise.

If you are looking for the right mobile application, we have researched on this topic and came up with the list of the best fitness apps for iOS and Android. The applications have a number of features that won’t require additional instructions from the coach, as you can have it all online. Living in the era of advanced technologies makes it possible to get through the difficult times easier and adds some entertainment to our daily routine. Go through the list and find the most suitable app for regular training.

5 Top Fitness Apps for Stretching and Yoga

Stretching and yoga are great ways to start your day as you will tune up your muscles and wake up your body for a productive day. Here are 5 top fitness apps that can help you with that.

Down Dog: Yoga Practice for All Levels

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

Down Dog is one of the best apps for fitness available for both iOS and Android users. The application has a number of features that you can easily customize according to your preferences, starting with the type of practice and ending with pace and instructions.

Down Dog app is designed in a way to suit the needs of every individual user. Here you can choose the type of practice that appeals to your level (from beginner to advanced). The types of practices include Full Practice, Hatha, Gentle (when you want just to relax), Restorative, Quick Flow, No Warmup, Yin, Chair Yoga, Ashtanga, Sun Salutations (the only type of practice that repeats the same set of moves but varies in accordance with the level), Yoga Nidra.

The app offers 60 000 configurations, so everyone can build the practice they love. Another great feature of the app is that you can choose the voice of the instructor you like the most, as well as select the type of music that suits your mood. The time of the practice varies from 7 to 90 minutes. There are five pace modes (slowest, slow, norma, fast, fastest). Every practice includes instructed videos that are easy to follow as you have a visual aid for every pose.

Stretching Exercises at Home – Flexibility Training

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free, offers  in-app purchases

Stretching Exercises at Home is among top-rated fitness apps as it has a wide set of features and sets of exercises that can help you make stretching a regular part of daily life, help you improve flexibility, reduce muscle tension, release pain and relieve stress.

Every user can set a goal for a week and choose the number of days they want to exercise, and the app sends reminders not to forget to exercise. There are Morning Warmup (5 min) and Sleepy Time Stretching (8 min) sets of exercises that help to tune up in the morning and relax before the sleep. In addition to this, you will find sets for Flexibility, Full-Body Stretching, Pain Relief exercises that include Neck & Shoulder Stretching, Lower Back Pain Relief, Knee Pain Relief, and Foam Roller Knee Pain Relief. In addition to this, there are sets for runners and the ones that are oriented on particular parts of your body (Upper, Lower, Full, Back).

The application is suitable for people of all ages, provides voice coach instructions, animated, and video demonstrations of all the exercises track your progress, burned calories, and weight trends. Also, there is one feature that sets this app apart from the other similar ones, here you can create your own training by choosing the exercises you want to do.

Yoga for Beginners: Learn Basic Poses with 30-day Plan

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

Yoga for Beginners is a perfect guide to start yoga practices at home without any equipment. The application offers a 30-day workout plan that will teach you all the basic yoga poses as it designed specifically for beginners. The sets of exercises last for 15 minutes, and you have an animated guide to follow the exercises correctly. Calming music will create a peaceful atmosphere so you can enjoy the practice to the full, relax your body, and take the thoughts under control. The program is suitable for users of any age and gender.

If you want to concentrate on a particular part of your body, you can choose your focus on arms, legs, shoulders, hips, buttocks, back, and core (ABS). In addition to this, premium users can choose a yoga style they want to try. The app offers Hatha, Gentle, Hiit, Lyengar, Pilates, Power, Prenatal & Postpartum, Restorative, Vinyasa, and Yin.

Yoga exercises help not only to relax but also to keep your body fit, strong, help you lose weight and improve the flexibility of the whole body, as well as stay healthy and full of energy.

Flexibility Training & Stretching Exercise at Home

Platforms: Android 

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

Another of the applications that can help you work on the flexibility of your body, gain muscle control, and regenerate faster after the core workout.

Flexibility Training & Stretching offers four unique and well-thought workout programs that include: Full Body Stretching, Upper Body Stretching, Lower Body Stretching, and Back Stretching and Release (to keep your back healthy). Choose the type of workout you want to try and follow the guidelines of the instructor demonstrated by the HD video. The application is designed for men and women of all ages, requires no equipment, and works offline.

Users can find here over 65 bodyweight exercises that can help not only to maintain the flexibility of the body but also help you recover from injuries or heavy workouts. Clear guidelines make it easier to complete the workout and do exercises in the right way.

Premium users have a chance to customize workout according to their individual preferences and needs. Also, they can set up the duration of the training and rest intervals. It is very useful as every person has the individual pace for workouts. Now you can challenge yourself with training created by you.

Yoga Tools From Sadhguru

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free

Sadhguru is a worldwide known yogi and mystic who offers you to discover the science of yoga on a daily basis and in a way that suits contemporary minds. The practices are based on the science of Upa-Yoga that is oriented to keep both your physical and psychological state in peace. 5-minute practices will help you keep your body tuned, as well as help you cope with the situation we are facing today.

Yoga Tools consists of 7 types of practices:

• Yoga for Health: helps to activate the energy of your body and exercise muscles;
• Yoga for Success: a type of practice that will activate alertness and intellectual sharpness by exercising neck and shoulder regions of the body;
• Yoga for Wellbeing: Yoga Namaskar is a powerful practice that is oriented on all three components: body, psychology, and energy;
• Yoga for Peace: the practice of cleanses that results in balanced psychological wellbeing;
• Yoga for Joy: the yoga of sound that helps you create an inner atmosphere of joy;
• Yoga for Inner Exploration: an easy practice that enhances the perception and helps dive into your inner world;
• Yoga fo Love: the practice that helps you strengthen love within.

The Upa-Yoga practices will help you enhance vitality, focus, memory, and productivity. This is a great way to stabilize the body, mind, and emotions. Every practice is guided by the explanation, so you can feel a lasting joy and fulfillment after the practice.

5 Top Rated Fitness Apps for Whole Body Workout

Nike Training Club – Workouts & Fitness Guidance

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

Nike Training Club is on the list of the best apps for fitness for several good reasons. The app offers training sessions that suit your preferences, you can build a personal plan and save the workouts that you liked most to have quick access to them.

The library of the app includes 200 workouts that can be categorized according to the level of difficulty (beginner, intermediate, advanced), duration (from 5 to 45 minutes), intensity (low, moderate, high), focus (strength, endurance, mobility). Also, you can choose the ones with or without equipment.

The app offers workouts that are focused on particular parts of the body, including Abs & Core, Arms & Shoulders, Glutes & Legs.

The workouts are guided by instructors and video demonstrations, making it easy to follow the routine and do exercises in the proper way. They are suitable both for men and women. Here you can find collections of workouts with guidance and instructions like 4-Week Guide to Build Strength, 4-Week Guide to Get Started, 6-Week Guide to Get Lean, Always Ready for the Gym, etc. In addition to this, there are collections of workouts from famous athletes and Nike trainers with additional tips.

Fitness: Home Exercise, 30 Days Body Workout

Platforms: Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

Fitness: Home Exercise is one of the most popular fitness apps as it offers 30 days of body workout to make you better. It’s a great way to motivate yourself, as there are sets of exercises to follow on the days of workout. The sessions will take up to 15-25 minutes, they are fully guided by an instructor and have visual demonstrations, so you do exercises right. What is more, you can not only take care of physical exercises with the help of the application but also start a 30 days diet. There is a menu for every day, including breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and the daily amount of water you have to drink. A vegetarian diet is also available.

Apart from this, here you can find additional courses for Abs Workout, Leg Workout, Core Workout, Butt Workout, Yoga Beginner, and Morning Warmups. You can go through the list of exercises included in the set, read instructions to be ready to proceed according to the workout pace.

The program offered by the application will help its users burn fat and keep fit. All the results will be recorded, so you can keep track of the changes. The app will send regular notifications to remind you about the workout time. It suits both men and women.

Fat Burning Workouts – Lose Weight Home Workout

Platforms: Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

Fat Burning Workouts app is a great choice to keep fit during the quarantine. It will help you lose extra weight quickly or will help you maintain your weight. The sets consist of effective fat burning exercises to lose fat on your belly, legs, and arms. The app offers voice instructions and visual demonstrations of the exercises, so it is like you are working with a personal coach.

The application offers a 30-day plan that you can follow and keep track of your records. The app sends regular reminders, so it’s easier to stay organized. The set of exercises do not require any equipment and can be done at home. The plan is suitable for men and women.

There are additional workout routines available in the app, some of them can be unlocked for premium accounts that include Morning Stretch, Sleepy Time Stretch, Belly Fat Burner HIIT, Slim Down Your Face, etc. Also, premium users can create a personalized workout plan by choosing the trouble zone, level (beginner, intermediate, advanced), adding your personal information (weight, height), and choosing a target weight. The app will generate a customized fat to help you reach goals faster.

FitOn: Fitness Workout Plans

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

FitOn is a popular app that helps millions of people to slim down and to keep fit. Thanks to the application, users have access to numerous workout classes, including stretching, dancing, pilates, yoga, cardio, strength training, HIIT, etc. Now you can exercise anytime and anywhere.

Once you install the application on your phone, it will ask you several questions in order to create a personalized plan for you to follow on a regular basis. The workouts range from 15 to 30+ minutes, and they include guided videos with coaches who can help you reach your target goals. The videos also include subtitles.

Apart from creating a personalized plan, the app also offers a wide range of workout routines, challenges (for instance, WFH Challenge, 10-Day KickstarterBooty Bootcamp, etc.), target area workouts (booty, abs, arms, legs, back. total body). In addition to this, users can choose the duration of the workout and intensity (low, medium, high).

As for the extra features, here you can find useful articles on diet and workouts, find professional tips from trainers, learn more about self-care, etc. Premium users can use a customized meal plan to help them lose weight or build muscles more effectively.

8fit Workouts & Meal Planner

Platforms: iOS/Android

Price: Free, offers in-app purchases

8fit Workouts apps are a great way to motivate yourself to exercises regularly. Thanks to the applications of this kind, you can change your lifestyle while staying on quarantine. Here you can find quick workout routines and create a personalized meal plan to keep a healthy diet.

The application gives a chance to workout anytime and anywhere, and no equipment is required. The sets of exercises last from 5 to 20 minutes, so it is suitable for a busy schedule. The workouts are guided by voice and visual demonstrations. Users can choose their level (beginner, intermediate or advanced) and a category of the exercise (yoga, strength, stretch, HIIT, pilates, boxing).

Also, here you can read interesting articles on nutrition, fitness, sleep, lifestyle, as well as check excellent recipes for a healthy diet. Learn how to organize your week with a healthy meal plan and grocery list (the app will take into account the food you like and don’t like to eat, give tips on the types of food you should avoid, etc.).

The workouts by 8fit will make both men and women sweat as they are challenging and aim to help you change your lifestyle. The app will track your progress and keep you motivated every day.

Fitness App Developers that Turn Ideas into Reality

The development of a great fitness application requires fitness app developers who can take on the project and provide all the necessary support. If you have an idea of the next impeccable app for workouts, you can try the services offered by our company.

We are a devoted and professional team that has vast experience in mobile app development. Our developers will offer you the most suitable solutions, give you tips on design and features that might be a great advantage of your application. What is more, we can take the project into work at any time, as we have all the necessary tools and technologies to work remotely.

Help others to become better versions of themselves with your awesome ideas for workouts. Talk to our app developers and experts to find out more about the topic and how your business or project can start benefiting from it today!

The post 10 Best Fitness Apps During Quarantine appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

1. Brilliant Animation

We all know that complex animation affects how fast a website will load. The more complex the animation, the slower the site loads. But any interactive animation can be effectively optimized without any problems for the website.

Movement can speak louder than words. Using new technologies, you can add amazing animation to your website. For many companies, this is an unknown area, but it’s cool to finally be able to make high-quality animations without losing the loading speed. It’s high time to give it a shot and not be afraid. Otherwise, your competitors will do it first.

Let’s have a look at the UX and UI of a site with amazing animation:

2. Empty Space

Not only is empty space aesthetically pleasing to the users’ eyes, but it also greatly influences the effectiveness of the website because it enhances the readability and perception of the information.

When elements have to fight for attention, they become invisible to the viewer. When one element is highlighted in some way, it gets all the attention. It is crucial to give the site some space to effectively convey the message to the user.

Using empty space when designing a website is quite pragmatic because people tend to percept shortened information for a longer period, and it becomes less understandable. Surrounding an idea with empty space is a great way to highlight it. Just be sure that the concept is worth highlighting.

Here is a website with a lot of empty space:

3. Visual Coding Tools

Sometimes, designers create designs that can’t be implemented within a specific timeframe, or the budget is not big enough. We are also in an era when designers can easily learn to code and, thus, become dangerous. Why? They know enough to argue with developers but not enough to create a website themselves.

In 2020, new tools will make coding easier for designers. In fact, there will be visual tools that will allow designers to create anything they want using HTML and CSS. They will provide designers with the ideal opportunity to start coding.

We’re all moving toward interactive designs, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain the way the aforementioned interaction has to operate and look. The relevance and necessity of a visual instrument cannot be overstated.

Becoming a dangerous designer is a must. It’s crucial to mix design with the coding.

4. Mixed Experience

Visualizations speak louder than words. Embedding fast-loading, unsupervised videos into a site can help the design look more lively.

Content is the driving force. It influences users greatly and powerfully. Mixing content types provide users with a beneficial and unique experience. The main trend for websites to include various screens, illustrations, and videos. A good website should include a little of everything in its design.

A good example is a website called Feed. It has a very unusual concept that takes a user into the world of music, creating an immersive experience. This experience wouldn’t be possible if not for the blend of animation, sound, videos, and text.

Create experiences, not build kits.

5. Asymmetrical Design

Classic website design is symmetrical. It allows you to easily view and follow the flow of information and determine the boundaries of the site. Symmetry conveys a sense of completeness and simply helps users better understand the site’s structure.

In 2020, the trend will be the opposite. Asymmetrical design will become popular. Now is the time when asymmetry will return to sites.

The absence of symmetry helps users separate the navigation menu or sidebar from the rest of the content in a more natural way, leaving more space for useful information. Asymmetry is suitable for emotional design and the use of advertising images that create a positive mood and reinforce emotions. In general, asymmetrical balance helps create a sense of dynamism.

The Japanese GQ website is a good example of asymmetrical design:

What was once a utilitarian approach will become a visually appealing way to present any type of information.

6. Unusual Illustrations

By 2020, we will have everything illustrated to the point that we will have to invent a new style of illustration. Illustrations are nothing more than art on digital media. This medium opens a window of opportunity for artists who hate stock illustrations. Moreover, the more strange and out of the ordinary the illustrations are, the better. That way, the site will be different and stand out from the crowd, attracting attention and encouraging users to interact with the website. Of course, in this case, both designers and illustrators are necessary, but it’s worth it.

Here is some unusual illustration in action:

This absurd design is a good example of using a purely artistic approach to creating content. Here is an example of an interactive, illustrated menu.

7. Soft Gradients

One of the key emerging trends is the use of gradients. It exists now, but in 2020, this trend will not lose its relevance because it’s a very simple technique that adds liveliness to web design.

This year, you will see more sites with soft gradients. Why? Sharp changes in color negatively affect the perception of information. At the same time, monochrome is considered boring. Gradients are very unobtrusive, but they add uniqueness and aesthetics to the product. They are a guaranteed trend for the next five years. Check out this example.

8. Muted Colors

Design critics and reviewers believe that muted color palettes will rule this year. They claim that it will be a response to the prevalence of neon and bright colors in recent years. Brands began to actively differentiate themselves by using the principle that “brighter means more noticeable.” Now, everyone is tired of the colorful flow, and the trend toward calmer colors has begun.

The world of design will not be less colorful this year. The colors will just become a little more restrained and deeper.

Muted colors are achieved by lightening or darkening the main colors:

When working with a white background, it’s important to use lighter muted colors, and when working with a black background, it’s important to use darker muted colors. This rule ensures good compatibility and minimizes contrast.

9. Full-Screen Visual Effects

The center of the screen is the place our eyes naturally focus on. However, there are advantages to using the entire page. Showing that the screen is only a part of the visible content creates an immersive experience. This encourages users to read more and reduces the failure rate.

This trend is more suitable for complex issues and socially significant problems, where it is important to show a person the right context. For instance, this is a website about climate change and resilience work for one of the world’s largest NGOs.

Final Thoughts

If you blindly follow trends, you neglect many things for the sake of a few likes and reposts. Trends are cool, but it’s better to have your own style. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make more money, but sites are remembered for being different. There is no recipe for success, but knowing the trends can help you find it.

The post What To Expect From UX/UI Trends For 2020 appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In this article, we will make projections across 5 technology areas:

• AI algorithms in fake news and the future of media
• The not-so-comfortable truth about the state of AR & VR adoption 
• Endpoint growth, edge computing, and other IoT industry trends
• Financial organizations embracing a shared ecosystem
• First steps of face recognition technology in financial services

There are many interesting developments to talk about. Let’s start.

AI Trends: Algorithms in Media & Fake News

The media industry has already seen AI-driven virtual TV presenters in action. The technology paves the way for a potential revolution in the industry, allowing media companies to produce a lot of content on-the-fly.

Still, over the last two years, the public, the media, governmental organizations, and prominent artists have grown increasingly alarmed about how deepfakes can sway opinions online, influencing political events. In 2017, the University of Washington created the notorious deepfake video of President Barack Obama, there was a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a deepfake video of Mark Zuckerberg, and other examples. The resemblance between the real and fake political figures proved almost uncanny, prompting discussions about the big perils of deepfake technology and other AI uses. 

Today, doctored videos can be spotted upon closer examination, but the technology keeps evolving, while easy-to-use deepfake creation tools are available online. Although current countermeasures can detect deepfakes and their creators quickly and easily, this may change soon: the technology is evolving, so the countermeasures will need to evolve as well. 

Fighting fake articles online will be more challenging, though. MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has been going to great lengths to showcase the scale of the problem. CSAIL has conducted two scientific investigations (publishing a paper for each in the August of 2019), and both showed that current AI-driven fake news detecting systems, no matter how sophisticated, are not effective enough and face many nuanced challenges.

With other companies joining the battle, (including Facebook), this means that we will definitely see more sophisticated AI tools aimed at reducing the quantity and impact of fake news in 2020 and beyond, across the board. 

The laws will follow suit as well. In 2020, we may expect new deepfake and fake news scandals, hearings on that cases, as well as first instances of comprehensive regulation in the most progressive countries. All popular platforms would use AI algorithms to automatically detect and block deepfakes and fake news, as well as trace their creators.

All in all, trends in AI will be a hot topic in 2020.

Augmented & Virtual Reality Trends Slow Down

Although established companies use AR in manufacturing, building construction, retail, and other industries, the general adoption progresses slowly. Games and gamified customer experiences continue to be the main driver for both AR and VR. 

According to a survey by XRDC, fifty-nine percent of AR and VR projects are game-related. This won’t change anytime soon, at least for VR. Steam will be pushing its SteamVR platform with the recently announced Half-Life: Alyx, driving the competition on the VR market. Still, the adoption of both technologies continues to grow steadily in other industries, like education and training. 

As AR has been growing slowly in the last two years, there is no indication this will change in 2020, despite the release of HoloLens 2 in November 2019. There is the usual back-and-forth in the rumours about Apple’s AR headset, but hard evidence on whatever the company is developing will are non-existent. 

Still, we can expect AR to continue breathing new life into familiar experiences. Readers tired of consuming content the old way will definitely enjoy immersive experiences and new story angles enabled by the technology, like those seen in The New York Times AR/VR section and by TIME’s new AR/VR app. 

As for other augmented reality trends, the technology will also help ecommerce drive sales in 2020 and beyond. As customers are tired of the same types of ads and their ubiquity, brands will follow into the steps of Instagram (who released its Spark AR Studio to public this year), building AR catalogues of their goods and creating digital experiences with AR lenses in mind. 

AR lenses and filters are booming, but they should be approached carefully by development teams in the future. For example, Instagram removed filters that depict or promote cosmetic surgery amid concerns they harm mental health.

AR try-in on web pages and in mobile apps would also gain more traction. This option is more cost-effective compared to other AR solutions as well as convenient for users, who would only need to open the camera on their smartphone to try a T-shirt or sunglasses on. 

According to a study published by four UK universities, AR improves decision comfort, prompts users to give positive word-of-mouth recommendations, and drives sales of more expensive products.  

The big-scale adoption of AR will continue in 2020 with products like Adobe’s Aero, which allows designers to create AR experience without coding easily. The iPad app gives users a step-by-step guide on how to build AR scenes, allowing them to use their existing assets from the Adobe Creative Cloud. The app allows to create basic AR experiences, with the full-fledged version coming to desktop in 2020. 

Internet of Things — Adoption Continues  

Most of the IoT industry trends are connected to streamlining existing IoT-driven operations further, sustating IoT device growth, and building massive ecosystems.

Tapping into IoT Metadata

For the last decade, enterprises have been gathering and using data from smart endpoint devices in their IoT ecosystems to a great extent. The next step will be using that data’s metadata to drive intelligence systems, increasing the level of personalization further, and giving context to otherwise incomprehensive scenarios in data sets. As a result, the companies will be able to structure unstructured data and improve the process of developing their cognitive systems.

Confident Endpoint Growth

Staying on the subject of endpoints, their number will grow in 2020, as devices like smart meters, smart lighting, and smart air conditioning are becoming increasingly common in commercial and residential markets. According to Gartner, the utilities industry, who is the leader in endpoint usage, was operating 1.17 billion endpoints in 2019, and the firm projects the number will grow by 14.6 percent in 2020, reaching 1.37 billion. 

Still, the governmental sector will see a more dramatic spike: from 0.53 billion to 0.70 billion (24.3 percent). The quantity of endpoints will also grow substantially in the building automation and physical security industries. 

Other Internet of Things Trends: Edge Computing, Digital Twins

What else can be expected in the IoT area in 2020? According to IDC, enterprises will begin transitioning from cloud-based IoT deployments to edge computing to further streamline IoT deployments and application performance in their ecosystems. 

As for big trends in IoT, the Port of Rotterdam, the largest in Europe, has started a massive project of digitizing its every operation, which will continue in 2020. Some parts of the harbor are already automated, but the ports leadership and partners plan to use the digital twin technology and IoT for a complete digital transformation. The end goal is to entirely rid the port of time loss, cargo loss, spills of CO2, and safety incidents. The harbor also wants to berth crewless automated ships somewhere around 2030. 

Learn more about the port’s plans and progress in detail in the video:

Open & Decentralized Finance

In all likelihood, 2020 will be a watermark year for banks and financial institutions, as they face the inevitability of a large-scale transformation. The concept of open finance — an ecosystem of shared services that converges users and companies in one place to enable better efficiency and experiences — will be the overarching trend. 

This means that financial organizations will have shared transaction data, IT infrastructure, and cross-compatible systems, while the ecosystem itself will be enabled by distributed technologies and more sophisticated and accessible APIs. 

Distributed technology will play a key role in the evolution of the entire industry, giving way to decentralized financial services: lending, borrowing, and other financial operations will be provided on decentralized distributed platforms. Banks will use distributed ledgers to issue bonds (like Societe Generale and Santander did), as digital markets with tokenized financial instruments will emerge. Payments, meanwhile, will be transferred to permission-based distributed networks to enable high security and speed.  

Face Recognition in Financial Services

As facial recognition is available in more and more smartphones and can help financial organizations cut costs and simplify operations and customer experiences, we can expect more financial services that use face recognition at different customer touchpoints. 

Users will be able to verify different actions related to their accounts in seconds by letting smartphones scan their faces. Still, this will require a high level of security from both the financial institutions, smartphone designers, and software teams behind mobile operating systems.

The concept of a federated identity — using your face to manage all of your financial operations — is also on the table, but it will take time to evolve. Mexico has already adopted a biometric security mandate to bring this idea to life, so we can probably expect other countries to follow suit in 2020.

Summing Up Technology Trends for 2020

Although major breakthroughs are not in the cards, 2020 will be yet another eventful year for the tech industry and the world. AI will play the most important role at the both sides of the fake news war in 2020, prompting governments to come up with never-before-seen laws. AR adoption has slowed down significantly, and this may continue until Apple releases its first AR device. IoT adoption continues, as companies across industries tap into new types of data, use more endpoints, and find ways to streamline deployments; massive IoT projects like digitization of the Port of Rotterdam are also underway. With no time left to postpone transformation, financial organizations embrace modern times with big plans for setting up shared systems to deliver next-gen user experiences. Finally, face recognition is slowly coming to financial operations. 

It’s still going to be exciting. Stay tuned.

The post 5 Tech Trends of 2020 Every CIO Needs to Know appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

We prepared a comprehensive guide for you that answers these and more questions, providing real-life examples along the way. The guide will cover the following:

1. What Does Customer Experience Mean Today?
2. Why Customer Experience is More Important Than Ever
3. Types of Customer Experience Services:
   1. Full customer services experience development
   2. Enterprise UX services 
   3. Customer mobile experience services
   4. Stand-alone solution for specific touchpoint
   5. UX & UI design services
      1. Can UI & UX design and development services involve the latest technologies?
4. Customer experience examples in services of top brands
5. F. A. Q. 

Let’s start. 

What Does Customer Experience Mean Today?

Customer experience is how an organization interacts with its clients over the course of their relationship, online and offline. Every CX is comprised of touchpoints — moments when a company interacts with a customer. A touchpoint is any type of interaction with a client, whether it is answering a question at a store, a call to confirm delivery details, cash desk service, or an outdoor ad. 

As customers demand more from companies in every industry, the concept of customer experience has expanded beyond commerce. Companies like Google build their campuses approaching employees like retail stores approach customers, that is, aiming at high retention and satisfaction rates. 

Where a retail chain would put up a sale, a tech company company offers its employees entertainment, recreation zones, and other bonuses. In this case, customer experience bears the name “employee experience.” Governmental organizations adapt as well, digitalizing and simplifying governmental services for citizens. As a result, more and more subtypes of CX emerge in different industries, indicating that both commercial and other types of organizations give more attention to catering to their customers than ever before — terms like hotel/guest experience, patient experience, event experience, are now the new normal. 

Why Customer Experience is More Important Than Ever

It’s not just naming for the sake of naming. According to a sweeping report on customer expectations by Salesforce, 67% of customers said their standards for good experiences are higher than ever, with 51% noting that most companies fail short of their expectations for great experiences. 

Salesforce

Every industry is inherently different, so customer experience is different, too. As a result, companies and organizations across industries look at how they interact with clients and improve the experiences based on the nature of the industry, client feedback, and customers’ specific needs. In other words, every industry dedicates more resources to building industry-specific CXs.

For example, hotels do not simply provide a generalised customer experience that rests upon a website, guest services, and a manager who will address guests’ concerns — they think about the big picture, from booking to branded hotel app to new ways to amaze their clients in the face of competition from market disruptors. A generalised customer experience becomes a well thought out hotel experience. 

Creating a solid customer experience brings substantial benefits to any organization:

• Strengthens brand/image of a company/organization
• Increases revenue
• Attracts new customers
• Boosts customer loyalty
• Improves customer retention

Most companies do not build customer experiences on their own, more so if they involve the latest technologies — they enlist digital agencies or software and technology companies who offer customer experience services. As the field of customer experience design has been expanding over the years to address the ever-changing customer demand, more services emerged.

Let’s explore them below. 

Types of Customer Experience Services

Customer experience services can encompass everything from building a next-generation retail store to creating a mobile app that would converge all services in one place. So CX is as much about building an Amazon Go type of experience as it is about mobile app UX and UI design services.

End-to-End CX Design (Full Customer Services Experience Development)

Every company has a customer experience, but if you aim at meeting customer expectations at every touchpoint, you need end-to-end CX design. One of its main goals is creating a seamless connection between a company’s physical and digital experiences. End-to-end CX design usually encompasses everything from creating intuitive websites and mobile apps to connecting all the company’s systems.

Amazon is a great example. Enabled by the decision to make an Amazon account the heart of the experience, everything in the company’s CX is simple. Whether you want to buy a product, read a book on the device of your choice, shop at an Amazon Go store, watch a TV show on Amazon Prime — everything is interconnected, simplified, and only a few clicks away. A user only needs to register an Amazon account and provide basic details. 

Amazon uses virtually every technology available in its CX, from IoT to deep learning to robotics. Still, a comprehensive CX does not have to use everything to achieve solid results, even if it operates on a large scale. For example, a bank can transform its branches with web and mobile, a CRM system, embedded software development, and by redesigning the physical space itself. 

Enterprise UX Services 

If CX in commerce deals with improving the process of buying goods/services from a company for its clients, enterprise UX development services focus on enhancing enterprise operations so that the company’s employees would work more efficiently and comfortably. A good example comes from Boeing, whose employees now use AR headsets in the wire assembly process instead of continuously consulting manuals. Results are staggering: assembly speed has risen by 25% while errors are down to nearly zero. 

See the video below:

Customer Mobile Experience Services

This type of services involves creating a mobile-driven CX where a company’s application is front and center, converging all its services in one place. 

For instance, Sweden’s leading insurance provider EuroAccident transferred its insurance process to a simple mobile app. The company’s clients can manage every step easily, from setting appointments to managing insurance for their children. Getting a refund is paperless — a user only needs to make a photo of the check, fill out a few fields, and press a button. The app is also integrated with the country’s most popular booking service, the most widespread banking account authorization system, as well as the company’s IT infrastructure. 

EuroAccident

This is service is often offered as part of mobile UI / UX design services, digital transformation services, or UX/UI design and development services.

Stand-alone Solution for Specific Touchpoint

Say, a retail company has everything covered: mobile and web are interconnected, the company gathers user data to better cater to customers, employees at physical stores can anticipate what shoppers might need, and so on. Still, the company wants to strengthen their image and improve their sales further with something fresh. 

Emerging technologies provide a solution. A company can opt for creating an Augmented Reality (AR) kiosk for the store (we will explore an Under Armour example below) or install beacons that would be connected to a mobile app, delivering personalised offers at the right place and time. 

These services can also be referred to as customer experience IT services, as they involve both software development and sophisticated technology solutions. 

Build a tech-driven CX by leveraging 11+ years of industry-specific design expertise.

Get in touch with us.

UI & UX Design Services

These are typical UI & UX design services you can find on the websites of most software development companies and digital agencies. They include web design, cross-platform design, mobile app design, and so on. 

In the context of customer experience, common UI & UX design services play a secondary role. A company may need them when it already has a solid CX in place, but, for instance, needs to add a new mobile product to it. 

Other UI and UX services might also be useful. Say, a big retail company has built a tablet app for their warehouses themselves, but it does not work properly. Turning to a software development company for UI and UX consulting will provide a solution. 

Can UI & UX design and development services involve the latest technologies?

Yes, common UX and UI services can involve them. A company can create a website with a  virtual reality (VR) feature in mind, or a mobile app with augmented reality. For example, a hotel can set up website-based VR tours of their locations, while an event company can create an AR app allows visitors view immersive AR installations on events’ grounds. 

Customer Experience Examples In Services Of Leading Brands

We briefly explored real-life examples of CXs across industries above, but more of them will give you a better idea of what CX is and what shapes it can take. 

Full Customer Services Experience — Oasis

The U.K. fashion retailer Oasis has merged its website, app, and store experiences into one seamless CX. Whether customers shop on desktop or a smartphone, they can enjoy the same experience, and it extends further, to the brand’s brick-and-mortar stores. The stores’ sales representatives are armed with iPads, enabling them to give customers accurate product information on the spot, as well as use the tablets as cash registers. If an item is out-of-stock at the shop, the sales representative can book it online and order delivery to the customer’s place of choice. The company’s flagship store also incorporates eating, drinking, and beauty areas. 

Oasis’ Flagship Store 

Enterprise UX — AF Gruppen

One of Norway’s biggest construction companies has transformed their core processes with the help of mobile, geofencing technology, and ERP software. As AF Gruppen is often tasked with massive projects like building roads, it often needs to set up the necessary infrastructure in the middle of nowhere. Managing the flow of materials as well as numerous partners is also hard. 

The solution helps to tackle all these issues. With the mobile app, drivers record the process of loading/unloading materials. Geofencing technology helps monitor the movements of the partners’ representatives at a project location, enforcing security, as well as track time of AF Gruppen’s employees. All the data is synced to and consolidated in the company’s project portal, giving it a bird’s-eye-view of any project. 

AF Gruppen 

Stand-alone Solution for Specific Touchpoint — Under Armour 

For one of its stores, Under Armour created an AR kiosk that lets users apply signature objects of sports stars to their photos: Stephen Curry’s mouthguard, The Rock’s headphones and sunglasses, and other. Plus, users pose alongside a 3D animation of the chosen star and can share the photo on social media right away. The solution refreshes the in-store experience as well as helps Under Armour learn more about their shoppers.  

Start building a seamless and engaging CX for your business.

Get in touch with us.

F. A. Q.

What is the difference between customer services and experience design?

A customer service is what  a company offers to customers (insurance policy management, package delivery, etc.), while experience design deals with how a company should offer its products or services to customers at every touchpoint (implementing an AI-driven chatbot in an insurance company’s app for customer support, ensuring managing package delivery on desktop is as simple and quick as possible, etc.).

What are customer experience IT services?

Customer experience IT services help companies cover any software and technology needs related to their CXs. This could be anything from a CRM to tablet app for warehouses to AR storefront.

How can I find a fitting partner for UI / UX design or customer experience services?

If you need UX and UI design services, choose between a digital agency and a software development company. The first option will give you more expertise in marketing, the second in software development. Still, an agency can have solid software developers, and a software development company the required marketing expertise, acquired in completing projects similar to yours. As you will be focusing on expertise and completed projects to select the right partner for UI / UX design services, you can search among both. 

If you need customer experience services, seek out companies that focus on CX, not simply offer it alongside many other services. This could be an IT/software development company or design agency.

Whether you need to find a partner for UI & UX design or customer experience services, you need to carry out a comprehensive research, especially if you plan a major overhaul of your CX — not too many companies offer end-to-end CX design. You can find fitting companies on websites of consulting companies and research firms like Clutch.co, they rate and profile services providers regularly. Asking your business partners or people you know about a potential partner can help you in finding one for UI & UX design or customer experience services as successfully as in any other case where you need a 100% reliable partner. 

The post 360-Degree Guide: Tech-Driven Customer Experience Services appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

I sketched a lot during most of the sessions. In this quick overview, I want to share with you my sketches from the talks and the summary of what I learned.

Hot stuff

There were several topics that drew my attention as a designer:

• Understanding conversational interfaces and the design process for voice-first applications.
• Assisting drivers. This topic overlaps with conversational interfaces and raises the issues of multimodal interactions.
• Web applications as an evolution of responsive sites and their role for first-time internet users.

Conversational interfaces

Shifting to a voice interaction model requires people to change already established habits around multi-touch interaction and most likely this will be neither an easy nor fast process.

However, there is no doubt that conversational interfaces will become the primary way for our interactions with online services in the future and it is a good time to start learning how such interfaces should be designed.

1. Users’ memory span is very short—on average you are dealing with 5-9 word phrases. So avoid information overload and keep your assistant’s messages very short: structure information in a way that supports the recall, ask questions that are easy to answer, and break messages into two parts.
2. People are experts in conversations (embrace this), which is why they have a very low tolerance for system errors. So ALL errors will be the system’s fault.  Spend time developing a strategy for exceptions; make it easy for a user to get back on track; leverage techniques that we use in everyday conversations.
3. The Google team is eager to feature your app for assistant and there are several criteria they are using, asking themselves: Did I smile? Did I LOL? Did I learn something? Will I use it again? Would I use it every day? Would I tell someone about it? Can I pick up where I left off? Did it do what I expected?  On the other side: Was I confused at any point? Did I have to repeat myself? Did it have a nice re-prompt?
4. There is two type of errors in human-to-computer voice interactions: no input (you didn’t get any input from the user) and no match (you got input but you were not prepared to handle it). You should consider users’ context and the sequence of the questions, think about why they didn’t respond, try another strategy or re-prompt: repeat the initial question.  Each time you re-prompt look for opportunities to add variety and ask in a new way or escalate for details.

Google clearly wants to put Assistant into any device around you. At IO they showed open source projects with the Google Assistant SDK – DIY robotic cocktails mixer and the Do-it-yourself AI for Makers.

You can read Google’s guide on conversational UI here and check my sketch below. 😉

Sessions worth watching:

• Finding the Right Voice Interactions for your App
• In Conversation, There Are No Errors
• Home Automation with the Google Assistant

Join Google challenge and submit your app for assistant by August 31st!

Assisting drivers

Android Auto now works right on your phone screen, or on your car display. At IO, Google presented two cars, Volvo and Audi, with Android Auto software onboard.

1. Main principles to keep in mind when designing an app for cars: minimize distractions and reduce cognitive load.
2. Google created a system that enables automotive use templates to safely and predictably perform the most common driving-related tasks.  For example, if you are Spotify, you will create an API for Android Auto and OAM will be able to include it in the car, but you won’t control the look and feel of your app. This is really make sense – each time the driver switches between, let’s say, Spotify or SoundCloud, you don’t want them to have to learn a new interface.
3. When building a product for various platforms and surfaces consider users’ interaction model (which input/output mode is the strongest: audio, video or haptic?) and the user conditions (Are they on the move? Are they in private or shared environment? Can they access the screen?).  You should understand which mode is the strongest and optimize for it.
4. Google wanted to show that Android in the car is a good way for application developers to deliver their content for drivers in the way they could not do before and that the car manufacturer (OAM) can bring really nice user interface and all the opportunities of the Android to the driver without compromising their brand identity: Android inside Audi will feel like Audi.

Sessions worth watching:

• Defining Multimodal Interactions: One Size Does Not Fit All
• Assisting the Driver: From Android Phones to Android Cars

Web applications as evolution of responsive sites

For the last 7-8 years I have been focused on designing for native mobile interactions and building web apps always was a compromise between quality, performance and app capabilities. You can create such a better user experience if you design a native app!

But it looks like things are changing.  The web is becoming a platform for lightweight apps that can be accessed on-demand, installed without friction, and incrementally updated.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) allows you to create a radically better web experience on mobile and in many cases it may be the only app you will build — for web, for iOS or for Android.

• PWA fits any form factor: desktop, mobile, tablet, or whatever is next;
• allows users to work offline or on low-quality networks;
• feels like an app;
• makes re-engagement easy through features like push notifications;
• allows users to add apps they find most useful to their home screen without the hassle of an app store.

Several quick and quite impressive facts:

1. Twitter. Mobile accounts for over 80% of Twitter’s usage, with many users reaching the site via 2G or 3G networks. With the launch of the new web app they reported a 65% increase in pages per session, 75% increase in Tweets sent and 20% decrease in bounce rate.  The Twitter web app is fast and responsive, uses less data, takes up less storage space, and supports push notifications and offline use in modern browsers.  Check case study here.
2. Forbes reports a 100% increase in sessions on mobile since they launched mobile web app.
3. Olacabs (leading cab aggregator in India, 1M rides every day) were able to reach new markets in the Tier 2-3 cities, where people use very basic Android smartphones and often don’t install apps at all. They achieved a 68% increase in mobile traffic in Tier 2 and 3 cities. Ola also noticed that 20% of users who book using their PWA had previously uninstalled their app. By reducing the amount of storage space needed, the PWA allowed them to effectively re-engage with their previous app users.
4. Alibaba reports a 76% growth in conversion on the mobile web.

Sessions worth watching:

• The Mobile Web: State of the Union
• Creating UX that ‘just feels right’ with Progressive Web Apps

Designing for new internet users or the next billion users

Last year Google saw over 100 M new internet users come online in India but 65% of India’s population is not yet online. So, projecting forward, various experts suggest that by 2020 there will be about 1 billion unique mobile subscribers in India alone. And that is just in India. Google sees similar processes happening in countries like China, Brazil, Nigeria.

So all these people might be your new future users. And their first internet experiences are on mobile phones (not desktop), a lower-end device (limited storage, RAM, old OS) with a slow and pricey connection and rare WiFi access.

And even if you are not focused on reaching users from these emerging markets, by building products that are fast and use less data, you will delight your savvy internet users as well.

So new internet users are facing very different constraints when accessing the internet:

• 33% of smartphone users in India run out of storage space every day and 83% people delete stuff every week.
• 50% of the users in India and 2/3 in Nigeria have 2G connections, so a lot of them are not really connected all the time. If you are building a product that relies on constant updates, that is not going to work out for you—you need to make sure that your product is fully functioning offline.
• People buy prepaid packages of data (10 Mb or 100 Mb) and use them really consciously, often turning on and off Airplane mode, keeping track of which app is using up data and how much.

Therefore, when building the product for these new markets keep those things in mind.

1. For data-heavy tasks provide transparency and control over data consumption (ex.: give the option to preview the content before it is loaded).
2. Make great connectivity the edge case. Expect latency and allow offline mode (optimize for bandwidth constraints and inconsistent connectivity).
3. Design clearer, larger, farther-apart affordances to prevent mistaken taps caused by bad or broken screens.

Sessions worth watching:

• Designing Great Apps for New Internet Users
• Building for Your Next Billion Users
• Designing for the Next Billion Users: Accessibility UX Insights from the Developing World

The post Google I/O 2017. Designer’s Point of View and Lots of Sketches appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

An experienced iOS developer designs code that is easy to change. It means that if you need to change something that appears in multiple places within your app, it’s enough to modify  one place in your code to fix them all. What tools do we have to make this happen?

First of all, we have UIAppearence which is an powerful tool but lacking in flexibility. It works best for UI elements that don’’t have use more than one style, such as UINavigationBar or UITabBar. But if you need to change the color of your navigation bar with a single controller (some modal view, perhaps) you need to override this directly in UIViewController. Little-by-little your code will be crowded with these small hacks which make it painful to maintain and implement quickly. Also, this will likely lead to various bugs.

Since we know that UI elements in applications belong to groups with identical appearance (let’s say all UISwitches) we can make some use of it. Probably, we can create a library of UI controls that are used within our application. UIButton sub-classes for similar buttons and reused related UITableViewCell’s. As long as you can do it without inheritance and complex hierarchies of classes it works fine. (You know that inheritance could be your worst nightmare, don’t you?). But that’s a lot of code.

So, the team at Intellectsoft  decided to take some time to creating something which:

1. Will allow us to use system classes (so we don’t have to spread our attention too thin).
2. Will require less code.
3. Will be simple.

After spending some time with my colleague, we came up with the idea of applying styles for UI elements. Each system class would have a predefined set of styles and all you have to do within your UIViewController is to apply it. If we need to add another style it will not affect any other elements, and you can change styles in one place.

Let’s dig into the code shall we?

As long as we are writing in Swift and following Apple’s advice on protocol-oriented programming, it’s natural that we start with a protocol.

Pretty simple. It’ only defines a function that performs styling. So we decided to add another protocol and extension to it with a default implementation. All UI elements that need to be styled (we don’t have to style everything of cource) will adopt that protocol.

I hope this makes sense to you.

Here is an example of UILabel styling:

And using it in your code is quite simple and doesn’t take much time:

If you find this approach useful give your credits to my awesome colleague@EdPanasiuk who made this workable and myself @ankoma22. You can reach out to us on Twitter if you have any questions.

The post A Developer’s Perspective on Designing for iOS Applications appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

The new Apple TV doesn’t bring innovation to living rooms but instead will certainly drive short-term adoption and popularity of the connected television. Unlike other companies in this sector (LG, Samsung, Panasonic and Sony) Apple finally has done it right from the user experience perspective by introducing an easy to use interface combined with the new remote, universal search and a large selection of apps (in the future).

New TV apps can’t simply replicate smartphone or web apps, and if you want to expand your existing product to the TV screen you will need to discover compelling use cases by creating an experience that wasn’t viable before.

But what kind of experiences should apps bring to TV users and what factors should we consider when thinking about developing such apps?

We’ve visualized tips of “Apple TV Design Principles for App Developers” in a presentation and one-page infographics.
Download PDF.

Design approach

Creating great products begins with understanding the goals of the people who use them. As a designer at Stanfy, when I start working on a new project there are three main questions I want to answer first:

1. Who are the users?
2. What problems would this product solve for them? What benefits would people get from using it
3. What is the context or situation in which the product would be used?

Obviously the audience for TV apps is very wide but apps that embrace the communal nature of the living room or public spaces will be the real winners on this platform.

So we should definitely consider what kind of shared experiences we can create and how our app will appeal to a group, but we also should think about personalization and what will appeal to a single user.

When we think about TV, the environments for it are the living rooms, shared office spaces, universities, cafes, gyms, hotels or other public premises. And there are specific cases that can be targeted in those contexts.

Possible use cases

The obvious use cases — consuming media, playing games, watching media streams and communicating with friends and families. But beyond that areas apps for Apple TV have the potential to empower TV screens and allow you to engage viewers more efficiently.

For an office space you can build an app to inform your teammates about the latest updates and industry insights, share photos from team events, showcase company’s metrics or show the dashboard of Instagram or Twitter stream with the specific hashtags.

For a restaurant or cafe you can create an engaging experience for customers: share great Yelp reviews, showcase featured dishes, display your menu or instantly share customers’ Instagram and Twitter posts. TV wait-list apps can help to keep track of wait time and showcase a real-time waitlist for guests to see their spot in line.

In the family environment, different productivity apps with shared options, sport activities dashboards, shopping and cooking apps could transform the TV into something more than just a movie hub.

Also, you may think of providing some useful content on top of any media. For example, you could make a streaming app that together with video displays additional information like tweets from customers or Viber messages from friends or family who are watching the same content and want to exchange opinions.

New interaction model & interface guidelines

Apple TV brings new interactions to a TV screen. Let’s talk about the most important.

Focus-based interactions

The remote is used to interact indirectly with elements on-screen from across the room. The interaction is fully based on a focus model. By pressing buttons and swiping, users move their focus from element to element, stop and click to access particular content.

We don’t need a cursor as people will navigate simply by changing focus.

Mind the gap

On Apple TV, users see the screen across the room so you should think carefully about user interactions and the sizes of the text and interface elements. Apple gives precise recommendations on that.

You have to minimize the amount of text in your app and seriously consider using more pictures or animations rather than writing about something. When using typography, follow Apple recommendations on font sizes to make sure your interface is legible at a distance.

Remote interactions

Remote has a touch surface, an accelerometer, and a gyroscope that you can leverage in your app to deliver a compelling experience.

You must make the remote usable as a game controller and you should always implement some behavior for the Play/Pause button. Unused buttons feel broken. For example, the Play/Pause button can trigger the same behavior as a click to activate a focused item.

With the new Apple TV, users expect to press the Menu button to return to a previous screen or the main Apple TV Home screen. Implement backward navigation by using the Menu button instead of introducing a separate Back button.

Layout templates

TVs vary in size and TV app layouts don’t automatically adapt to the size of the screen. That is why you should pay special attention to this fact when designing the layout, to make sure that it looks great in a variety of screen sizes. Optimize assets for the big screen. Design interface for a screen resolution of 1920×1080 pixels (1080p, 16:9 aspect ratio).

On the Apple site you can find particular recommendations on designing an app’s layouts and also templates for different needs that are easy to browse at a distance, and are quick to navigate with the remote.

Navigation

Apple created standard navigation components such as page controls, tab bars, segmented controls, table views, collection views, and split views. They can cover most of your UI needs so use them to provide an optimal viewing experience.

Also you should keep in mind that swiping to the side is easier than swiping up and down so you should consider this when choosing or designing layouts for your content.

No Web browsing

There is no web browser on Apple TV and moreover – you can’t open web pages inside your app either. Webkit, the framework that allow developers to include webviews in their apps, is missing from tvOS. For example, on the TV you won’t be able to open links posted by someone you follow on Facebook or Twitter.

Why would Apple do this? The main reason is that they want to control user experience. A big, non-retina screen is not going to render web content well and a mobile browser also has a number of interactions that simply are not available on the tvOS.  Also, this way Apple makes sure that non-native apps with poor overall experience won’t appear on Apple TV.

Key takeaways

1. People mostly enjoy watching TV in a shared environment so, when creating a TV app, think about experiences that you can bring to a group of people.
2. Touch or click interactions that people are used to on other devices are now focus-based. Use the remote’s touch surface, accelerometer, and gyroscope to help people feel connected to your app even though they’re sitting at a distance.
3. You can build a fully customized interface for your app but do refer to Apple’s recommendations on grid parameters, interface component sizes, spacing, typography and layout templates to make sure your content is easy to browse at a distance and navigate quickly with the remote.

Welcome to the new apps world for Apple TV 🙂

The post Apple TV. Understanding the Design Principles (with infographics) appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Transplant Hero is a medication reminder app that is the brainchild of Dr. Jay A. Graham, a transplant surgeon in New York. It helps transplant patients follow a strict anti-rejection medicine regimen after an organ transplantation. At Stanfy in collaboration with our client Dr. Graham we designed the iPhone app experience, created a name and a logo for the product, and finally brought the solution to the iOS marketplace.

In this post I would like to share with you our design process and lessons learned. Together, we put our whole collective heart and soul into this project and even if Transplant Hero can prevent one rejection — it was well worth it!

Understanding the problem

After an organ transplant, patients need to take immunosuppressant drugs that help prevent their immune systems from attacking the new organ. Typically, the drugs must be taken for the patients’ lifetimes, at all hours of the day and night from two to four times a day.

This creates a serious challenge for patients — research shows that 15% of graft losses happen due to immunosuppression non-compliance. In 2014 alone around 30 000 transplants were performed in the US. That means that around 4500 of them may have serious problems due to medication non-adherence.

Why are the numbers so high? Why do people whose lives depend on the tiny pills keep breaking their medication regimens and repeatedly forgetting to take pills on time? Why don’t existing reminder apps help?

Understanding the people

Our design process starts with the people we are designing for and ends with the solution that suits their needs. Research is a reliable way to gain insight into people’s’ lives and to create a compelling experience for them.

For this project we chose to conduct generative research with the goal of stepping into transplant patients’ shoes, to understand their lives and solve problems from their perspectives, and to to find answers to such questions as:

• What is the exact problem we are solving?
• Who are we building this for?
• What is the context in which our users will interact with what we are designing?

The research included a series of informal interviews with patients and a subject matter expert (the transplant surgeon), and a review of existing literature.

We asked transplant patients about a variety of topics, including their lives before the surgery, how they changed after, difficulties they are experiencing in relation with their medication regimen, and their computer and mobile habits.

The interviews allowed us to get the following valuable insights:

• The patient’s life is changing dramatically for the better within several weeks after the surgery.
• Within weeks of leaving the hospital patients find that that they have more energy and the world has become “brighter”.
• During the first several months patients feel overwhelmed with information; they need to learn about their new organ, how to take care about it, and how to avoid rejection and infection.
• Patients hardly notice that they miss their anti-rejection medicine sometimes.
• Transplant patients often treat the day of the surgery as their second birthday.
• Patients do forget about taking their pills on time even though they fully realize that it may cause the rejection of their transplant organ.

Defining the vision

Our next step was to transform our research into meaningful and actionable insights that would become the foundation for the design.

At this stage we were looking for answers to these questions:

• What should we make?
• How should it work?
• Why should people care?

We conducted several ideation sessions within the team and the client to make sense of what we learned and come up with experience and design principles for the product.

Experience Principles and Design Criteria

• Transplant Hero is your smart guide to the anti-rejection medicine. It minimises the patient’s work on medications setup and does the heavy work on proper pill scheduling.
• Be a friend, not a doctor. Transplant Hero builds a personal connection with the patients and encourages them to follow the medication regimen. By taking medications regularly a patient is rewarded by fun and cool awards.
• Transplant Hero is all about transplant patients and their medications. It anticipates the medications needs of the transplant patients and content that is universal for the transplant patients is predefined.
• Transplant Hero is the bright part of your post-transplant life. The application’s visual language emphasizes the new, energetic patient’s life, far away from a hospital.

The application inspires, encourages, and gently but persistently prompts patients about their medications times.

Designing the experience

Once we identified opportunities for design we started sketching out concepts quickly to illustrate the user experience with our app and prototype several possible experience solutions.

The Engagement Flow

A big part of our discussions was the “engagement flow”, the “secret sauce” of the Transplant Hero that is supposed to get patients to stick with the app and seamlessly, playfully help them to get used to keeping track of all of their medications.

Eventually we came up with the flow that involves the user in the game and challenges him to earn cool rewards towards eventually becoming a Transplant Super Hero.

Minimal Viable Product (MVP)

Our goal for the first release of the app was to design and develop a minimal viable version of the product that:

• would cover the main user needs,
• would engage users;
• would be created with reasonable amount of efforts and investments;
• allow us to gain feedback and learn how to improve the app.

We decided to focus on two basic uses:

Creating a design prototype

Following the design criteria that we agreed on before we came up with the user interface concept for the application.

Than we applied a little bit of color magic and here is our beautiful Transplant Hero!

Defining the key product metrics

“Don’t just ask questions. Know how the answers to the questions will change your behavior,” Alistair Croll stated in Lean Analytics.

The metrics that we will choose to track over time should help us to make design decisions and avoid unnecessary implementation efforts. Also the clear set of metrics allows us to indicate the progress of our product.

In Transplant Hero one of the most important goals is in the engagement category: we want our users to “checkin” all their meds every day. To identify this we need to calculate the ratio between checked in and prescribed medications.

Other information that is also important for us is understanding what stops patients from becoming our regular users. To do this we can track the retention rate, how many of the active users from a given time period are still present in some later time period.

The third issue that is important is the percentage of users who installed the app and successfully went through the medication setup flow. This can give us a hint about what turns off some users from the app at the very first launch (fears, questions they may have) and how we can improve that.

Key metrics:

• Missed rate per active* user per week — the ratio between checked in and prescribed medications (by active user we mean a user who checked in at least one medication during the last 7 days)
• Retention rate per user per week — percentage of users who are active after 7 days
• Activation rate per user per week — percentage of users who successfully scheduled their medications

Build it. Learn. Iterate

In development we followed the Agile process and it took us about 5 one-week sprints to release the first version of the app.

The flexibility of Agile and the ability to test the app every week gave us a chance to improve the user experience and refine some ideas during the development cycle. As a result, the scope has grown but together with that it has allowed us to deliver a better product.

Almost immediately after the app went public we started to gather feedback from the early users and learn.

For example, together with the client we found out that the majority of the patients don’t religiously follow the doctor’s prescriptions and prefer to customize their medications schedule. Other patients have specific needs to schedule medications every other day or have different dosages in the morning and evening time.

This feedback contradicts our research findings and the design principles that we defined for the app — that the app should do all the “heavy lifting” on scheduling medications. As such, it meant we needed to pivot and adjust to our user expectations.

At this point we have released three new versions of Transplant Hero that take into account these specific needs of transplant patients and we continue to listen and to learn.

On the bright side — we are getting overwhelmingly positive feedback from people who love the app and it encourages us to see that we are on the right track!

Just in one month after the launch, Transplant Hero has been selected as a Platinum Award winner of the Best Mobile App Awards, under the category of the “Best Mobile App User Interface”!

Moreover, Transplant Hero has been featured on the prestigious American Society of Transplant Surgeons website as well as many community support group pages.

The post Design Case Study: Transplant Hero appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.