Chatbots and UX Design:

Delivering seamless customer experience is the top most KRA for many web and app developers. But are they really scoring well on this front? How can customers get 24 x 7 support in the face of personnel constraints? How can user engagement be lifted with timely, prompt, and accurate support, right when they need it?

Chatbots emerge as viable answers to address these critical questions.

How does a Chatbot Provide Value to Your Business?

• Offers personalized services
• Caters key consumer experiences, including Customer Service, Content Interaction, and Productivity
• Offers simple, seamless, and engaging platform to consumers
• Helps businesses to respond faster to consumers
• Assist you to distribute content with higher information dissemination rate
• Helps in delivering targeted content as per user’s feedback or past records
• Works as a source for lead generation
• In the future, the platform can be used to incorporate AI and machine learning for responding to customer inquiries

Here is how we feel Chatbots will re-define UX Designs

1. Defines the Problem Clearly

Chatbots are one of the most popular platforms that can help your define your marketing and branding strategies, before you actually invest anything into development. It helps you to identify a user problem that you have a solution for, and can help you analyze its capabilities for being a business opportunity.

2. Helps in Analyzing and Measuring Success

It is agreeable that many game-changing products have not delivered their expected results, just because the development team failed to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs). Since your bot has the capability to impact your business in a positive way, it can assist you to design certain metrics that can assist in showcasing success rates, when pre-defined goals are met.

3. Offers Better Understanding of Customers and their Preferences

The platform assists in segmenting information as per persona groups and develop user stories by deciding with whom the bot will interact, how it will behave, and what purpose it will serve. It not only helps you to understand your target users’ feelings, but also assist in customizing the application as per their requirements and preferences.

4. Helps in Deigning UX Conversational Flow

Unlike designing screens, the bot enables you to design a UX conversational flow that will answer queries as per bot’s intelligence. In the designing phase, developers will think of all the potential questions, answers, and logic paths that the bot will require communicating with humans in an efficient manner.

5. Ensures a Personalized Experience

Lastly, the most important factor is the bot’s personality, and it should link directly to your brand. Start with naming your bot, and work on its presentation styles, appearance, and other vital factors to deliver a personalized experience to your wide and trusted customer base.

Conclusion

Providing a fascinating experience to customers by the way of timely support helps in keeping them engaged with your brand. It can also assist in capturing important details to let your business improve and expand.

Undoubtedly, users would wish to access something that can answer their queries at the earliest and can assist them in better decision-making. If your bot can do that, then it can bring tremendous success to your current business activities and can enhance the chances of overall growth.

Gamification in the Healthcare Industry

If you are in the fitness industry you would surely need a helping hand with maintaining a high level of motivation and engagement. Have you thought about using technology for this? Have you considered using gamification to keep the participants engaged for success? If not then this blog will tell you how to achieve this.

We make a case to accomplish this KRA through ‘Pokemon Go,’ an AR game which revolutionizes fitness in a unique manner. If you are wondering how ‘Pokemon Go’ proves to be the next big thing in the fitness industry, here’s what you need to know!

Introducing Pokemon Go

While fitness freaks already know about this revolution, some of them might be unaware of the concept. Let’s introduce Pokemon Go for those who haven’t been exposed to this addictive game. As a collaborative venture of the Pokemon Group and Nintendo & Niantic Inc, Pokemon GO happens to be a captivating Smartphone app.

Pokemon GO is an application built in the gaming format. By leveraging some of the essential Smartphone features such as camera and GPS, Pokemon GO merges the fictional world of Pokemon Gyms and Pikachus.

Players can play in the real world with these virtual creatures known as Pokemon. The player should have physical proximity to these creatures, as that is what makes it visible on mobile screens. By overlaying the Pokemon’s image on a video, this particular game involves players in the real world and in real-time.

With such a unique and innovative approach, Pokemon GO is surely riding quite high in popularity. The app has garnered great attention and ranks at the top of Google Play Charts and iTunes. The manufacturers had to stop its roll out in the European market, simply because Pokemon GO servers are overloaded to a great extent.

These reports clearly indicate towards the unsurpassed popularity of this gaming application. On that note, it’s high time to find out what it does for the fitness industry.

What’s in there for fitness freaks?

Some of the remarkable spots in Pokemon Go known as ‘gyms’ are places where players engage in competitions. These places correspond to physical locations such as monuments, gardens, and fountains which require the player to come out in the open and play.

Most importantly, this particular game makes players walk around a lot. The physical movements of the player help them advance in the game. As a result, Pokemon GO has successfully pulled out players out of their couch!

Fitness benefits 

With the help of this spectacular gaming app, fitness walks have become easier than ever! You no longer need to drive, cycle, or run to stay in shape. Pokemon GO has an innovative speedometer which measures your moves and stops counting distance when the speed is above 5 to 10 mph.

Quite unlike its contemporaries, the app also warns you and keeps you aware of your surroundings. Players will come across a PokeStop if they are too close to platform edges.

Parting thoughts

With such distinctive and unique features, Pokemon GO is undoubtedly emerging as the latest revolution in the fitness industry.

Are You Using Data Analytics The Right Way?

In today’s tech-led era, there is hardly anything that you can accomplish without using data. In this scenario, are you able to fully utilize the value presented by data? Is your data analytics helping you turn data into a revenue generation engine? Are you using data analytics the right way?

Today we look at solving these questions at how this can be done

• Is Your Data Purpose Driven?

The first question that you need to ask yourself is whether the data you’re using is purpose driven or not. The easiest way to find an answer is by analyzing it based on four important dimensions – accuracy, relevance, usability and cost involved in the analytics. Based on these elements, you can determine whether your data is purpose driven or not.

• Are You Asking The Right Questions?

The another important aspect of data analytics is whether you’re using it to ask the right set of questions or not. Questions like “how can we reduce costs? ” “how to increase revenues? ” “how to improve the productivity of all the team members? ” “how can we better manage the time dedicated towards product development? ” etc. should be addressed without any failure. It’s great if your data analytics practices address these question, but if not, then ensure that you make the necessary changes as soon as possible.

• Have You Built A Data Provenance Model?

Valuable data may come in all forms and shapes, and you need to be ready to capture it at any given point of time. Building a strong data provenance model can help you do that in a hassle-free manner. It enables any business owner or team leader to identify the actual source of information and check its reliability to know whether it can be used or not.

In today’s time when differentiating useful data from scrape information has become one of the toughest tasks for businesses, data provenance model can help you achieve desired results over and over again. If you have not already built a data provenance model for your business, do so without any further delay.

• Can You Connect The Dots

No matter how intelligent or experienced you are in a particular field, you cannot get hold of everything at once. Ask yourself whether you can connect the dots in the raw data that comes to you from different people and departments. If the answer is no, hire someone who can. Knowing how to connect the dots can take your business to whole new heights; therefore, learn this process or hire someone who possesses necessary data skills to do the job.

Data analytics can make a real difference only if you are willing to convert your insights into action. So, take a close look at the points mentioned above and start using data analytics in the right way.

Have you been exploring data analytics field for a long time and have an expert opinion on this topic to share with everyone? Please comment below and help others learn the usefulness of data analytics.

UX Design Challenges

What is it that will help app developers deliver a tailored and intuitive experience on the mobile?

How can developers satiate user demand for applications that are fast, deliver instant results, and can be customized to provide a personalized experience?  What is the one key that prevents app uninstalls and engages better with customers?

It is UX or User Experience around the mobile app.

Because of the problems UX tries to address, it becomes a complex field strewn with challenges at every step. If you are looking to make a mark in the field of UX design then it is worth your time reading about the top 5 challenges that every web app developer requires overcoming while designing UX:

1.     Follow the Concept of KISS

Keeping It Short and Simple (KISS) is the essential rule to attract users to an application. Using technical jargon, complex terminologies, and jazzy words ruin user experience as they may fail to understand what exactly does the app wants to convey.

Incorporating features like accepting users’ comments, feedbacks or ratings, and even options to share the content with others can help in enhancing the overall experience.

2.     Make Possible Efforts to Bridge the Gap

Since a web designer is responsible for delivering an output that can ensure engaging user experience, it doesn’t mean that everything in the development should be at par with his/her interests.

Studying target audience, understanding their behaviors, and determining their requirements plays a major role in laying out the entire roadmap for any web development project. Market experts suggest understanding user’s interests and expectations to ensure that the outcome connects with users on all levels.

3.     Always Keep User Security & Privacy on Priority

Keeping the emphasis on design and user experience, a web developer should never neglect web app security or treat it as a secondary factor. Nowadays, apps contain payment details, contact information, confidential data, and other sensitive details of a user. Therefore, application security features should be carefully coded to offer protection against threats and vulnerabilities.

4.     Make it Appealing and Impressive

Apart from focusing on fitting the app to today’s technological demands, it is important to offer impressive packaging to attract users and deliver a pleasant experience.

Adding transitions, animations, and responsive designs can help in boosting your app’s presence on the global front and can help in gaining ample downloads within a fraction of seconds.

5.     Create for One, But Aim for Universal

Today’s users may have multiple devices with different screen sizes; hence, it is important to design your app for multiple platforms. Ensuring its capability to run on as many devices as possible helps web developers in attracting as many users as possible. Develop an application for a single platform, but start testing its capabilities for other platforms using Beta versions.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, UX designers may face one or more of these challenges from most unexpected sources. But it is imperative to keep user’s expectations in mind while designing and delivering a streamlined and memorable mobile app experience to them.

Amazon – The e-commerce behemoth recently started Amazon Prime Air – a drone-based goods delivery mechanism to deliver packages to customers in 30 minutes or less. This step marked the first step of putting drones in front of the eyes of the general public. While substantial R&D action was happening behind the scenes for many years now, drone are a business enabler has recently gone mainstream.

A quick intro to drone technology

Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles that have the capability to deliver lightweight packages from source to destination. With amazon stating that 86% of its deliveries weigh less than 5 pounds, it becomes a good target candidate for testing drone delivery system.

Its current status

Drone technology has seen limited adoption in the commercial market meant for the masses. FAA approvals, regulatory framework, and government sanctions are one end of the barriers present. The other end is the advanced technology and cost of development that makes the technology out of reach for smaller or inexperienced players in the market.

However, we have seen an increasing number of enthusiastic entrepreneurs and researchers work towards a more sensible civilian drone technology. Such technology will not only provide a low barrier to entry but also have a wider reach than just e-commerce delivery. One such existing example is SkyCall from MIT’s Senseable Labs that can build a quadcopter in a couple of hundred dollars. There are multiple other developments happening around drone technology from Australia to Switzerland. Some of these include

1. Flirtey – An Australian based company that delivers books via drones to students instead of taking days for the delivery.
2. SenseFly – This Swiss company is out with commercial UAVs that take high altitude photos and work well in terrains unsuitable for man.
3. 3D Robotics – The company provides tools, knowledge, and resources to accomplish personalized drones as a DIY project

How is the business world impacted?

There is a sustained level of interest on the on-going action happening around drone technology. FAA and DOT have come up with rules to fly UAVs in commercial airspace. But there seems to be a lot of ambiguity around the technology even today. The widespread open source drone development community too, is fueling the fire to come up with innovative and practical drone-based business applications for the common public. Analysts say that precision agriculture and public safety will comprise of 90% of the market sectors where commercial and civilian drones will make its impact felt.

Its future

It is estimated that a whopping $89 billion will be spent around Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones). Though commercial applications will form only 10% of the total, it is still a major boost to a fairly nascent technology.

While the commercial drone delivery system is nowhere close to its military counterparts in size or volume of adoption, it is certainly poised to grow in the right direction in 2017 and beyond. What are your thoughts about this exciting new system to deliver packages safely to consumers? Do write to us and let us know.