The Innovation and Technology Bureau of Hong Kong announced an upcoming fund under the Anti-Epidemic Fund called 遙距營商計劃 (D-Biz). Applications will be open on May 18 2020. We have summarized some points to help you understand the funding scope.

D-Biz covers 12 categories of IT solutions as shown below:

1. Online business

• For companies to establish a web portal, mobile app or other online channels
• Including development and management of the platform
• Online promotion through search engine promotion or digital advertising E.g. social media promotion, e-coupon, loyalty programme, etc.
• Excluding production cost of any promotion materials, contents or assets (e.g. image, text and video for promotional use）

2. Online order taking and delivery, smart self-service systems

• For companies to establish a web portal, mobile app or other online channels
• For companies to acquire and promote self-services
• Enable companies to perform end-to-end order placement and delivery to designated locations
• E.g. smart self-servicing system, smart kiosk, smart vending machine, smart lockers, or with integration to e-logistics provider platform

3. Online customer services and engagement

• Develop and manage online ordering service, E.g. reservations and appointment bookings
• Such adoption of technologies can also include distance learning facilities
• Online promotion through search engine promotion or digital advertising (e.g. social media promotion, e-coupon, loyalty programme)
• Excluding production cost of any promotion materials, contents or assets (e.g. image, text and video for promotional use）

4. Digital customer experience enhancement

• For companies to improve customer service experience and engagement through various technologies
• E.g. 24/7 customer service support via Chatbot, Uplift product or service experience with use of Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR) or Mixed Reality (MR) technologies / Digital Twin technology, Apply analytics to improve customer experience such as purchasing data

5. Digital payment / mobile point of sale

• For online / physical stores
• Enable multiple digital payment channels E.g. payment gateway or mobile Point-of-Sales (POS)
• Including cost of one-time setup and associated hardware / equipment
• Excluding the handling fee or equivalent of each payment transaction
• E.g. Stripe

6. Online / cloud-based financial management systems

• Adopt computerised system to manage the financial related processes (cloud-based or accessible remotely by staff)
• For invoicing and bill collection, accounting and budget planning, asset and liabilities management, regulatory compliance, reporting
• E.g. Invoicely

7. Online / cloud-based human resources management systems

• Adopt computerised system to manage the human resources related processes (cloud-based or accessible remotely by staff)
• For payroll and expense reimbursement, attendance and leave records, training, reporting
• E.g. Peakon

8. Remote document management, cloud storage and remote access services

• Digitise hard copy document into electronic format and store on cloud
• Enable staff to access company information, data and system remotely with remote desktop control, Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
• E.g. Google G-Suite, Dropbox

9. Virtual meeting and conference tools

• Adopt tools to allow online team collaboration and meetings
• Software that support audio and video communication, content sharing, manage appointments and registrations, meeting recordings, online polling and Q&A
• E.g. Zoom, Google hangouts, WebEx

10. Virtual team management and communications

• Adopt tools to allow online team collaboration and communication
• Software that support instant messaging, video and voice calls, document sharing and co-authoring / concurrent editing, task assignment, progress monitoring and collaborative product development
• E.g. Confluence, Slack

11. Cybersecurity solutions

• Improve cybersecurity of companies by implementing software, hardware or services to defend against cyber attacks
• E.g. data encryption, firewall, anti-virus / malware solutions

12. Other online / custom-built / cloud-based business support systems

• Other solutions that support the programme objectives of enabling enterprises to conduct and continue business remotely
• E.g. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), e-application form and approval workflow, Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Reach out to us at [email protected] if you need help in applying for D-Biz and for some free advice.

創科局推出的遙距營商計劃 D-Biz，將於2020年5月18日開始接受申請，資助合資格企業購買和採用資訊科技方案（包括相關的培訓開支）。我們將在此講解「遙距營商計劃 D-Biz」所覆蓋的範圍，並列出受理的資訊科技方案，希望可以幫助大家順利申請！

D-Biz適用於各行各業，以下12個資訊科技方案類別都受理：

1. 網上營商

• 適用於想建立線上服務/購物平台（網上、應用程式）的公司
• 包括開發及管理電子商貿平台
• 透過搜索引擎宣傳及數碼廣告進行推廣，例如：社交媒體宣傳、電子優惠券及網上會員計劃等
• 不包括宣傳物品、內容或資產的製作費用，例如市場推廣用的文字、影像和影片

2. 網上接單和送遞、智能自助服務系統

• 適用於想建立線上服務/購物平台（網上、應用程式）的公司
• 用於推廣自助服務
• 運用智能自助服務系統、智能服務站、智能自動售賣機及智能儲物櫃等方式，執行點對點訂單下達，並將其交付到指定位置，或與電子物流提供商平台整合

3. 網上客戶服務和推廣

• 開發及管理互聯網訂購服務，適用但不限於預訂和預約服務
• 適用於遠程學習設施
• 透過搜索引擎宣傳及數碼廣告進行推廣，例如：社交媒體宣傳、電子優惠券及網上會員計劃等
• 不包括宣傳物品、內容或資產的製作費用，例如市場推廣用的文字、影像和影片

4. 客戶數碼體驗升級

• 透過現有科技改善客戶服務體驗
• 例如：全天候客戶服務支援（聊天機械人）、擴增實景（AR）、虛擬實境（VR）或混合現實（MR）、 數位孿生（Digital Twin）的應用、以及數據分析

5. 數碼支付 / 流動裝置零售管理系統

• 適用於在線/實體商店
• 升級系統，以支援多個電子支付渠道，例如：支付網關或流動銷售系統 (POS)
• 包括一次性設置和相關的硬件/設備的費用
• 不包括每次付款交易的手續費或同等費用
• 例子: Stripe

6. 線上 / 雲端財務管理系統

• 採用電腦系統來管理與財務相關的流程（支援雲端或遙距登入）
• 例如：發票和收集賬單、會計和規劃預算、資產和負債管理、符合法規、報告等
• 例子: Invoicely

7. 線上 / 雲端人力資源管理系統

• 採用電腦系統來管理與人力資源相關的流程（支援雲端或遙距登入）
• 例如：薪酬和開支報銷、出勤和請假、培訓、報告
• 例子: Peakon

8. 遙距文件管理、雲端儲存及遠端存取服務

• 將傳統打印文件轉為電子格式，並存放於在雲端儲存系統
• 允許員工透過桌面遠端控制、虛擬私有網絡(VPN)或虛擬桌面基礎結構 (VDI)，獲取公司信息，數據或使用相關系統
• 例子: Google G-Suite, Dropbox

9. 網上會議工具

• 運用工具以允許員工透利用互聯網進行網上會議和合作
• 例如：語音及視頻通話、內容共享、管理及預約會議、 記錄會議、在線投票及發問等
• 例子: Zoom, Google hangouts, WebEx

10. 虛擬團隊管理和溝通

• 運用工具以允許員工透利用互聯網溝通和合作
• 例如：即時通訊、視頻和語音通話、文件授權及共享、協助工作分配、監察工作進度和便利產品開發流程等
• 例子: Confluence, Slack

11. 網絡安全方案

• 購買合適的軟件、硬件和服務，來提升公司的網絡安全，防範網絡攻擊
• 例如：數據加密、防火牆、防毒軟件等

12. 其他線上／度身訂造／ 雲端業務支援系統

• 其他計劃目標一致，有助公司進行和繼續開展遙距業務的方案
• 例如：企業資源規劃(ERP)，電子申請及審批流程，流程機械人 (RPA)

Reach out to us at [email protected] if you need help in applying for D-Biz and for some free advice.

On April 19, 2020, the Innovation and Technology Bureau of Hong Kong announced an upcoming fund under the Anti-Epidemic Fund called 遙距營商計劃」(D-Biz). We have summarized some preliminary details below. Applications will be open in May 2020, stay tuned to this page for any updates.

What is「遙距營商計劃」 D-Biz?

A new fund under the second round of Anti-epidemic Fund totalling in 500 Million Hong Kong Dollars lasting for 6 months from the day of launch.

Purpose of 「遙距營商計劃」D-Biz

To help companies develop and expand digital presence and business operations to create new opportunities and overcome the challenges brought on by Covid-19.

Application highlights

• For Companies (not including listed companies, statutory bodies and subsidized non-governmental organizations)
• $100,000 limit for each proposed plan, maximum $300,000 in total per company
• Open for registration in May 2020
• Fund approvals and disbursment within 10 working days if all necessary information and documents are provide

How can companies use the fund:

The fund is applicable for facilitating automating and streamlining back-of-house company operations and training of employees.

1. Set-up or Enhancing Online Presence and Sales Capabilities

• Building an online sales platform (website/ app) E.g. Delivery ordering website
• Set-up of electronic payment systems E.g. Stripe, Alipay, Paypal
• Enhance the user experience of current online platforms
• Strengthening e-marketing strategies
• Strengthening cybersecurity of current systems

2. Facilitating back-of-house company operations

• Upgrade and automation of operation E.g. Smart admin panel
• Purchase cloud service for remote document management E.g. Google G-Suite, Dropbox
• Purchase team collaboration tools for remote team management E.g. Confluence
• Purchase of virtual meeting tools for remote team/customers communication E.g. Zoom, Google hangouts, WebEx

3. Support for Continuing Education and Training

• Training for how to manage and operate an e-commerce business
• Training for how to utilize e-commerce marketing tools
• Training for how to utilize remote team management tools

【創科局推遙距營商計劃】每間企業最多獲30萬元資助

二零二零年四月十九日，創新及科技局局長楊偉雄發表網誌，宣佈在第二輪防疫抗疫基金下，推出為期6個月，合共5億元「遙距營商計劃 D-Biz」，資助企業拓展遙距業務。我們為你總結了以下重點：

計劃目標

藉著疫情帶來的衝擊，協助企業利用創新與科技，創造新的機遇，轉危為機，渡過難關。

申請須知

計劃適用於各行各業（上市公司、法定機構和接受公帑資助的非政府機構除外），企業可就遙距營商包含的科技應用及相關培訓申請資助，每個方案連同培訓開支可獲最多10萬元資助，每間企業最多可獲30萬元總額資助。計劃於5月開始接受申請，申請文件齊備後，約10個工作天內可知悉申請結果。

如何善用D-Biz

企業可以在以下3大範疇，善用資助，以科技協助營運及提供培訓或拓展遙距營商業務：

1. 設立/優化公司的線上銷售表現

• 創建網上銷售平台，例如：網上教學平台，外賣應用程式
• 設置網上電子支付，例如：Stripe、Alipay、Paypal
• 優化現有網站及應用程式的用戶體驗
• 加強網上市場營銷策略
• 加強現有網上系統的安全性

2. 提升辦公室營運效率

• 自動化營運模式，例如：創建智能管理平台
• 購買方便在家工作的遙距文件管理系統，例如：Google G-Suite、Dropbox
• 購買遙距團隊管理軟件，例如：Confluence
• 購買適用於員工或客戶溝通的網上會議軟件，例如： Zoom, Google hangouts, WebEx

3. 支援員工培訓及進修

• 網店營運的相關培訓
• 網上營銷策略培訓
• 管理軟件的相關培訓

We hope we've been helpful in interpreting some of the public information in helping out our community in troubled times.

Please click on the link below to stay up-to-date:
https://bit.ly/itb-dbiz-announcement

At Altitude Labs, we have launched award-winning web, mobile applications and internal corporate apps to acheive one goal in mind: a better world for all stakeholders involved.

We do this in a number of ways including: Design Sprint Methods, Digital Transformation, Software Engineering, UIUX, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Object recognition modelling, UX auditing and Design Tests.

Our Product Design Sprint helps you quickly design, prototype and validate your idea. It is a 5 day sprint with 7 phases where our business analysts, partners, designers and engineers work with you to convert your idea into a user-tested prototype.

Why the Product Design Sprint?

It all starts with an idea, a hypothesis aiming to help make the world a better place to live in. But before you can take your idea and jump straight into development, you have to think about what the user's experience would be and see whether or not this idea will achieve product market fit. This is where the Product Design Sprint comes in.

Rather than spending months wasting time ideating, designing, and developing something that may or may not be what the market commands, the Product Design Sprint helps to prototype results in a short period of time. Large and small firms alike use this method to build and test ideas to gain valuable insight and data on the proposed product.

In short, the Product Design Sprint helps you:

• Validate whether the product has a market fit
• Build a clickable prototype to mimic a real world application and test it with real users
• Only start writing code when you know why you're building what you're building

The Product Design Sprint prevents bad situations where you:

• Sink money and time building a full application with a lot of features without first validating the idea
• Finding out that you're building a product nobody wants

At the end of the Product Design Sprint, your idea will be fleshed out into a clickable prototype. More importantly, you will be able to make an informed decision as to whether your idea is headed in the right direction or if you should take a step back and rethink, iterate and test again.

How do we run a Product Design Sprint?

Our Product Design Sprint is a two-week sprint with 7 stages. It starts with design thinking and ends with a user-tested clickable prototype.

The 7 stages in our product design sprint are laid out below:

• Stage 1: Understand
• Stage 2: Diverge
• Stage 3: Converge
• Stage 4: Operation
• Stage 5: Prototype
• Stage 6: Test
• Stage 7: Iterate

Stage 1: Understand

Our Product Design Sprint uses a methodology called design thinking, which is used by designers to solve complex problems, and find desirable solutions for clients

Design thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning, to explore possibilities of what could be—and to create desired outcomes that benefit the end user.

The first step to solving a complex problem is to have everyone on the team Understand the goals, problem, market and existing solutions.

Stage 2: Diverge

After the team understands the problem, the next step is to draw upon our creative juices to brainstorm and explore desirable solutions in a process called Diverge.

Stage 3: Converge

Armed with a multitude of possible solutions from Diverge, it is time to Converge by sifting through solutions and identifying winning ones.

Stage 4: Operation

With the blueprint of a desirable solution from Converge, Operation is where the team irons out the operational kinks and identifies what administrative features will be required to support the ongoing operations of the app.

Stage 5: Prototype

We now have what we need to Prototype your app. Our team will create clickable prototypes based on the discussions, sketches and wireframes in previous stages.

Stage 6: Test

We then Test the prototype with real users to get feedback about whether it solves a pain point they have, where it works and where it can be improved. User feedback helps us understand if the idea and proposed solution has legs.

Stage 7: Iterate

Finally, we consolidate user testing feedback, prioritize feedback results and changes and Iterate over the clickable prototype.

Conclusion

At the end of the Product Design Sprint, you'll leave not only with a prototype that you can show to potential investors and users, but also a stronger conviction on how to take your idea forward.

Here is what one of our Product Design Sprint clients Ross Yip had to say about the experience:

We had a big idea when we went to see Altitude Labs and through the Product Design Sprint process they helped us map it with clear and concise logic, by the end of it, our idea felt far more reachable.

If you would like to work with us to run a Product Design Sprint to turn your idea into reality, feel free have a chat with us.

Designers here at Altitude Labs adopt the Product Design Sprint to help clients verify whether the product that we’re building together has a place in the market.

1. Deviating From the Original Goal
We tell our clients that the aim of the Product Design Sprint is to build a clickable prototype, get feedback from real users, learn from them, then reiterate until we get a Minimum Viable Product that would be ready for development which successfully achieves their business goals.

Building out a full feature set would just deviate from the actually goal of discovering what a users really want see in the core functionality.

2. Feeling Unprepared
We prepare our clients with the Product Design Sprint Itinerary and Pre-work before the first day of the sprint. It is common that when it comes to sketching out ideas, clients are a little caught off guard which leaves them feeling unprepared. Rest assured this is a common feeling and in order to mitigate it, clients are free to do some research and jot down some notes before coming in.

3. Not Knowing How to Administer the User Test
After our concept sketching and ideation phase, we proceed to create a clickable prototype and the user task table. We ask that the clients identify and round up a group of their potential users prior to starting the process with us as they could provide honest feedback and observe reactions to their ideas. There are times when you want to just test not with your target users but to do it internally but we do not encourage this as it only hurts the progression and authenticity of the outcome.
If user testing is a problem, feel free to reach out, our Altitude Labs team is happy to jump in to assist.

4. Time Delays
The Product Design Sprint is an iterative process as feedback from the client is often times varied in the process. It is a process that involves two parties, the client and the facilitator (Altitude Labs). We advise all parties to be focused and be committed in the process as this will yield the best results and allow all parties to be on the same page.

5. Extension of the Product Design Sprint
On average we try to limit our Product Design Sprint exposure to about 1 week, however, some clients require more discussion and iteration before the final MVP. Be prepared to spend more time with our team to deliver user testing results and know that we have your back in the product design and validation process.

Do you have new business ideas? Come meet us at [email protected]

Written by: Irish Isip

Advocate of Dot-mocrat

Dot-mocrat is a facilitation tool that aids decision makers, designers, project managers and clients make a unanimous decision. Other common terms are “dot-voting”, “sticker dots” and “dot democracy.” What one outside the UI/UX Industry may not probably know is that this tool is often used to open up discussions without disregarding anyone’s opinion. At the same time, streamline the thousands of good ideas with a good focus.

Here’s how it works:

1. Prepare for the dot-voting.

Obviously, there are already research in the ideas and sketches for the voters but since voters may include people that weren’t part of the ideating process, it is ideal that they come prepared by digging into the best practices they believe in. For an example, voters from the development side can research on technical feasibility and dig into the APIs and their existing codes they can work around with.

2. Schedule the voting rounds.

The time depends on how many ideas and sketches there are. However, it shouldn’t take more than two days. Plus, the round should not be more than 2 hours in a day, especially if it involves the other stakeholders outside of your team.

3. Remind people of the objective.

As the voting round starts, remind individuals of the purpose and value. The facilitator should explain the goal and how many votes they have.

4. Silent voting.

During the votes, individuals should not be discussing with others and remain independent. They should vote for differentiators rather than the basic expectations.

5. Discuss.

Converge and have a discussion on the votes. Facilitator can start with the key questions “who voted for this?”, “why did you vote for this?”, “who came up with this idea and how did you come up with this idea?”

Benefits of Dot voting:

1. Productive
2. Time-efficiency

Let's end with a quote from UI speaker and consultant Stephen P. Anderson “The value of dot-voting is as a discussion tool, not a tool for making decisions.” More often than not, decisions are made hastily and without careful discussion.

Does my website or mobile application look and work towards my business vision?

Why are visitors are not interacting or reacting the way I imagined they would?

Does my application idea not serve my intended purpose?

We usually ask ourselves these questions after the launch of a product.

In this post, we discuss why websites and mobile applications need the UX Audit, and why it is such an important process to determine the success of any digital product in today’s fast paced world.

What is a UX Audit?

A UX Audit is a process which allows you to identify the current state of your application and whether it is serving your current intended goals. The process should be conducted every 4-6 months after launch in order to keep up with market relevancy.

Often product owners start questioning their own business ideas right away, when the web or mobile application does not react or get the conversion targets they had in mind. The truth is your business idea is properly meeting the needs of the market, however the UI/UX design of your product might not be pinpointing the needs of your real users, making the conversions or interactions impossible for the user to figure out.

A UX Audit can help you figure out where and what is working, why it is not working? What could be improved in your current product to meet conversion targets and KPI’s you were hoping for.

When is the UX Audit needed?

A UX Audit should be conducted at least twice a year in order for data and real user feedback to be collected over time.

How do we perform an UX Audit?

Our UX Audit starts with understanding your product, setting objectives (because technically and audit could run forever), your KPI’s and ends with a full UX Audit Report with insightful actionable recommendations.

The 7 stages of the UX Audit are laid out below along with their objectives:

Stage 1: Understand

• Set the scope of the project
• Get to know the product
• Understand the challenges the product is facing

Stage 2: Internal Interview

• Verify if the product does what it claims
• Find out the current beliefs and knowledge gap
• Find out what else needs to be checked
• Find out any hints about how problems arise

Stage 3: Data Analysis

• Find out where the engagement drops in relationship to objectives

Stage 4: User Research

• Find out/verify the actual users
• Obtain insights from actual users
• Create User Personas

Stage 5: Usability Testing

• Test usability with users
• Obtain insights from new users

Stage 6: Competitor Analysis

• Research and determine industry standards for the product

Stage 7: Comprehensive UX Audit Report

• Summarize the problems
• Make actionable recommendations

Last thoughts

A UX Audit requires significant investment in terms of time, money and human resources if done internally. As professional UX auditors, we act as a guide for our clients to run through the process in a timely manner, identify the significance in their user generated behavioral data, then ultimately providing them with a logical pathway to improvement and better ROI.

What are you waiting for? Gain insightful findings and actionable recommendations of your exisiting digital products today. Email us at [email protected] for more details.

Thinking of developing a mobile app? Looking for a team of mobile app developers? This article will walk you through why we use React Native to bring your ideas to life.

Related: Our mobile app development services

The difference between Native, Hybrid and Mobile Web apps

Generally speaking, there are 3 ways to develop mobile apps:

Native:
Phone apps that run on native code (Objective-C or Swift for iOS and Java for Android)

• Pros: Best performance
• Cons: More costly to develop because you need separate apps for iOS and Android

Hybrid:
Phone apps that contain a browser view that run web (HTML5)

• Pros: Less costly to develop because you write one set of code for both iOS and Android
• Cons: Poorer performance

Mobile Web:
Web (HTML5) apps that are loaded in your mobile browser

• Pros: Convenience because users can use your app by opening up a URL in their browser rather than downloading from the app store. Also, you write one set of code for iPhones, Android phones and web.
• Cons: Poorest user experience and limited functionality compared to Native and Hybrid apps

What is React Native?

React Native is Facebook’s follow-up to their highly successful React framework for user interfaces in web development. React’s popularity with web developers was predicated on its simplicity and use of JavaScript; epitomized by the idea that “UI is a function of data – if the data changes, UI should change.”

React Native essentially applies the same principles to UI in mobile app development.

Why do we use React Native?

React Native allows developers to write one set of code (Javascript) and enjoy performance of a Native app. React Native is superior to developing Hybrid or Native apps for 4 key reasons:

1. Cross-platform

React Native was originally only developed for iOS support, but due to its success and popularity, Facebook decided to develop support for Android as well. This means that development for both iOS and Android can both be done through React Native simultaneously through one codebase, which translates to lower development costs.

2. Performance

Traditionally, ‘hybrid’ or ‘mobile web’ apps that work on both iOS and Android have gotten flack for essentially being lesser apps. But while performance using hybrid does tend to go down for more complicated apps, there are many upsides to developing through React Native. For one thing, apps built through React Native are compiled into natively written code. This means they not only work on both operating systems, but also function the same as a natively written app.

3. Reusability

Reusability is key in React Native. What that means is that the building blocks are treated as native components that can be compiled directly into the native languages of Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android.

Typically, web development employs a more agile and rapid approach and React Native essentially allows for the same speed in approaching mobile development without sacrificing quality and usability.

4. Maintainability

React Native heavily utilizes JavaScript, this, coupled with the intuitive architecture of the framework itself, allows engineers to jump to and from each other’s projects with relative ease.

Parts of a specific app written in React Native will have no trouble combining with parts written in the native languages for iOS or Android.

Say for example a React Native developer is commissioned to build an app for both operating systems (OS).

The typical workflow would consist of writing most of the code on React Native and then using the native languages to optimize certain elements of the app.

However, it is completely up to the developer as to how he wants to build the app. Not only can the native languages of an OS be used to optimize an app, they can also be used to write parts of the app. React Native will have no trouble combining these native elements with those written in React Native.

This goes the same for changing aspects or implementing new features of an existing app written in the native language. React Native components can be easily placed into an existing app’s codebase.

Another reason why many developers are sworn converts to React Native is the ‘live reload’ feature that allows you to see changes in real-time as you’re writing code, which makes the process of building an app much more intuitive and efficient.

What does this mean for you?

Ultimately, all these factors amalgamate into lower costs, faster deployment and easier upkeep, translating into a huge net benefit for customers.

The use of React Native brings the speed and agility found in web development to the mobile app development environment.

Using React Native increases efficiency, and development workload can be reduced by as much as 50%. Traditionally, a firm wanting to deploy to both iOS and Android would need to develop both apps natively, but with React Native it is possible to focus on only building one app that runs on both operating systems. Therefore, technically, if the project is small enough, it only requires one skilled developer well-versed in JavaScript.

Such productivity boosts are evident in the Instagram case study, where 90% of their code was reused in Android and iOS.

Due to the accessible nature of React Native, flexibility is also greatly enhanced, allowing developers well-versed in JavaScript to contribute wherever necessary.

Over to you

Looking to build a mobile app in React Native? Feel free to contact us here. We look forward to hearing from you!

A good or bad user experience can make or break your app.

We live in a world where users are digital natives that expect apps to be intuitive to use and smart enough to predict what they are looking for.

Having a great user experience makes it so much easier to acquire users and keep them happy.

Not convinced? Let’s look at some statistics that back it up:

• In 10 years, a $10,000 investment in design-centric companies would have yielded returns 228% greater than the same investment in the S&P (Source)
• ESPN.com revenues jumped 35% after they listened to their community and incorporated suggestions into their homepage redesign (Source)
• Infinite scrolling can lower your bounce rate. Time.com’s bounce rate dropped 15 percentage points after they adopted continuous scroll (Source)

In this article, we’ll cover what user experience is and how to create an app with a great user experience.

Let’s jump straight in.

What is user experience?

User experience (UX) is the summation of how people feel when they use your product or service.

It is a multidisciplinary field that marries technology, business and design. Great user experience comes through when experts in each of these areas – business people, designers and engineers – work together effectively.

The diagram below illustrates the relationship between technology, business and design:

User experience, especially for mobile and web apps, is a relatively nascent field when compared against the entire history of technology development.

As such, things evolve very quickly. While core design principles are timeless, staying up to date with the latest UX trends and patterns is important to create good user experience.

What is the process of user experience design?

Now that we know what user experience is, how can you create an app with a great user experience?

There is no simple answer to this question. Great user experience comes from having an effective, organized and repeated process of understanding users needs and wants.

Generally speaking, the design process involves identifying patterns amidst seeming chaos, finding concepts and focusing them down into a design. Very much like the diagram below:

The UX design process can be broken down into five stages: research, information architecture, prototype, user test and iterate. Let’s go through each of the stages briefly.

Stage 1: Research

The research process starts out with understanding the problem you’re trying to solve as well as the people that you are solving the problem for. This stage is most easily neglected, but it is extremely important to the success of a project.

During the design phase, the main deliverables are:

• Identifying customer personas. These are profiles of your archetypal users. These are the people you should speak to during the research phase and user testing.

• Creating user stories. User stories help teams articulate the motivation for users to take different actions in your app. User stories should be created as a sentence in the form of “As a [user], I want to [action] so that [motivation]”.

• Creating user scenarios. User scenarios put you into the shoes of your users by giving you a real-world example of how a user story might come to play. User scenarios help you feel for your user by describing an actual environment where the user might need to perform a task.

• Creating user flows. User flows are the result of user stories and scenarios, where you sketch out the path that users take through the product. This could take the form of an actual screen flow or simply a line that depicts how users navigate your app.

Stage 2: Information architecture

Now that you have understood your users’ needs and wants, the next step is to get business people, designers and developers on the same page in terms of what the app should do.

Information architecture lays out and organizes the structure for your app. It allows us to understand where we are as users, and where the information we want is in relation to our position.

The goal of information architecture is to understand the different modules within your app, how they relate to each other and the data that they will generate and consume.

During the information architecture phase, the main deliverables are:

• Sitemaps. A diagram that maps out the relationships between modules in your app. It could come in the form of a tree or a linear flow diagram.

Stage 3: Prototype

Once you have your information architecture laid out, you are ready to prototype.

There are many techniques (e.g. crazy 8s, storyboarding and super votes) that can help your team to brainstorm and agree on the best version for different modules in an app.

During the prototype phase, the main deliverables are:

• Wireframes. A wireframe is a unified vision of a product, focusing on structure, functionality and usability rather than visual identity. Most of the wireframes we do these days are low-fidelity interactive wireframes, which means users can click and interact with them.

Stage 4: User test

Now that you have your wireframes or clickable prototypes, the next step is to get it in front of people. You’ll realize things rarely go according to plan once you put your ideas in front of real users.

At this stage of user testing, you have already understood your users’ goals and you are looking to test the usability of an application and measure how effective it is at helping users reach their goals.

During the user testing stage, the main deliverables are:

• Usability test plan. Summarizes the background, goals and methods for testing. This includes number of users to test with and whether the test will be conducted remotely or in person.
• User testing script. The script provides guidance, structure and consistency for the person who is administering the user test. It also helps the team to agree on what and how things should be tested.
• Usability reports. After a test is conducted, user feedback is consolidated in a usability report. This report is used to iterate and refine the prototype.

Stage 5: Iterate

Armed with the results from your user test, you now have tangible feedback that you can use to refine your prototype. It is a good idea to test each iteration of your prototype with users.

The design process is a continuous process of prototyping, getting feedback, implementing over and over again.

Conclusion

That’s a wrap! Hope this article has been useful in helping you to understand the basics of what user experience is, why it is important and the process for coming up with great user experience. Feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] if you need help in conducting a UX Audit on your digital applications.

How can malls create a personalized experience for each of their shoppers within the constraints of physical space?

In this article, we discuss how malls can blend the digital and physical and create a tailored experience for customers.

Why personalization?

The mall...is at a critical inflection point. A storm of global trends are coming together at the same time to cause malls to change the role they play in people’s lives. No longer are they primarily about shopping. Now, when consumers visit malls, they are looking for experiences that go well beyond traditional shopping

(McKinsey)

To compete with other physical and online, mall operators have to create that unique experience for shoppers and customer.

This can be implemented by first collecting the right data and then using that data to improve customer acquisition and retention.

1. Data collection

Hong Kong mall operators sit on a lot of useful but latent data.

Most mall apps come with a loyalty feature that encourages customers to collect points which they can redeem for goodies within the mall. The data from these loyalty apps are key to getting customer insights and offering a personalized experience to their customers.

The problem is that the data is often not in the right form. For instance, mall operators might collect receipts but do not record who the merchant is or what line items were purchased. Data cleaning is required to get data into the right format for analysis.

The key to creating a customer centric experience in the mall is data in the form of . John bought shoes from Zara. Jane visited McDonalds.

The user experience of mall apps make them suited to getting two types of information:

1. What customers bought

Many mall apps reward customers when they shop at your malls. When a customer presents a receipt in exchange for loyalty points in their mall app, they are giving you a record of what they bought in your malls.

The screenshot below illustrates the reward proposition for mall apps:

2. Where customers visited

Most mall apps also have access to the location of the user for wayfinding purposes. This gives mall operators the ability to record where customers visited.

2. Understanding the customer journey to improve customer retention and acquisition

These two types of data allow mall operators to gain valuable insights and take meaningful actions on their customers for customer retention and acquisition.

Let's talk about each of these separately.

Customer retention

The customer retention problem can be boiled down into how we can get customers to visit and shop at my malls more often.

There are two parts to this. The first is getting the customer to visit your mall. The second is getting customers to spend when they arrive at your mall.

To get customers to return to your malls, mall operators can use emails, SMS messages, push notifications and interactive kiosks to give customers a reason to visit.

But what should we send them?

Using data about what customers bought and where they visited, mall operators can personalize their recommendations to help customers discover products, merchants and promotions in store.

Customer acquisition

On the customer acquisition front, mall operators can identify their most valuable personas based on the demographics and interests of people who shop the most in the mall.

For instance, we are able to generate customer personas by taking the data in Part 1 as inputs.

Mall operators can then focus their marketing efforts on finding more of these types of customers and getting them to visit.

Conclusion

By making mall apps slightly more sophisticated, mall operators can not only drive shoppers to their malls using online-to-offline strategies, but can also gain a much deeper understanding into who their customers are.

That's it for now. Feel free to reach out for a chat or leave a comment below.

Looking to launch a fintech app in Hong Kong or Singapore for your banking department or new venture?

At Altitude Labs, we're a team of designers, engineers and ex-bankers. We have had the pleasure of developing and launching several fintech applications. Projects we've worked on includes a VR-powered mortgage app for DBS Bank, a Bitcoin remittance platform for Bitspark, a sentiment index for iMaibo, a credit card linked expense monitoring app, a blockchain-enabled private market for alternative investments, a social lending platform and a digital bank.

In this article, we'll cover key considerations for fintech startups when launching their app.

1. Security

The number one question that comes up about fintech startups is security. How can I stay lean and develop rapidly with the cloud while keeping my data safe?

From our conversations with the solution architects at Amazon Web Services (AWS), your fintech startup can achieve bank level security on the cloud.

In a nutshell, it involves hosting your application in a virtual private cloud, where you keep application code and data in private subnets and only expose your app to the world through a single public subnet.

There are several components to a secure infrastructure:

1. Routing: Configure your instances and subnets such that traffic flows only in restricted ports and channels
2. Network ACL (Firewall layer 1): Configure access between subnets
3. Security groups (Firewall layer 2): Configure access between instances
4. Bastion host: Only allow access to your private subnets through a VPN or a limited physical location and SSH key
5. VPC flow logs: Allows you to monitor the traffic within your virtual private cloud for anomalies
6. User access management: Separating roles for different levels of web console and API access to your cloud account
7. Encryption: The best practice is to encrypt all data transfers within your virtual private cloud
8. CDN: Use CDNs to not just serve your assets faster but also as a first layer of prevention for DDOS attacks, web application firewalls and IP blacklists
9. Physical: Physical data centers should have bank-level security certifications and your people and locations that have SSH access to data on your virtual private cloud need to be secure.

Needless to say, setting all this up is complex. In fact, most fintech startups will not have all this in place from the start. Startups have to exercise judgment in balancing between level of security, nimbleness and business scale.

Note: In spite of the above, banks in Hong Kong and Singapore still rely on their own IT infrastructure for security. As such, the apps they develop are often deployed on-premise.

References:

1. Introduction to AWS Security
2. AWS Security Best Practices

2. Blockchain

Word has it that some companies can multiply their valuations by inserting buzzwords into their business, and blockchain is one of those buzzwords.

However, many startups do genuinely want to leverage a distributed ledger to achieve transparency and trust in transactions that take place on their platform.

When implementing blockchain technology, it is a good idea to leverage a blockchain as a service (BAAS) solutions. This allows you to keep your investors happy while not having to invest heavily in implementing blockchain technology from scratch.

3. Know your client (KYC)

The last big hurdle for many fintech companies is around compliance and knowing your customers.

In terms of KYC requirements, it is a good idea to speak with the regulators to understand what's going on.

Fintech in Hong Kong is regulated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), SFC (Security & Futures Commission). In Hong Kong, fintech startups can talk to regulators through the Fintech Facilitation Office.

In Singapore, fintech is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The other way to understand KYC requirements is to compare what other apps out there have done.

There are several digital bank and wallet apps out there released by banks and fintech startups in Hong Kong, Singapore and internationally.

Comparing their onboarding flow to your understanding of regulatory requirements is a way to sense check that your app is meeting regulatory requrements while providing the best possible user experience.

Conclusion

Hope you've found this article useful. If you'd like us to cover other aspects of developing fintech applications or have questions, feel free to leave a comment below. If you have a fintech app you'd like to build, feel free to contact us.

Want to sell your products to Southeast Asia's over 650 million people? Consider selling on Southeast Asia's online marketplaces.

Why marketplaces?

Many of the marketplaces do not charge a listing fee. Listing your products on them gives your brand greater reach and potential customers without significant marketing spend.

Back in June 2017, we looked at the amount of web traffic to some of the larger marketplaces in Southeast Asia (see below). Many of these websites have millions of visitors each month.

(Note that the chart above omits US marketplaces who are in Southeast Asia such as Ebay and Amazon. You'll want to consider these as well.)

The Southeast Asia market resembles a more nascent version of China, where large majority of ecommerce transactions take place on third-party marketplaces like Tmall, Taobao and Jingdong.

It is a common strategy for retailers and merchants to sell both on their own ecommerce websites, retail stores as well as on third-party marketplaces.

Marketplaces do, however, charge a fee upon the completion of a sale. To keep customers within their ecosystem, most of these marketplaces also prevent you from exporting customer emails and contact numbers (this is standard practice for all marketplaces).

What is the selling process?

The process for selling on these marketplaces is similar to that of your own ecommerce store.

The steps involved are as follows:

1. Register as a seller on their website
2. Upload your products for approval
3. Products will be published on their website once approved
4. Customer places an order
5. Fulfill the orders
6. Get paid every 2-4 weeks from the marketplace

When you list on a marketplace, you will also have to extend your customer support functions to cover questions that might come from customers browsing the marketplaces.

Which marketplaces should I list on first?

Different marketplaces focus on different geographies, product and customer types.

Most of the time, merchants already have product names and descriptions in English. In this case, listing on marketplaces in English speaking countries first is a good way to test the waters. These would be Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines.

It is also a good idea to test your products on different marketplaces as their customer bases are different and your products could be more successful in certain marketplaces.

To help you to decide which marketplaces to consider listing on, here's a list of the popular marketplaces and what they focus on (in alphabetical order):

11Street

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Malaysia

Amazon

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: International

Blibli

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Indonesia

Bukalapak

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Indonesia

Carousell

• Model: P2P selling
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Singapore

Ebay

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: International

Elevenia

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Indonesia

Lazada

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan

Lelong

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Malaysia

OLX

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Philippines, Indonesia

Qoo10

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia

Matahari Mall

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Indonesia

Redmart

• Model: Marketplace (invite-only)
• Products: Groceries
• Countries: Singapore

Sendo

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Vietnam

Shopee

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Taiwan

Tiki

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Vietnam

Tokopedia

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Indonesia

Vatgia

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Diversified
• Countries: Vietnam

Zalora

• Model: Marketplace
• Products: Fashion
• Countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan

(Note: If you would like to be included or suggest an edit, please contact us)

Looking to create a web or mobile app to turn your product idea into reality?

This handy infographic walks you through the journey product development based on design thinking and lean startup principles. The journey is broken down into 3 stages, namely:

• Preliminary research. Apply design thinking principles to understand the problem you're looking to solve and conceptualize a solution
• Product design. Create user-tested prototypes or wireframes for your solution
• Agile development. Turn your prototype into an actual working website or mobile app and continue iterating based on user feedback

Enjoy!

For your ease of reference, here is a summary of what was covered above in text form:

Research

1. Identify and clarify your users' pain point
2. Research and observe how users tackle pain point
3. Organize your learnings
4. Brainstorm concepts
5. Hypothesize an app idea, user test and iterate

Product design

6. Understand the problem
7. Map out information architecture and user journey
8. Brainstorm and storyboard options for user experience
9. Vote on your favorite user experience options
10. Wireframe, user test and iterate

Agile development

11. Plan
12. UI/UX design
13. Development
14. User test
15. Review and go back to step 11

Unless you’ve somehow made it this far without a single competitor, UX should be an essential facet of your digital marketing budget for 2018.

As the landscape becomes increasingly competitive, good UX can be a massive differentiator for your company. Today we’ll take a closer look at how leading companies are going to be spending their UX budgets this coming year.

Why is UX important

First, let’s take a look at why investing in UX is essential for your business.

It’s critically important that users can quickly learn how to interact with your website, application, or software in a way that’s easy and rewarding for them. UX has benefits on several different levels. It helps to increase conversions, inspire consumer trust and even inspires brand loyalty.

Take Amazon for example. While the platform is devoid of the bells and whistles that are popular on other marketplaces, Amazon is the largest e-commerce retailer in the world. While the reasons for Amazon’s success are many, UX is athttps://www.emarketer.com/Chart/Most-Trusted-Source-Accurate-Product-Information-According-US-Internet-Users-by-Generation-May-2016-of-respondents-each-group/193031 the heart of that success. Can you think of a website that’s easier to use and understand than Amazon?

UX design is also a viable way to increase consumer trust. According to the chart below, only about 20% of users trust brands to represent the products they sell accurately. A strong user experience is a useful way to increase the level of trust the 4 out of 5 people lack when they visit a branded website.

Source

Today, consumers are making snap judgments on the trust level of a website almost instantaneously. In fact, recent studies suggest that users form their initial opinion of the trustworthiness of a site in less than a second!

UX is especially critical for small businesses and startups that lack the sort of reputation that years of success can provide. For this reason, UX is vital as it’s one of the best ways a business can inspire user trust.

Still trying to hammer out your 2018 budget to see if you can find room for UX? This marketing budget calculator may be a helpful tool for you.

Where to spend

Hopefully, you’ve now subscribed to the idea of UX as a critical component of success moving forward. Now that you’re thinking about how to include UX in your 2018 marketing budget let’s look at where to allocate that money.

Development

If you’re developing a new website, app, software or service, the best time to invest in UX is during the development process. At this time, UX works as a preventative measure, and it can help save you big money in the future.

Robert Pressman, author of Software Engineering: A Practitioner’s Guide asserts that “for every dollar spent to resolve a problem during product design, $10 would be spent on the same problem during development, and multiply to $100 or more if the problem had to be solved after the product’s release.”

While this doesn’t necessarily apply directly to web design, it can still be helpful, considering that a buggy or difficult to use website can render other aspects of your marketing ineffective, and it can create a negative experience that users will recall with ease when thinking about your company.

User testing

User testing is especially necessary for established websites and services. It can also be implemented in a way that’s cost-effective. User testing helps to ensure that your site, software or service is operating in the way it was designed to work.

User testing is also a great way to optimize when you’ve already got a good thing going. If your site is already functioning well and providing a strong user experience, user testing can shine a light on areas where you can still improve, leading to an even more memorable user experience.

Interactivity and personalization

One of the most important areas of UX that you should include in your budget is a focus on improving the interactivity and personalization of your website. While this can often be one of the most costly aspects of UX design, if it’s done well, it can pay off in spades.

Recent studies have suggested that as much as 56% of people would be inspired to spend more time or money interacting with your service if it provided a more personalized experience. Nearly 75% of internet users are turned off when a website doesn’t provide content that’s either personalized to them specifically or caters to their interests.

Those figures are pretty impressive, and they illustrate the importance of personalization in the 21st century. Personalization is also one area of UX that experts forecast massive growth moving forward. If you can swing the expense, personalization may be the area of focus most worthy of your marketing dollars this year.

This is a guest post by Tim Brown, who is the owner of Tim B Design, and is a web designer and SEO Specialist out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can check out his recent project “The Marketing Budget Calculator” to plan your marketing budget for this next year and take a look at his blog to learn cutting-edge methods to get the most out of your digital marketing budget. Tweet him at @timbdesignmpls

You've finally got the green light to develop the mobile app you've been championing. What next?

In this post, we'll cover a few things you should consider when hiring a mobile app developer to design and build your initial prototype.

Let's jump straight in.

1. What pain am I solving?

Before hiring a developer, make sure that you have identified and validated a clear need for your app. This means getting off your desk, speaking to users and understanding whether they actually have this pain point.

In the process of creating an app, there is a lot of research work that should be done beforehand:

2. What's the smallest thing I can build?

The biggest paradigm shift you'll have if you're developing an app for the first time is how to start small.

The corporate world teaches us to think big. We look into the future and picture what the world could be like with your product, the addressable market, the millions of users.

But launching a mobile app is about using the limited time and money that you have to create a prototype that you can use to prove that your idea works. Proving that your idea works in some way will get your stakeholders behind that idea, giving you a higher chance of getting more funding to grow the idea.

The smartest way to allocate limited time and money is to narrow scope and solve a specific problem. Instead of solving the problem entirely, it makes more sense to focus resources on the one feature that makes your app unique.

To learn more, check out this lecture about finding product market fit:

https://youtu.be/_6pl5GG8RQ4

3. Should I outsource or insource?

Another common question is whether you should hire engineers and designers onto your team or outsource. I'll lay out the pros and cons here and you can make your own decision:

Here are the reason to outsource:

• Faster. Agencies are optimized for building initial prototypes. We have a structured product design sprint where we guide you through designing your app over a short period of time. Working with an agency also saves you the time of training and getting the people your hire to work effectively as a team.

• Reusability. Good software agencies have boilerplate code that they use to prototype quickly. As part of your project, you get access to this code.

• Resource Flexibility. You are effectively renting a UI/UX designer, project manager, engineers or testers as and when you need. This allows you to speed up development on your project as required.

Here are the reason to insource:

• Control. You have full control over how your designers and engineers spend their time and the type of person you want on your team.

• Culture. When you hire out your own team, you can pick likeminded people and train them to fit the cultural mold that works for your business.

4. Native or mobile web (HTML5) app?

Finally, you'll probably ask yourself if you should develop a mobile web version or a native app. The main considerations for this are:

• Native apps are more expensive to build than mobile web apps because the process of developing iOS and Android are different
• The performance and speed of native apps are generally speaking better than mobile web apps because less content needs to be downloaded from the server
• Mobile web apps are easier to onboard users on because they do not have to install a new app but simply need to visit a URL
• Can your app provide a lot more value with native functionality like beacons, location based tracking, gyroscope etc.? If the answer is yes, you're probably looking for a Native app

Conclusion

That's a wrap. We hope you found this post useful. Feel free to leave any comments or questions you have below. If you want to talk to us about an app you'd like to build, feel free to reach out.

Daily UI challenges, motivates and inspires our designers to explore new designs and possibilities for web and mobile.

To kickstart the series, we created a clean, subtle and monochromatic calendar interface for the web.

This concept was inspired by the current Google Calendar as we are trying to bring to light the snapshot of your event and control of the details of your event within the same view. Our design aethestic takes after the Techō (a traditional Japanese personal planner or diary) which is rich in reminders, life details and page holders, ultimately creating a sense of organised layers.