Monday, October 31, 2016

Last part of my UX postioning

The last part of my UX positioning is pushing out some UX android redesign remixes in screenshot and video form. So this blog may getting boring unless you like UX design.

URL to the design remix page is coming..about a week or two.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Mobile Apps:5 Channels or 5,000 Channels

The last peak of VC investment in mobile start-ups was in the year 2012. While certainly VCs stop investing due to not finding enough viable mobile start-up ideas, that did not answer the underlying question.

Mobile Apps Are they 5 Channels or 5,000 Channels?

If its 5 channels than we should see a leveling off of things like AI services, cloud services, etc among MS, Apple, Google, and others. If its instead close to 5,000 channels than we should see an increase in efforts for those services including investments.

Guess what we see? Yes, everyone doubling down on investments in these areas and some such as Apple playing catch up.

Remember folks, VCs maintain a 5 year or less outlook as usually they are 5 years into their FUND in searching for things to invest in as their funds only usually run ten years. Apple, MS, Google, etc are looking at in contrast 25 year windows.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

2 Mobile Platforms

You will see many firms make an attempt at two platforms or try to exploit some dev into doing two platforms at 100 hours per week keeping up. Here are the numbers of why they do crazy stuff like that.

The normal or average conversion rate to MAU is 30%.

Android market share of 80% means 24%

iOS market share of almost 20% means 6%

Obviously, some firms are not yet waking up to the numbers and that generally is due to what resources they may have already deployed towards covering 2 mobile platforms.

If you are a new start-up than obviously you might to re-think the mobile platform choice.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

99% Material Design

Yes, 99% Material Design including even the Flat and Raised Buttons on Android 4.1 through Android 4.4. The missing 1% is the Transparent SystemBar stuff.

Some of you might not understand, but creating a UI for an app is not like creating a painting.  On mobile because we have this lack of space in the first place we kind of need every UI component working and looking the exact same way as our colors in our palette that we use to tell the app story.

I am of course talking about the GreenAndroid full library I am putting together. I just now have to clean up loose ends such as making sure every custom widget extends the AppCompatWidget and not the Native Widget,etc.

Than its creating the UX demo videos gifs,etc.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Witaj Polsko

Hello Poland..okay so my Polish is extremely rusty as I was only exposed to Polish speaking people when I was very small.

Remote Freelancing Strategies

You see every online freelancer place like Elance, UpWork, etc claim that they are the ones that get the most gigs. And yet, if you add all those numerical claims of the most freelancers they come to somewhat past 8 billion people and the world does not have 8 billion peopel as of yet.

And, I have yet to find any successful freelancer that is actually using those sties.

Thus, my set of strategies is somewhat different.

Number One, I search for those people that are nodes in the start-up and business communities that happen to have a need to be seen as knowing moible UX skilled devs. Typically, these are people who have previously co-founded start-ups and are now strategy consultants.

At this stage, I have to find those who are somewhat a bit hungry and new as strategy consultants. My online portfolio is than being structured to show what a high engagement Android UX app experience is about as that is an immediate start-up problem to solve that affects the future of that start-up.

Than I let those start-up strategy consultants think its the strategy that they have come up[ with, ie Android first as Android has 80% market share in the USA.

Why not post in HN or the numerous BuiltINCity-Sites?  Because, at the stage they start to consider developing an android app first they, ie the co-founders, are not reading those sites to helop find someone as the strategy consultant is already suggesting someone. And that strategy consultant also may be a VC or Angel investor.

Which Tech and Start-Up Hubs? I chose two start-up hubs near me to start, the big one Chicago and the a small one Indianapolis. Chicago is one the cusp to becoem bigger than NYC in about 5 years from now so it is probably a good choice.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

3-Year GooglePlayStore Downloads Doubling Window

Yes folks,there is a 3-year window where Google Play Store downloads will double each year. The ELIA5 explanation:

People are updating a to a new android device that allows them to install android apps on their SDCards unlike the current android 4.x device they have.

Are you ready for that Android app Push? If not than maybe you should contact me..

Saturday, October 15, 2016

Android UX Way

I think the answer to my being marketable to non-tech people in start-ups and other firms and my dev book series being marketable is to revamp and rebrand as the Android UX Expert with the book series being Android Development form an Android UX perspective.

So back to some work, some free stuff coming on Monday...its UX relaterd

Thursday, October 13, 2016

SoftForking Secret, Why

The whole set of reasons I softfork most android UX 3rd party libraries is for these reasons:

1. Google never, and I mean never, deploys enough Engineers to have a fully Android Support Library solution to the many UX and feature changes it makes per major Android OS version. We usually end up with an average effort after 8 months or so after the Android OS version release. This harms the goal of making an android app behave and look the same across android OS versions which is somewhat important to user happiness and on boarding efforts.

And due to more than two versions of Android OS being in the device market at once this a unique problem due to the android platform fragmentation as iOS app developers do not face this problem.

2. The Average Android Developer may get back-porting concepts right as far as the way to back-port a certain feature but usually lacks full knowledge of the Android Support Library internals to pull it off correctly.

3. Having cleaned up and curated those libraries allows me to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of the Android Support Library internals and provides me with an edge in guaranteeing specific look and feel across android 4.x to android 7.x.

I just have to figure out what visual formats to use in showing off the demos. Should it be just UI controls or more expansive UX demos or both sets of demos.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Where am I getting UX inspiration?

Something to tie-you-guys-and-gals-over until I start posting some new UX videos. The new place where I am getting some UX inspiration from is:

UpLabs

Especially, if you are into material design you should sign up.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Android App Dev as a Service??

AS I finish the UI-UX-Material Design library full of module this week I and get ready to start cranking out UI-UX demos, I still have the glarring hole of how to pitch Android App Development as this long-term Service Offering.

Let me explain, like ELIA5...

In the long-term, say a decade or more, one wants to decrease the android app development by being able  to predict where the UX changes will occur and thus pre-plan in your android app UI-UX implementations both those choices and the choices of libraries used, etc.

The goal of course is for the firm receiving the android app development services over a decade or more to view me as the one migating the risk of the UX style changing among android app users and of course migating the liabilities of depending upon a whole bunch of 3rd party libraries(android UX tends to use 25 out of 60 3rd party libraries).

Certain IT Shops and Design Shops in the Chicago market are lazily using the reputation and brand of their most famous Fortune 500 clients as the marketing message. Part of the reason is its a simple thing to use with almost no explanation needed.

I think what I need to is use UX-UI demos and highlight its just something from the GrottWorkShop magic lab of Android UX coolness. Its easier in explanation and uses their worldview to get to them to sign on with something that is in their long-term best interests.

And the nice thing with that is that the IT Shops and Design Shops are relying upon reputation of the Fortune500 client rather than showing UX demos so it should translate into an advantage.

How long did it take to currate, audit, and figure out how the 3rd party UX-UI libraries fit togetehr to be backward and forward compatible? Awhile, it did not occur in an hour or a day.

As far as UX-UI demos lined up to be shown in November, we have:

1. DebugDrawer, as it represents at most a naviagational drawer and uses animation effects to draw attention to content.
2. Certain Menu and  Contextual tool bars as they focus attention on user choices.
3. An onboarding app tour guide that introduces the android app user to the app.

I think those UX-UI demos offer a good peek at the UX techniques used to increase user engagement and that is the major thing I have to highlight in this mature mobile app market we have in the USA and Europe with potential clients.

What is nice is the full app demos with the source, apk, etc than also serve the duel function of gettign Google to award me an Android GDE certification after those projects have been code reviewed by Google. At some point that will be anice marketing tool to have earned.


Android App Dev as a Service??

AS I finish the UI-UX-Material Design library full of module this week I and get ready to start cranking out UI-UX demos, I still have the glarring hole of how to pitch Android App Development as this long-term Service Offering.

Let me explain, like ELIA5...

In the long-term, say a decade or more, one wants to decrease the android app development by being able  to predict where the UX changes will occur and thus pre-plan in your android app UI-UX implementations both those choices and the choices of libraries used, etc.

The goal of course is for the firm receiving the android app development services over a decade or more to view me as the one migating the risk of the UX style changing among android app users and of course migating the liabilities of depending upon a whole bunch of 3rd party libraries(android UX tends to use 25 out of 60 3rd party libraries).

Certain IT Shops and Design Shops in the Chicago market are lazily using the reputation and brand of their most famous Fortune 500 clients as the marketing message. Part of the reason is its a simple thing to use with almost no explanation needed.

I think what I need to is use UX-UI demos and highlight its just something from the GrottWorkShop magic lab of Android UX coolness. Its easier in explanation and uses their worldview to get to them to sign on with something that is in their long-term best interests.

And the nice thing with that is that the IT Shops and Design Shops are relying upon reputation of the Fortune500 client rather than showing UX demos so it should translate into an advantage.

How long did it take to currate, audit, and figure out how the 3rd party UX-UI libraries fit togetehr to be backward and forward compatible? Awhile, it did not occur in an hour or a day.

As far as UX-UI demos lined up to be shown in November, we have:

1. DebugDrawer, as it represents at most a naviagational drawer and uses animation effects to draw attention to content.
2. Certain Menu and  Contextual tool bars as they focus attention on user choices.
3. An onboarding app tour guide that introduces the android app user to the app.

I think those UX-UI demos offer a good peek at the UX techniques used to increase user engagement and that is the major thing I have to highlight in this mature mobile app market we have in the USA and Europe with potential clients.

What is nice is the full app demos with the source, apk, etc than also serve the duel function of gettign Google to award me an Android GDE certification after those projects have been code reviewed by Google. At some point that will be anice marketing tool to have earned.


Saturday, October 8, 2016

Smarter Than The Average Android Developer

In a mature android app market such as in the USA or Europe, one has to arrange and organize things differently as one will not have that big gigantic hit off of one app but will have some smaller mobile app hits and have to maintain and update more than mobile app.

Android is somewhat challenging as instead of just two OS versions in the market usually there is 6 to 7 different OS versions and the new UI-UX featues that requrie particular attention. I could do the android UI-UX of each app by piecemeal but that falls apart as far as being able to maintain it as one wants time to devote towards updates as that is what pays the bills as far as paid IN-App Purchases.

Thus, one has to currate and clean-up a whole bunch of 3rd party UI-UX libraries with the goal of having this one stop UI-UX library that is backward compatible but forward looking as far as being maintainable when new UI-UX features get introduced by Google.

Than of course you are also currating and cleaning-up a set of utility libraries that allow you to  modularize the parts of the android app so that you can put the apps together like you would lego blocks. Sounds simple, huh?

Mix that in with not one IT shop, Design Shop, or start-up understanding those goals or why those goals also benefit them as far as obtaining an android developer. Of course most of those are operating in the piecemeal website world still where you still can get away with such shoddy ill-planned software creation.

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Microsoft's Lack Of Engineering

If you have a windows PC you might have Windows Defender turned off. Why? Well, because of all the false positives it generates.
Even worse is its behavior of flagging errors in finding what its detecting and never prventing a dismal screen to the end users to encourage rporting that set of errors back to Microsoft.

The symptom is the same you see with Plane or Train crashes. A system is designed for some safety aspect or concern, but due to all the false positives the USERS of the system learn not trust it or even worse learn to turn it off and end up triggering crashes.

This is the crux of engineering as we are not building a system to manage a computer. We are building a system to make it easier to do something but has its responsibility to encourage humans to make the right decisions.

It would be easy to state that it's just one smal thing with Microsoft. But, it permeates the whole company from its lack of discipline in UX(3 free OS versions just to fix the UX) to its lack of discipline in security in getting just Windows Defender to deliver only true postives and negatives.

This is why I insist in being interviewed only by co-founders and founders of start-ups as I want to find out if the top of the start-up will let me set-up discipline in engineering and enforce it.  It does not make sense to me to get hired and take their money if the top management is going to destroy all my discipline to the point where its reflected in end users using the software in a way that it was not designed for.

I want to find a start-up that happens to need an android developer and happens to want me to be happy actually using all the computer science and engineering stuff to actually come up with a system that pleases me by pleasing end users.
But, that has to be founded on some actual discipline and the management team that is willing to not compromise.

Its hard to find something of that nature. Too many start-ups with the Wells Fargo disease of lets strive for some immediate goal and screw the long-term consequences.

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Tech Bubble Burst-Defense

If the investing public moves from the quick-rich Tech bubble assets, what is the next asset class they will move to? The reason for the previous Tech Bubble Bursting post was a there is already a move towards a different asset class by the investing public and one should start thinking of which asset class it might be.

For homework everyone should read the SEC rules changes that were published last year concerning start-ups and stock classes and reporting requirements as it has a clue to where the investing public is moving to as far as assets they are investing in.

Monday, October 3, 2016

Tech Bubble Bursting, Its Real Folks

Okay, so you might be wondering why some tech founders are claiming that we are in a tech bubble. Some folks have obliquely explained with just confused more people so I will give the ELIA5 explanation.

The underlying trend first popped its ugly head in the 2008 financial crisis. That happened because young people stopped buying houses to the point where demand for houses reached zero and than of course house prices fell to bottom and those who had house mortgages dumped those.

Loose money and loose bank standards only sped up the process but was not the root cause. The root cause the massive amounts of student loan debts carried by young people which causes those same people to put off things like house purchases,etc.

That less housing buying, now at a 50 year low, impacts other parts of the economy as now the GDP is only increasing 3% per year. On top of that less young people form both startups and small businesses due to the heavy burden of student loan debt.

The $1.5 trillion in student debt acts as a mortgage on future increasing GDP growth as we do not get the benefit of that multiplier of 3x or 5x that would happen if that same $1.5 trillion was spent on something else instead of debt. Thus we are actually missing out on an increase of 7% to 12% in GDP per year based on self-interest.

No more big start-up unicorns for awhile and people switching to very small startups.  The only silver lining is that maybe the thing gets solved in the next 15 years due to a collection of USA states through their public colleges giving those HS graduates that can pass the full AP course and examples a tuition free 2-year degree(Indiana is one of the states through their public colleges making such efforts, hopefully more USA states sign on to that initiative.).

Saturday, October 1, 2016

Demo App, my StrictMode Code

So I will be posting some tips as I finish my app demos this month. The first tip is to set up some gradle flavors for each api level you are targeting and than code out an effective strict-mode setup :



Nice and simple and it works better than doing a detect all. the only caution is that it does not catch every ANR. For that purpose you really should check out using ANRWatch Dog:

ANRWatchDog