Als Unternehmen das im Bereich individueller Softwarelösungen aktiv ist stehen die Berater bei L-mobile vor der Herausforderung die zu erstellende Anwendung für den Kunden im Rahmen eines Workshops zu skizzieren und das finale Design erlebbar zu machen.
Fehler oder Design-Probleme die in diesem Stadium des Projektes gefunden werden sind einfach und schnell zu erkennen und können bereits frühzeitig korrigiert werden.
Andere Arbeitsergebnisse dieses Termins umfassen in der Regel Prozess- oder Rollenbeschreibungen, Ablaufdiagramme, Schnittstellen- oder Datenbankbeschreibungen. Alle diese Ergebnisse sind für den weiteren Prozess wichtig, doch kein Arbeitsergebnis ist so überzeugend wie ein Wireframing oder Prototyp der Anwendung.
Diese Ergebnisse sind besonders aus den folgenden Gründen sehr wichtig:
Sie sind leicht zu verstehen
Sie geben die Vision und die Erwartung realistisch wieder
Sie haben einen konkreten Bezug zu den Inhalten
Sie sind am ehesten interaktiv
Sie erzeugen den größten Eindruck & beeinflussen das Projekt massgeblich
Sie sind Grundlage für Diskussion & gemeinsame Verbesserung
Sie geben den Fortschritt der konzeptionellen Arbeit direkt wieder
Die anderen Arbeitsergebnisse werden üblicherweise in einem Dokument zusammen getragen. Die Optmierung des Layouts und der Formattierung nimmt häufig einen großen Teil der Arbeit ein. Die Empfänger schauen das Dokument kurz an und fahren mit Ihrer täglichen Arbeit vor.
Hier findet keine wirkliche Veränderung oder kein Wandel statt. Projektdokumente sind in der Regel nicht die Dokumente mit denen man seine Bürowände schmücken möchte. Ihr Ziel ist das Auslösen von Veränderungen in einem Unternehmen. Wenn man ein Problem lösen und die Lösung effektiv und effizient kommunizieren möchte, sind Wireframes und Prototypen der beste Weg. Sie stimulieren die Vorstellungskraft, erzeugen Verständnis und geben Menschen eine Vorstellung von den erreichbaren Zielen. Kein anderes Arbeitsergebnis kann diesen Prozess so effektiv auslösen. Der Eindruck, den ein guter Prototyp hinterlassen kann ist nicht zu vernachlässigen, unabhängig davon welchen Stellenwert die anderen Dokumentationsteile erhalten.
Wireframes
Wireframes sind wie Baupläne in der Architektur. Ihr Ziel ist es den grundlegenden Aufbau, die Struktur, die Navigation und die Organisation, und NICHT die visuellen Aspekte wie Icons, Farben und Typgrafie einer Anwendung zu beschreiben. Aus diesem Grund werden Wireframes häufig in schwarz / weiß ausgeführt. Der Fokus liegt häufig auf Inhalten, nicht auf der Form. Wireframes werden üblicherweise vor den so genannten Mockups oder Prototypen erstellt.
Mockups
Mockups kommunizieren die visuellen Aspekte einer Anwendung die ein Wireframe nicht transportieren kann. Hier geht es um Bildwahl, Typografie und Farbgebung. Nach der Fertigstellung bekommt man häufig einen Eindruck davon wie das fertige Design aussehen soll. An dieser Stelle kann ein Entwickler eingeschaltet werden der die Anwendung nach diesen Vorgaben gestaltet.
Prototypen
Ein interaktiver Prototyp ist die Königsdisziplin. Hier geht es darum eine interaktive Demoanwendung z.B. aus Html und jQuery zu erstellen die den finalen Funktionsumfang für den Anwender wirklich erlebbar macht. Der Vorteil ist das bereits sehr früh Schwächen in der Ausgestaltung im Bezug auf die Zielplattformen gefunden werden können. In der Regel empfiehlt es sich mit einem Satz an vorgefertigten Elementen zu arbeiten um die Bearbeitungszeit während des Konzeptes möglichst gering zu halten.
Der Vorteil ist das die Anwendung bereits fast vollständig die Ideen und Designs wiedergibt und diese von anderen Entwicklern sehr schnell bearbeitet bzw. übernommen werden können. Darüber hinaus ist Html wirklich plattformunabhängig.
Auf dem Markt existiert eine ganze Reihe von freien und kommerziellen Prototyp-Werkzeugen die in unterschiedlicher Qualität Demoanwendungen erzeugen. Ich persönlich bevorzuge den Einsatz von reinem Html, jQuery, CSS und Firebug um meine Kentnisse in diesen Bereichen zu trainieren und die Entwicklung schlank zu halten.
FORM + INHALT = DESIGN
Design ist die Synthese von Form und Inhalt. In einem interaktiven Prototyp erlebbar, fühlt sich die fertige Anwendung zum Greifen nah an. Mindestens eins der oben genannten Werkzeuge sollte in keinem professionellen Projektworkshop fehlen. Die Begeisterung die ein Kunde ausstrahlt der ein Design aus einem Wireframe entstehen sieht ist eine tolle Erfahrung für jeden der dies schon einmal erleben durfte. Ich möchte auf das Gefühlt nicht mehr verzichten.
Posted By: Oliver Joest @ May 25, 12:50 PM |
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I was impressed by the response to his series. It seems his traffic has dramatically increased and also many people where providing comments and also making suggestions to extend the list. After some time passed he updated his original list and the post came back to my mind. After thinking a while about it i decided to create a TOP 100 mobile business list.
Why mobile?
As some of you might know i am allowed to call myself “Development Manager” for L-mobile We’re creating mobile solutions in enterprise environments on a daily basis. We are working with Microsoft technologies, including a pinch of ALT.Net and always searching to improve the development process. I have some insight in the Microsoft way of doing things, Compact Framework, SQL Compact, you name it.
I didn’t want the resulting list to be too platform specific. Focus on a single technology or Programming Language didn’t cut it. I wanted the list to include different aspects of the mobile business as it is in 2009. It’s a true heteregenous network of aspects. Programming Languages + Tools, User Interfaces, Concepts, Devices and processes. The goal was to embrace all of the aspects and assemble a list that contains the best of all.
Due to the nature of my companies business i expected the list to come out a little .Net centric. I tried to get away from it as much as possible but of course this list is subjective to my research. If you find an important voice in the mobile blogosphere is missing i am looking forward to improve!
Assembling a TOP 100 List
When starting the list i decided to stick to the approach Jurgen outline in his post How to make a Top Blog List The assembling of a list of blogs was no major deal, by going from my feedreader to the blog rolls of the sites i visited, taking a look at google, technorati and twitter i was quickly able to assemble a list with more than 300 items in it.
But then comes the long end, the gathering of the numbers turned out to be far more exhausting then Jurgen let me anticipate: “And some stamina is useful as well, because it’s a lot of work…” How right he was!
In the end the list was complete with numbers in them, final sorting was like winning the fight. The insights i gathered are valuable, the mobile industry consists of so many aspects, and taking a look at them was both motivating + interesting at the same time.
UPDATE: After having this post around for at least 1 month, i am currently taking part in the 1st german mobile camp in Dresden and i decided it’s a good idea to let this post manifest.
After using my iPhone for almost half a year now i always felt that it was lacking some important thing: Battery Power. The Standby time of my iPhone was in fact that bad that i wasn’t able to travel more than one day without recharging it in the evening.
After some research i have assembled a list of the settings that solved my problem. I have the feeling that the largest Consumer was the 3G option. After switching it feels like it will standby for epic timespans (When not talking on the Phone the whole day, i can live with 3-4 days without power outlet).
Reduce Brightness to about 10%
Switch off 3G, your iPhone will go with Edge which gives decent speeds for mail and basic browsing, you can start 3G if you really feel you need it (iTunes, AppStore DL, etc.). After switching it off i never felt the need to switch it on again
Switch of Wi-Fi, also just switch it on if you need it
Same for Bluetooth
Go from Push to Periodic updates, receiving updates once per hour does it for me.
That’s it, recharge and feel the Power of a iPhone that to me is more like a companion than a Tamagotchi which needs periodic care.
Posted By: Oliver Joest @ Mar 26, 07:10 PM |
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Some of my teammates are not experienced with the usage of Feeds, so i decided to give a short introduction to the subject.
*The basic idea behind feed readers is that a website publishes it’s content in a machine readable resource. This Resource will update frequently for example when a new article is published.
A Feedreader is a program that monitors a list of resources and aggregates new posts into some kind of inbox. This inbox can be compared best to an E-mail client, you can read new posts, order them into folders and add new feeds if you like.
A bunch of Feedreaders exist. I tried some of them but decided for Google Reader in the end. As a gimmick i will share my .opml file (Directory of Feeds i read) with you.
Google Reader
The Google Reader is a free service. You can subscribe to it via http://www.google.com/reader. Once registered you can start registering new Feeds to it. It helps managing Posts by Starring them (marking them Favorite), order Feeds in folders and the best: it is available everywhere you have an online connection. This means you can get your news all over the world.
How to find Feeds
If you have sites you visit on a regular basis watch-out if they show one of the Orange RSS-Icons. Most Browsers will show this near to the address bar if the Site overs Feeds.
Once you click it you will be redirected to the machine readable content of the site. The address of this page is what you will need to register it to your feed reader software.
Watch out: Some sites over different types of feeds. E.g. one for posts and one for comments.
Once you found a site you like you should look for a “Blogroll” on the Website. Most Blogging Systems allow you to publish the list of Sites you like. Once you found a starting point you can dig deeper by looking at the content the publisher reads. This is like Alice in Wonderland: Follow the white rabbit and stop & subscribe to what you like.
Today a plethora of Sites offer feeds. The problem is not to find them but to filter the information for those feeds which provide you the most value.
Bottom-Line
Feeds help you to stay updated and gather content from multiple sites. But make sure you subscribe only to Feeds which yield a value. Also take into account that most blogs express the subjective thoughts of a single author to a specific topic. Always be critical and build your own opinion by reading multiple sources.
Once found a start, and with some discipline blogs can provide a lot of value.
Posted By: Oliver Joest @ Mar 14, 07:13 PM |
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Almost without any notice the L-mobile Blog passed it’s first birthday. *Time for me to review
the first 365 days of existance and draw a little resumee*. In the beginning there was the idea of starting a blog. Motivated by different posts like i decided to give it a try.
After posting some articles i decided it was fun and i would continue. Also some of my teammates took the upcoming adventure and contributed some bits, i was happy and waited to see the blog growing.
After the enthusiasm
But after a while i discovered that posts where not coming that easy. There was a timespan of almost 2 months where no new entry was published. Did the vision of a succesful business blog end like that? I decided to continue, writing at least one post in a month to keep things updated from time to time. Writing blog posts is a task that consumes time. It’s not that you flip out your notebook and voila there are new posts.
Posting articles is work. First there is the idea to write, followed by research, writing, preparing examples and looking for appropriate visuals. Assembling everything in a meaningful and appealing manner and posting is the last step. Sometimes this step is never reached. There are some articles waiting ever since to be published. The headings are ready , but the content is not ready to be released right now.
Positive experiences motivate you to continue.
Independent visitors
My teammates did not notice the blog until i kept telling them that i have posted something related to their questions on this blog. This was in one way unsatisifying, but on the other hand statistics showed that i have up to 10 regular visitors per day that are not generated by my teammates. so still there is some nice chance to increase the amount of readers.
Posting value
There are some posts that really draw a lot more attention then others, most of them are not related to mobile business but to everyday questions. These posts are the real traffic-magnets and should be mentioned here:
Almost all of the traffic is generated from direct visitors (say 60%), the rest is coming from search engine(s) (in fact it’s only one search engine: google). There are almost no referring websites that link to the content, this means two things: Improve the content and spread the word to other websites.
What’s next?
During my current research for a series of blog posts i analyzed a lot of blogs. I discovered that good blogs have something in common and i feel like it’s time to refresh things a little bit.
Introduce yourself. I think that a blog should provide a little background- information about the authors and the motivation that it’s driven from. It should follow the elevator-pitch rule.
Allow comments. When setting up this blog i decided not to accept comments. I have made some bad experiences with comment spam in the past and so i decided to leave it out. But i think it is time to give the readers the chance to participate and share their insights.
More Posts, better quality. Like in the wikipedia Quality Offensive i want to increase the Quality of the posts to create more value, also i would like to see some new Posts coming. Focus on the niche will do the rest…
English as a default language. In the beginning i decided to write in german, but over time i discovered that writing in english will be more popular. The posts will attract a broader audience. As a side-effect my team-mates from Hungary, Slovakia and Turkey will be able to participate as well.
Posted By: Oliver Joest @ Feb 26, 06:16 PM |
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A package containing a lightweight Oracle client for Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Unix is available from Oracle (Direct Download) After extracting the Package to the local hard drive – e.g. C:\Oracle you should alter your Path variable and include the newly created Oracle folder.
PATH=C:\Oracle\
Connecting to Oracle is possible in 2 ways. With TNSNames.ora or without. The TNSNames.ora file acts as a connection directory so you can specify multiple connections and use an abbreviated connection string.
When using TNSNames.ora create a new folder in C:\Oracle called “Network” and under this one a folder called “Admin”. Now we have to include this in the Environment variables by creating a new Entry called “TNS_ADMIN” which points to the directory where the TNSNames.ora file resides.
TNS_ADMIN=C:\Oracle\Network\Admin\
If you ain’t looking forward to create a TNSNames.ora the connection string for the .Net Framework Data Provider for Oracle can be specified when creating new connections
If you are going to use TNSNAMES.ora create a TNSNAMES.ora file in the TNS_ADMIN directory and include the following and replace DEMO, SERVER and PORT with the correct values:
I know that posting links to good articles is a common behavior when your own creativity suffers and you’re not able to finish that blog post.
I like the idea that posting my favourite writers articles will increase my productivity just by sharing them to my environment. So here we go:
How to Handle Multiple Customers
This one was espacially revealing as it shows a way how to deal with the real problems software development teams are facing each day.
Variable Length List of Items
I’ve seen this UI Pattern multiple times and am really lucky to find such a good example for the creation. One Problem still exists, Firefox and Opera are loosing already entered data. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later release of ASP.Net MVC
Oracle Instant Client
At last a solution to prevent the installation of the 400MB Oracle Client monster, i like the xcopy approach and putting the additional environment variables into place feels like it’s 2009.
Posted By: Oliver Joest @ Feb 02, 04:23 PM |
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