ALL WE NEED IS A BASIC IDEA AND ONE DEDICATED PERSON. Jørgen Mygind, Business Development Manager, TouchGFX

Transcription

1 ALL WE NEED IS A BASIC IDEA AND ONE DEDICATED PERSON Jørgen Mygind, Business Development Manager, TouchGFX 3 rd Quarter 2014

2 EDITORIAL FROM IDEA TO PRODUCT FASTER As history shows, design and software development is often a very complex and time-consuming task. Our history, however, tells us that you can create successful products without a heavy and lengthy process. For more than 25 years, we have put our diversity to work, hereby ensuring both an innovative edge and a high quality of our clients products. The service supports the LINAK brand and the company s dedication to improve people s lives. See pictures from our TouchGFX Live workshop at E-14, and learn how we took clients from idea to basic prototype on embedded hardware in just five hours. In the same spirit, we bring you the service of rapid app prototyping. We swear by an agile and iterative process with a strong focus on trial and error. We wholeheartedly subscribe to the saying: Fail early, fail cheaply. Our process is designed to be effective, exploratory, and lightweight. To give you your tech fix, we breach the big data buzz with an article disclosing the business potentials of this tech trend. Finally, we invite you to our F# event in November sporting some of the absolute top experts. In the last months, we have taken our trust in this saying to a new level and brought our proven process into new formats that can take clients from idea to product faster. Among case stories, tech trend breakdowns, and event invitations, we bring you these new formats in this issue of Mjølner UPDATE. Learn how LINAK and Mjølner have differentiated LINAK s products with a service that motivates users to strengthen their health. Best Regards, Brian Gottorp Jeppesen, CEO UPDATE Cover Photo: Maria Holmegaard, Nicklas Lindahl, and Jesper Hedegaard, Mjølner Informatics

3 CASE MOTIVATING DESIGN IMPROVES USER HEALTH AND BUILDS BRAND Mjølner created LINAK Desk Control TM for LINAK. In close collaboration with LINAK, Mjølner designed and An application that builds brand awareness and developed LINAK Desk Control TM. motivates users to benefit fully from their height adjustable tables. Customizable & Informational LINAK Desk Control is a small application for users LINAK is a market-leading manufacturer of linear work computer. With personal settings, it calculates the actuators and a close partner to Mjølner. Our latest collaboration is the LINAK Desk Control TM application. number of minutes you should stand up each day in order to achieve your desired calorie burn or ergonomic benefit. LINAK Desk Control TM in use Service & Awareness The application then informs you when to stand up, how LINAK faces a challenge shared by many industrial close you are to reaching your goal, when you can sit down companies: When delivering a single component for again, etc. Developers, UX ers, and designers were all in for a challenge 12 Custom Versions Already Sold a larger product, a company s public identity easily here. The project called for important decisions on many The value of the application is clear to LINAK s customers. disappears in the midst of brands involved. Creating Encouragement Versus Disturbance levels, and Mjølner s ability to cooperate was central. It builds brand awareness while integrating the use of additional services that interact directly with end-users is The application posed two main challenges: First, when - Mikkel Yde Kjær, Mobile Manager, Mjølner Informatics their product in the daily lives of users. a great way to overcome this: dealing with health, it is essential that calculations are accurate. LINAK s own researchers developed a complex The Service Is the Face of Your Product LINAK has already sold the LINAK Desk Control We wanted to create an application that could improve formula for that purpose. Services that interact directly with users give you a chance application in 12 custom versions for different suppliers of user health while emphasizing the core of our product. to show the face of your brand. height adjustable tables. Being a trusted partner, Mjølner was a natural part in The second challenge was to create a design that achieving this goal. encourages users to incorporate exercise into their LINAK presented the application at exhibitions this - Bjarke Thomsen, SBU Sales Manager, LINAK workday without causing unnecessary disturbance. summer to a very intrigued audience. Find the software at linak.com/deskline

4 WORKSHOP THREE PROTOTYPES IN THREE DAYS WITH TouchGFX We invited a range of companies to challenge us with their future GUI project at E-14. Three selected projects were turned from idea to prototype in a live workshop for all visitors to see. The interest in TouchGFX is steadily growing and we wanted to give professionals from all levels of the Danish electronics sector a better understanding of the possibilities TouchGFX offers. Being Denmark s largest electronics event, E-14 was the perfect place to do just that. Concept, Design & Implementation Our TouchGFX-team of three, a user experience specialist, a digital designer, and a software developer, took on one project a day, turning a GUI idea into a working prototype on Cortex M4 hardware, all in just five hours. Day 1 - Prolon: Control unit for intelligent buildings Day 2 - Nilan: Control panel for ventilation units Day 3 - Hardi: Control unit for field sprayers At the end of each day, we gave the clients a package to use in the next stage of the process. This included concept descriptions, a collection of sketches with elaborations about design and feature choices, the prototype running on embedded hardware, and design files. Additionally, we gave the clients advice on how to convey design and feature choices to their organizations. Push Your Product Development The purpose of the workshop was to give potential clients a better understanding of what they can achieve with TouchGFX and how a project can unfold. All without spending too much precious time. The workshop is a simple tool for product managers, developers, and others to estimate, plan, and develop embedded GUI projects. All we need is a basic idea, one dedicated person, and a few design guidelines. - Jørgen Mygind, Business Development Manager, TouchGFX Henrik Buhl Nielsen represented Nilan during the second day workshop. Take Your Product Development Further Your organization s ideas and challenges might benefit from a similar approach. We can help you develop the The workshop gave me a new understanding of use scenarios and how we can utilize the animations, graphics, idea, create the concept, and implement the prototype in a matter of hours. and functionalities of TouchGFX and give our users a better product experience overall. - Henrik Buhl Nielsen, Electronics & Control R&D Engineer, Nilan Jørgen Mygind jmy@mjolner.dk Nilan s prototype included a change temperature feature, an open/close menu feature, and an animated warning screen. Furthermore, we implemented a home screen displaying the temperatures inside and outside, and the current ventilation mode. IDEATION CONCEPTUALIZATION DIGITAL DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION PROTOTYPE

5 WORKSHOP The workshop gave me an understanding of how we can utilize TouchGFX and give our users a better product experience. Henrik Buhl Nielsen, Electronics & Control R&D Engineer, Nilan

6 SERVICE LESS TALK, MORE APP-TION! What if you were able to get to know your mobile app before it was made? Our prototype apps make this possible. Prototype apps saves you time and money by making your development process more efficient. Communicate Quickly Prototype apps reduce confusion about how ideas will be realized. By having your idea on a device, you can quickly communicate your wants and needs and thereby minimize the amount of time spent on clarifying requirements. Realistic Mock-Ups that reflect the apps final form, regardless of platform. The best prototyped apps are the ones that mirror the requirements of the final product. Color, scale, pictures, and navigation, should be used in ways that create the most realistic mock-up possible. Continuous Iterations that become a natural part of your app design process. New screenshots are simple and fast to upload. This enables frequent iterations during the development process, giving you a better end-product. Get Started! Let us strengthen the collaboration between ideators and developers by optimizing the development process in your organization with prototype apps. Frederik Winstrup Johansen fwj@mjolner.dk Our prototype apps give you: Direct Feedback by enabling you to share links and input directly inside the prototype app, instead of exchanging document files and pictures. This way, collaboration becomes easier and more efficient. From Idea to Product Faster To develop an app is often a long and complicated task. By using prototype apps, the team is equipped with a better communication tool. It eases the decision-making process regarding design and function and takes you from idea to product faster.

7 TECH THE BUSINESS POTENTIALS OF BIG DATA Big Data is a highly profiled tech trend, but how can it benefit your business? The three V s of Big Data - Volume, Velocity and Variety - does not provide a sufficient definition of Big Data from a business perspective. Instead, the key lays in concentrating on the nature of the challenges the technology can solve. Describe, Predict & Prescribe Big Data can describe a current or historic state, predict future scenarios, and prescribe the actions a company should make based on these analyses. Big Data should therefore be seen as: Cost Reduction by enabling you to scan businesscritical and vast data sets at a reduced process time and cost. Improved Decision-Making with better data models that provide greater insights to decision makers and real-time data analysis that can automate decisionmaking in certain areas. Service/Product Optimization with large and varied data sets on the right platform. Optimize existing services and products continuously, or contribute to the development of new ones. The complex technical discipline of handling data of voluminous size and various forms at high velocity, in order to solve problems of a predictive and prescriptive nature. Three Gains of Big Data Following the definition above, three main business potentials of Big Data reveal themselves: Business First In the haze of the Big Data buzz, it is important to stay focused on the needs of your company. The crucial thing to consider is which questions you would like an answer to. Then consider if Big Data could help answer these questions. LEARN MORE ABOUT BIG DATA Gustav Kastrup Nielsen gkn@mjolner.dk

8 EVENT JOIN OUR F# EVENTS! Meet Tomas Petricek and Mathias Brandewinder and learn what F# can offer you. We have teamed up with the absolute top of F# specialists, Mathias Brandewinder, Microsoft MVP, and Tomas Petricek, author and Microsoft MVP. With these specialists, we offer you two F# events. Building Stuff that Works with F# November 3 rd from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm - Finlandsgade 10, 8200 Aarhus N Many standard F# libraries and tools, including the compiler itself, are developed as open-source and have a large number of contributors. How does the F# community manage to build tested, frequently released, and welldocumented libraries that work? In this talk, we will look into the awesome F# tools, many of which can be used with any.net language. F# via Machine Learning November 4 th from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm - Finlandsgade 10, 8200 Aarhus N Machine learning is the art of writing programs that become better at performing tasks by using data. In this handson workshop you will learn how to use the power of F# by building simple but effective machine learning predictive models and solve real-world problems. In the process, you will learn fundamental concepts and methods of machine learning that are broadly applicable by software engineers. At the same time, you gain a solid foundation to start writing clean and effective F# code. Tomas Petricek Tomas is a computer scientist, finishing his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He has been using F# since the early Microsoft Research versions many years ago. He is the author of the popular (and F#-centric) book Real World Functional Programming, and has written numerous articles and StackOverflow answers. Mathias Brandewinder Mathias specializes in the design and development of decision systems and forecasting models. He has been developing.net applications for the past eight years, for a variety of industries ranging from biotech to retail and global health. More information and registration at mjolner.dk/event/fsharp

9 MOTIVATING DESIGN IMPROVES USER HEALTH AND BUILDS BRAND THREE PROTOTYPES IN THREE DAYS WITH TouchGFX LESS TALK, MORE APP-TION! THE BUSINESS POTENTIALS OF BIG DATA JOIN OUR F# EVENTS! Mjølner Informatics A/S Finlandsgade 10, DK-8200 Aarhus N info@mjolner.dk