mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development

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1 mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 01

2 Table of Contents Introduction Iterative Services Model Strategy & Insight Interactive Design Agile Development Market Success Lifecycle Management Introduction mportal has over fourteen years experience in designing, building, launching and managing successful mobile apps and services for enterprise, telecoms, cable and media providers. More than just simply building a mobile app, we believe we can make our customer s long term vision successful through our focus on strategy, superior product innovation, delivery expertise, and where most other vendors leave off continued lifecycle management including a completely hosted and managed solution where required. From strategy through design, development, launch and maintenance, we specialize in working closely with our customers to deliver end-to-end mobile solutions that provide deep back-end integration with existing systems such as application servers, billing and care systems work seamlessly across multiple platforms and devices and most importantly, focus on a superior end user experience. mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 02

3 mportal Iterative Services Model mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 03

4 1 Strategy & Insight Successful execution starts with a sound strategic plan that addresses both the business and technical aspects of a project, and moves on through a process of activities, operations and releases. Our specialized strategy and insight team works closely with the customer s internal resources through all these phases in order to meet a mutual goal a successful outcome as defined by the customer. co n s u lt i n g and discovery Whether the customer comes to us with a high level objective or specific requirements, mportal can help guide and mediate the process to create a detailed plan based on a well thought out business case. Common questions that kick off the process might include: Who are the target users? + What are the primary use cases? + What is the projected size of the market? + Is this a mobile channel for an existing app or is this a mobile-only solution? + What is the key factor, from the organization s point of view, that will make the mobile initiative a success? e m e r g i n g technolo gy research New mobile technologies are emerging every day that promise to revolutionize businesses, organizations, and everyday life. An effective mobile strategy needs to evaluate these emerging technologies, and determine which may succeed and which may fail. Our Strategy & Insight team will help navigate through issues such as: b u s i n e ss ca s e planning With millions of apps available on the ios and Android app stores alone, creating a successful mobile solution means establishing a realistic business plan, projecting both the costs and the opportunities of the mobile initiative. Items to be addressed include: + What are the product management, development, and design costs for launching an app? + What are the program fees and program risks in launching the mobile app? + Once the app is launched, what are the marketing costs that need to be considered to best reach the defined target market? + When the mobile service is launched, what are the reasonable projections of adoption and usage of the new services? + Will the mobile app based on today s design and technology trends be successful tomorrow? + What are the pitfalls to avoid, and where are the first-adopter opportunities? + How do you weigh cutting edge technologies with the risk of fragmentation or unproven hype? mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 04

5 2 Interactive Design Today s mobile devices have set a high standard for a compelling user experience. Users have come to expect a concise, intuitive, and visually appealing mobile experience. Designing the most effective mobile experience is every bit as important [if not more important] than the underlying development and technology. Our team of interactive design experts works closely with both our customers and our developers on every structural and design element, optimizing around the needs of the end user. great design lies at the heart of great user experiences, which are crucial for success! c r e at i v e s t r at e gy and brainsto r m i n g Our Interactive Design team typically kicks off with a creative brainstorming session to share and develop ideas and concepts, keeping the organization s business goals in mind while we define the initial design requirements. t h e user experience The User Experience design stage is more critical in mobile apps than in any other software platform. Mobile solutions typically are bound by small screens, brief sessions, and use cases in highly distracting contexts. Navigation schemes must be simple and intuitive, and visual designs need to stand out in a world of a million apps. Users expect highly polished interfaces that respond immediately, and provide a good fit for their work-flow or business process. For these reasons, good app design cannot be done piecemeal, but should be finalized before coding begins. Our Interactive Design team looks at all of these facets in creating a compelling User Experience. v i s u a l design and ico n o g r a p h y Visual design of a user interface determines the complete look and feel, including the size, shape, color, and detailed position of elements on the screen or page and how the appearance changes with user interaction. Our Interactive Design team specializes in creating a visual experience, and through the building of just right icons and compelling user interfaces, the app will communicate the corporate branding and establish a unique connection to the end user for the mobile solution. r a p i d protot y p i n g Mobile apps, mobile websites and web apps are becoming more sophisticated and intricate when it comes to their presentation. Being able to add animations, screen transitions, and interactivity to the prototypes creates a new user experience for the end users. Using our tools and techniques, our Interactive Design team can turn wireframes and mobile mockups into amazing interactive prototypes, filled with rich media, animations and touch events. u s a b i l i t y and behav i o r testing our Interactive Design team works closely with the customer to evaluate the effectiveness of the mobile solution before it goes to market. We create a trial audience, build a lab for assessing specific mobile user cases, and collect both quantitative and qualitative data, including videos of each user session, gestures, effectiveness and efficiency ratios, survey responses, and clickstreams. Ultimately, our usability and behavior testing service allows the organization to have the answers it needs to confidently launch or, refine the service based on real feedback. mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 05

6 3 Agile Development Our mobile development process is based on a flexible agile methodology that maximizes customer interaction and reduces time to market. The agile development team employs an iterative approach, which establishes a minimal viable product that enables our customers to build a mobile relationship with their target market immediately. This allows us to gradually build out new features and platforms as we learn more and more about the end user s mobile interactions and experiences. n at i v e, mobile web, and hybrid mobile w e b develo p m e n t Multiple options exist for mobile deployments today. Native applications specifically designed for devices such as Android or Apple products, often provide a superior mobile experience. At the same time, mobile web using technologies such as HTML5, are becoming more feature rich. Hybrid mobile solutions, which leverage industry leading web and native technologies, are also a consideration. Regardless of the mobile platform, our Agile Development team can make the end result a success. agile proj e ct management Our project managers do not stop at just managing projects, they manage the entire end-to-end delivery process. Utilizing Agile methodologies we can quickly adjust to the priorities of our customers and provide a regular, repeatable cadence of releases, scaling projects and capacity as required. a r c h i t e ct u r e & i n t e g r at i o n At mportal, we pride ourselves on the technical acumen and extensive industry experience that our architects bring to the table. Our Agile Development team will work to design a solution that fits any need, can integrate with any existing back-end systems, or create a new system altogether. The backbone of any successful mobile solution is having properly designed and functioning middleware and backend systems. Well-architected and coded solutions are a hallmark of our engineers. q a engineers The QA team is an integral part of the overall delivery process. Unlike traditional waterfall testing, our QA team works in tandem with the development team, testing completed items during a given sprint. This allows issues to be uncovered and addressed more quickly and with less difficulty contributing to the high quality deliverables expected from the team. mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 06

7 4 Market Success The first few weeks after a mobile launch is a critical time period that can make or break the successful launch of a mobile application. once the application is out the door, it needs to be quickly analyzed to determine if the product is addressing the stated goals, and adjust the mobile strategy and roadmap as needed. m o n i to r i n g and deployment Our Market Success team will work with the customer to track the indicators of success after the mobile service is launched. Issues that may need to be quickly resolved are: + None or too few reviews from the app store + Poor reviews + Low uptake of the app We will use our proven tools and techniques to analyze the app, looking at analytics, user reviews, forums, metrics, and any pre-defined KPIs to report upon and to react to market launch realities. We will also help benchmark the success against specific competition and the industry in general. Our goal is to provide the best and most actionable app metrics for anyone who wants to compete in the mobile marketplace. a n a ly t i c s & i n t e r act i o n Mobile success is about building a relationship with users, and launching the product is only the first step. Pre-launch expectations, including the features and functionality that are expected to add the most value, are completely subjective until the service is launched. After launching the service, mportal s mobile specialists use our mobile metrics platform and partners to evaluate the success of the application, including: + Is that killer feature really a killer feature? + What features are users accessing and why? + Are there adjustments to the user experience that can drive better value? We will not only provide the answers to those questions, but provide the ability to act upon those answers. r oadmap planning & a dj u s t m e n t s Mobility is an evolving business, with everchanging technologies, devices, features, design approaches, and expectations of your users. Without a flexible roadmap one that can respond to postlaunch metrics and an evolving mobile landscape the life cycle of the mobile apps and services will only be months. Items to think about: Should you expand to other platforms, or double-down on a specific platform? Does it makes sense to add more features to one app, or might you be better off creating one or more additional app? mportal s Market Success team will gather the metrics, look at the landscape, and, based on the customer s criteria, work to make the mobile solution a success beyond the first release. mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 07

8 5 Lifecycle Management mportal s services do not stop once the customer has accepted the application. We can provide a range of flexible ad hoc operational and custom support services, including: 1. Application Operations. We ve built the application, now let us run it by leveraging our years of large scale operational experience and processes. 2. Cloud Hosting. We can run it in your environment, or host and run in mportal s Amazon-based cloud hosting environment. 3. Custom Application Support. We provide the three Rs (Respond, Restore, Resolve) for customer s that desire application support services beyond our standard warranty period. a p p l i cat i o n operat i o n s mportal s Lifecycle Management team can operate and maintain any mobile solution utilizing our 24x7 Operations team, upholding solution availability at or above service level targets. We use a variety of proprietary and open source tools to monitor not only the availability of the hardware and software, but also connectivity from multiple global locations and business transaction throughput. Corrective action is taken whenever it is required. Based on the specific needs of a particular mobile solution, our Lifecycle Management team members can interface directly with the customer s Network Operations Center, IT administrators, or other teams to report disruptions and remediate issues before they impact service availability. Through industry standard change control methods and procedures, mportal can ensure that operating system, middleware, and application patches are applied to the installation to maintain performance and security while minimizing or eliminating downtime. c lo u d hosting mportal partners with Amazon Web Services to provide cloud-based compute, storage, and networking resources. Solutions can be as simple as a single virtual machine, scaling up to large fault tolerant and geo-redundant configurations in any global location (Americas, EMEA, and/or Asia-Pac). We design and implement AWS-based solutions to meet our customer s particular requirements for availability, throughput, and security. A number of secure methods, including one- and two-way SSL and VPN-based channels, are used to interface with the customer s back-end systems. Past projects have included fault tolerant and secure installations that have been certified as compliant with PCI-DSS standards for financial transactions. c u s to m applicat i o n support Our Lifecycle Management Team is available on a 24x7 basis to provide Tier 3 support to authorized customer contacts (NOC, Administrators, Tier 2 Support, etc.). Issues can be reported by , web submission, or through our US toll-free support line. Customers can use our web-based Support Portal to submit issues, provide screen shots or other documentation, and track the status and resolution of submitted issues. mportal follows a Respond, Restore, Resolve methodology for any reported support issue. mportal Services Mobile App Design and Development 08

9 About mportal Inc. mportal, founded in 2000, offers mobile software and services to enterprise, telecom, cable and media providers, empowering them to deliver superior mobile user experiences for their content and services across smartphones, tablets, smart tvs and other IP connected devices. Specifically tailored to meet service provider s needs, mportal s cloud-based SPRINGBOARD mobile experience platform is designed to extend brand and presence to connected devices, making it fun and easy for users to discover and interact with unified communication and collaboration, entertainment services, content discovery and more. As a total solution provider, mportal eliminates the complexities involved in launching a mobile offering. Using mportal as a strategic partner, customers can focus on their core business and rely on mportal to provide its expertise in launching revenue-generating mobile experiences. Our customers to date include many of the world s leading companies such as AT&T, Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cricket Communications, Cox Communications, Disney Mobile, GENBAND, Mobile ESPN, Reliance Infocomm, TELUS, TV Guide, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon Wireless. /company/mportal t e. sales@mportal.com 2014 mportal mportal Services Inc. All Rghts Reserved. Mobile App Design and Development 09