Hello everyone!

At Simdea we, as well as the rest of the world, have been enveloped in this battle that affects us all, directly or indirectly, and that will require an enourmous ammount of sacrifice of every citizen.

We would like to express our most heartfelt thanks to all health professionals and to all national autorities, which have been relentless in the fight against this virus. Without them, our chances of winning this battle would be, withouth a doubt, small.

It is a fact that this is not the first pandemic that hit our planet, but it is the first one we face in the 21st century. The world we live in has provided us with unimaginable tools to face this threat but it has also provided the means for it to spread invariably faster given the way societies interact and culturally work. …

Apoiei desde 2013 o projecto do Bruno de Carvalho no Sporting, e votei na AG de dia 23 contra a destituição. Continuo a considerar que o mandato podia ter ido até ao fim. E continuo a considerar também que a unica forma de pacificar o Sporting era deixarem todos ir a votos, incluindo o Bruno e o Carlos Vieira e muito provavelmente o meu voto iria para o Carlos Vieira, se bem que os debates poderiam me fazer mudar de ideias.

Ainda assim vou votar, vou votar porque não sabemos o dia de amanhã no nosso clube e como tal pelo menos que haja um presidente eleito até ver o que as decisões dos tribunais vão dizer. …

Antes de mais e fazendo uma declaração de interesses votei contra a revogação/destituição do conselho directivo dirigido por ti. Desculpa estar a tratar-te por tu, mas para mim serás sempre parte da família sportinguista que mais quis o bem do nosso Sporting.

Ontem a noite o Sporting sofreu um revés e voltamos a casa de partida, mas não é por isso que vamos baixar os braços ou que vamos deixar de lutar por um Sporting de todos e dono do seu próprio destino. Eu pelo menos enquanto puder vou continuar a fazer valer os meus 5 votos. …

Missed the previous part? Read it here.
If would like to read it from the beginning, go here.

Lessons Learned and Best Practices

The Registration Flow is one of the most crucial phases of any applications’ life cycle. It affects the user’s state (it can cause joy through simplicity or frustration and anger from inefficiency), it offers a commercial competitive edge over other possible competitors and serves as the best way to provide an unique identity to each of the applications’ users. It is absolutely crucial to employ a simple and easy signup procedure.

For any kind of application we must aim to provide value upfront, in order to have a shot at capturing many users and more importantly, to be capable of influencing them to adopt our apps. To achieve this, as developers, we have to succeed in providing such value and clearly identify and convey it to our users. This holds especially true when we ask users to provide their personal information when they register. Allow your users to explore your apps before you ask them to sign up, so they can test it and formulate their own judgement before they even need to make a commitment (registration) to it. This allows for an even faster access, than using the already fast Social Login option, and disables any possible signup barrier. On the other hand, if you have a feature that requires an identity (or in other words, a registration), don’t hesitate to prompt the user for a signup, in a friendly manner, and if the user finds value in the app he / she will be happy to provide the required information. This technique is known as Progressive Profiling and it contributes to build a more robust customer data set over time. Make sure you present concise and clear messages about why taking the time to register is worthwhile, when the application first runs, by taking advantage of possible loading screens during setup procedures and by taking advantage of the descriptions you publish within the app store description for your application. …

Missed the previous part? Read it here.
If you would like to read it from the beginning, go here.

Current Real World Practices Study

We are at the edge of a new Information Age where mobile seems to be king, user information weights its weight in gold and a great number of mobile applications are published and developed every day. Each of these apps have their way of dealing with their own signup processes. So, how do they balance fast access with the account creation requirements for their systems? Generally we can distinguish three techniques:

1. Unique Account

• Creating an unique account is the traditional approach to any signup process. The system demands the creation of an unique username (or an email address) and a corresponding password for an account to be registered. Additional information is typically requested to complete the user’s data. Depending on the amount of data the system requires at this stage, the common form issues we identified earlier have a high probability of occurring. …

Missed the first part? Read it here.

Problems, Needs and Misconceptions

The first question we should ask is: Should we introduce a signup barrier to our product? Please do not confuse this question with “Should we have a signup process at all?”, as they are completely different points. You should have a signup process because it will allow for the creation of an identity to a user within your system, that will provide you with continuous information about that particular user, which in turn gives you a competitive edge, commercially wise, regarding that user. The signup barrier i ask about can be easily perceived as the additional and intentional step we add to the user’s experience when the signup process occurs. Usually, the signup (and login) process halts the application’s execution and flow which is intrusive and may lead to the users being frustrated and possibly angry (how many of us decided to uninstall an application after our first use of it, simply because we could not be bothered to complete a tedious signup procedure?). …

Mobile Application Signup Flow

Tolerance is short when it comes to mobile users overcoming difficulties. Especially when we compare to traditional desktop applications. For this reason, any kind of mobile feature should be made with the aim to be as simple and easy to use as possible. The general rule of thumb is basically to simplify and minimize the requirements to achieve some desired purpose. This can be accomplished by reducing the number of taps on the screen that the user needs to make in order to achieve his / her objective.

Here starts the path to Simple Ideas.

So welcome!

We have created this weblog with the intention to acquire and share the knowledge our team has and will develop in the future.

Please expect to read about mobile application and web solution development, design (UI & UX), quality assurance, system maintenance, research, marketing and business topics, in the form of tutorials, opinion articles and the occasional review article.

As we aim to provide the best mobile and web solutions that feel easy and simple, we will try our best to write about our motivations and why we consider and make our choices along the way. …