Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/how-we-helped-this-fintech-startup-become-a-niche-leader/

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Here at TMS, we see promising companies with amazing ideas and huge potential on a daily basis. Unfortunately, they often get stuck on technicalities and SOS emails just keep flowing in our direction.

However, that is actually a good thing. If we can help them reach their full potential and get to their goal, it is a win-win situation.

Some of the startups we have seen truly have ideas that could change our world for the better. So rather than seeing them struggle, we are here to help them in any way we can.

And that brings us to the common problem that numerous startups get stuck on; the technical implementation of their SaaS or other web applications. So let's talk a bit more about the TMS solution.

Here Comes the Challenge

It is one thing to talk about it in theory, but things often work out quite differently in practice. To best describe how exactly we help startups deal with their app development, let's take a look at a case study.

Four years ago, we were contacted by a British FinTech company who came to us with a great idea that included a very complex web app development.

From custom design to multiple user roles and complex user flows, we knew this would be a complicated project.

In addition to that, they needed constant maintenance and support since they already had some disappointing experiences in the past. They had to give up several unfinished apps that simply weren't up to their standard and they ended up losing a lot of money.

The TMS Solution

To get things off to a good start, we had to understand what went wrong with their project before they decided to reach us.

We listened carefully to what they had to say to identify the problems that were the root cause of the issues they faced in the past. It appeared that the previous contractors skipped through a lot of basic steps and went straight to development without the proper planning, wireframing, and estimating processes.

It sounded like a good offer; a low hourly rate and less working hours. Unfortunately, it turned out to cost the FinTech startup a lot more down the road.

We explained that we would take an entirely different approach; a systemized, step-by-step process with every developer focusing on their part while having a good grasp on the whole picture, instead of working on multiple components of the project at the same time and feeling no ownership on the delivery.

Since we had a lot of experience with app building, especially with the apps we created for our own company (mostly SaaS), we felt pretty confident about our capabilities to deliver the best product possible.

For us, this project felt like an exciting challenge but was still right up our alley.

Dealing with the Challenges

We have done this numerous times before but the bottom line is that every app is different.

With this one, we were new to the business domain of capital raising, we weren't familiar at all with the FCA classifications and legal regulations etc.

An additional challenge on top of that was trying to untangle the work of the previous development team. We were warned about the confusing UX and the bugs that would appear at the worst moments, especially on demos.

So our first step was to build a proper team led by a Tech Lead and a Product Owner. This would allow us to create the ideal team structure, a good project architecture, and a suitable project delivery strategy.

Forming a reliable team initially takes more time than just engaging a group of random developers – but it always pays off! Not only are the productivity and quality better, but it also results in lower costs over a 12-18 months range.

With every project, the team is formed differently according to the specific project needs and requirements. It sometimes requires just a project manager, a QA engineer, and 2 intermediate full-stack developers. Sometimes, we need additional UI/UX designers, security engineers, front-end engineers etc.

Unique Solution: Introducing our Full-App-Lifecycle Approach

Once the team was formed, we were ready to get started with our own customized approach – the Full-App-Lifecycle approach.

It is based on a simple fact:

Errors are much easier to avoid if the team of developers understands the big picture of the application instead of just focusing on small tasks. From the initial pitch to the final round of feedback, it is important to start every project with a core assessment and a proper analysis.

We always talk with the business' marketing and development team and get answers to the basic questions first: What problem are we solving with this product? Who are the target customers? Who are the competitors? What risks are we facing? What are the budget and the timeline?

All of these questions and more have to be covered in a good analysis, along with Impact Mapping and Story Mapping sessions. At that point, we are able to suggest the best development strategy and product rollout plan.

We need to stay flexible throughout the process to be able to adapt to changes, but we always start with the clear vision on the team structure, software architecture, project phases, features priority, and other little details that we keep in mind.

“TMS worked well with our team, and acted on behalf of our business in various situations. This helped us create a world-class team and grow internationally together.”

The FinTech App Development

The best way to start a cooperation is by establishing each other's trust. With the FinTech startup, we knew that it would take some time to earn their trust after their previous experiences.

They agreed to our approach and we decided to start with just 2 developers working on their project in cooperation with the project manager provided by the FinTech startup. Once we were off to a good start, we added other key members to get the prototype done on a tight deadline.

We had a demo ready for them to show to their clients in less than 3 months. At that point, we were ready to start building a fully featured application.

We gradually added more team members including the QA and QA Automation engineers, front-end developers, full-stack developers of different seniority, and more. Then we divided the team into smaller sub-teams, each with their own project manager.

The app was growing together with our team and we knew we were on the right track. All the way, we participated in the overall product development and our clients know that they can count on our full support even today.

Here are some of the most important results that we brought for our client:

After months of working with us, they fully freed up their time to work on scaling their business and only joining us for Agile sprint reviews.
Geography of usage expanded from the UK to the rest of Europe, while other markets are "on the waiting list".
Client range grew from small startups looking for small investments to large companies that need serious investment deals.
The mature product managed to attract several millions of dollars of investments.

On our side, the product development team dedicated to this project grew from 2 to 25 people and keeps growing.

Why Our Approach Worked

Our Full-App-Lifecycle approach has proven itself quite successful and the main reasons for that are careful planning and management. These were implemented in our every move throughout the process.

When a team is tailored according to a specific product and when every team member works on their specific task, all of them eventually see the product as their own. Not only it helps improving productivity and quality, but it also switches the employees' focus from the fee to the product itself.

In addition to that, the integration with the client's team and industry, the ongoing analysis, and in-depth planning also help increase the quality as well as the delivery pace.

It is important to add that our team is always encouraged to try all the new technologies and follow the latest development trends, to participate in conferences, and to keep up with the industry's highest standards.

The success we achieved with the FinTech project isn't a one-time success story but an example that shows exactly how our approach works.

We are looking for long-term partnerships rather than quick on and off projects and we are happy to join in later phases as well. The point for us is to build teams dedicated to the product and evolve together with it over time.

Conclusion

If you have recognized any of the mentioned problems as your own including the struggle to find a reliable development company, feel free to reach out to us and we will be happy to help you find the right solution.

We have a lot of experience in the field which can be easily proven by the projects that we have successfully completed so far, the 20.000+ paying customers of our own developed products, several millions of end users, and an average annual growth rate of 50% since 2014.

The post How We Helped This FinTech Startup Become a Niche Leader appeared first on SitePoint.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/grfTNtZwdxE/review-adobe-max-first-timer

In Review: Adobe Max from a First Timer

abduzeedo
Oct 22, 2018

This year I had the opportunity to attend to Adobe MAX. I have always wanted to go and finally, I got the chance. MAX is Adobe’s annual get-together where they share news about products, introduce new features for their flagship software like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and this year I would add XD as part of that. Those four days in LA were quite inspiring and I would love to share some thoughts about the event and the product announcements.

Adobe MAX is huge. I have been to big events like E3, Google IO, and small events as well. The MAX is definitely one of the big ones. The main keynote illustrated that quite well. There were 15 thousand people watching it there. The most amazing thing is that they were all creative people be it artists, designers or illustrators so the energy was inspiring and reinvigorating. I felt like going back to design school. There was this excitement in the air and every new feature announced was received with shouts of happiness and applause.

Speaking of announcements. I got the chance to see first hand what Adobe is bringing to XD and it’s quite impressive, but I will get back to that later. Let me talk about Photoshop. It got some neat new tricks, like unlimited undos via keyboard shortcut (finally), amazing new mask detection with their AI Sensei, double-click to edit texts and live preview of blend modes. The last one would have been a huge time saver for me 10 years ago when I was writing Photoshop tutorials but hey, better late than never.

All other tools got significant updates, most of them focused on streamlining the creative process, trying to automate tasks that take time and allow designers to pay attention and spend their time on what matters most, communicating the message through creative design solutions. So we could see a lot of Sensei helping with intelligent cropping, color adjustments, tracking and many more. There was also, the introduction of Photoshop for the iPad. I feel it might be a bigger deal for Apple than for designers, even though most designers have an iPad. In addition, they announced another iPad app, Project Gemini. That one, at least the demo, blew me away. 

– Project Gemini

For me, probably the biggest announcement was that Typekit now is called Adobe Fonts. In addition to the name change, they included their entire library for Creative Cloud subscribers. Yeah, you heard it right, you can now use their 15,000 fonts on your personal and professional projects. For those like me that grew up collecting fonts from foundries like FF, P22, T26, Emigre, House Industries, Monotype and many others, this news is simply incredible. I can finally use Ms. Eaves without worrying about anything.

Now back to XD. Adobe spent a lot of time promoting this tool. It’s an industry that they are not leading at the moment, which is quite ironic if you think that pretty much every UI designer I knew six years ago used to use Adobe Fireworks. Adobe killed Fireworks and tools like Sketch and Framer got their chance to succeed, which they did. Now Adobe is trying to reconquer what they owned in the past.

You should not get spooked by rejection – Albert Watson

XD is adding great features and their team is willing to listen to the users. This version they introduced some very useful new features like Auto-animate, Responsive Design, Plug-ins and Voice Prototyping. The last one is truly unique, they are the only one doing it. I have been spending some time playing with it and I have to say. I might switch, just because I am a Creative Cloud subscriber and I like the idea of using the same family of apps. In addition, the new features are worthwhile. Auto-animate is pretty much like using Keynote with Magic Move. It’s very easy to use and performs quite well. The resizing feature is, indeed quite magic. You don’t have to set constraints, XD just tries to figure out what should scale or not. Voice is very simple, yet quite useful. XD gives you a trigger input which is voice. It then gives you a voice system for feedback. For those designing for assistant software, this feature is a time saver.

Besides Adobe announcements, there was the exhibit with a lot of awesome people promoting their products. It was awesome to see people showcasing their new software with experts answering questions in addition to illustrators, print companies and foundries promoting their products. As I mentioned before there was this incredible energy in the air.

At the end of the four days in LA and seeing so many inspiring things I felt that my creative batteries were fully recharged and the only thing I wanted to do is to open XD and design the new version of Abduzeedo. I cannot forget to mention the people I had the pleasure to meet there, including some fantastic Brazilian designers working for great companies like Skyscanner, Target, Work&Co, and Adobe.

– Photographer, Albert Watson, discusses his path in creating iconic photos at Adobe MAX

I have to be honest, I was a bit skeptical about Adobe MAX and I was proved completely wrong. As Barry Schwartz said in his book The Paradox of Choice. The secret of happiness is low expectations. That was totally true for me. I didn’t expect much and I was totally blown away and I thank Adobe for that, for bringing back the eye of the tiger that I had forgotten I had. I can safely say I’m so looking forward to booking my trip for next year’s Adobe MAX.

For more information and full list of announcements visit: https://theblog.adobe.com/

adobe

Original Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/apple-watch-series-4-screen-resolutions/

Apple just launched its series 4 watches that, like its predecessors, come in two different sizes. However, unlike series 1, 2 and 3 which come in 38mm and 42mm sizes, the series 4 comes in 40mm and…

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Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/10/the-best-designers-are-taoists-sort-of/

Okay, for the love of any God you prefer, read this bit before you start writing comments…please? I’ve been studying up on philosophical Taoism lately because someone very near and dear to me is a (philosophical) Taoist, and I wanted to understand her better. What I’ve found is that web and UX designers have, by studying the data, come to a lot of the same conclusions as ancient Eastern philosophers.

While the lessons in this article may not be new to most of you, I thought it would be interesting to see how the principles of good design match up with Lao Tzu’s1 principles for good living. The world’s top designers are not, to my knowledge, actual Taoists. Neither am I evangelizing for Taoism. For one, I do not consider myself to be a Taoist, and secondly, evangelism as we know it is largely anathema to the ones I’ve met.

Thirdly, the practitioners of philosophical Taoism I’ve met will get a little annoyed if you call it a religion. Philosophical Taoism is just that: a philosophy, and many people adopt the philosophy alongside any religion they might already have.2

But without getting further into that3, here’s what I’ve found.

1. Don’t Struggle

“Struggle” as a concept, is unavoidable. We struggle so we can eat. But Taoist philosophy says that we should not struggle more than we have to. Take a lioness, for example: she may struggle to hunt down enough food for her cubs and her pride, but she does not struggle to be a lion. That part is instinctual, and she revels in it.

We humans, and designers/developers in particular, are very good at overcomplicating things for ourselves. We struggle not just to design and improve at our jobs, but we often struggle in ways that simply aren’t necessary. If you need examples, I’m just going to refer you back to Zeldman’s article: The Cult of the Complex. Smart designers keep it simple.

Another way good designers embrace this principle is in our love of workarounds and adaptability. While Bruce Lee himself was apparently non-religious, that whole “be like water, my friend” speech is actually one of the most important metaphors in the Tao te Ching. Water doesn’t struggle against obstacles, it goes around them. Nowadays, that sort of adaptability is basically a requirement for getting hired onto any studio or team that know what they’re doing.

2. Don’t Meddle

The Tao te Ching was, like many early self help books—I’m kidding—intended to be read by people in positions of leadership. Much of the advice is geared toward teaching local leaders—referred to in the book as “sages”—how to lead people, and more importantly, how not to. Most of the verses regarding this topic advise the sage against meddling too much in the affairs of their people.

Good designers would advise the same. Give your users a clear and easy path to the end goal, and then let them do their thing. Attempting to meddle with the way people browse will usually just annoy the hell out of them. Think of scroll jacking, modal pop-ups, the old pop-ups, obscure and unnecessarily creative navigation, and that sort of thing.

3. Be Slow to Judge

I know, Jesus said that, too. But the Tao te Ching takes the concept a bit further in suggesting that we should refrain from calling anything, anyone, or any circumstance good or bad until things have truly had a chance to play out. That is, don’t pass judgement until all the data is in4.

Designers these days are increasingly coming to rely on this same principle to inform their work. It’s one thing to “feel” like a big blue button would be better than a small green one, or vice versa. It’s another to know without a doubt that one is working better than another. While A/B testing is not always the best way to make design decisions, the importance of actually following the data to its conclusion cannot be understated.

4. Show, Don’t Tell

Taoists might make good designers, but they’re terrible marketers. I’m kidding again. It’s just that the Taoists I’ve encountered so far place far more importance on showing, rather than telling. Evangelism, as I’ve said, is not something they do. They believe that the only way to truly convince another to follow the Tao is to do it themselves, and let others observe the benefits.

Design is inherently visual, so this comes rather naturally to most of us. Good designers embrace this principle at every level with marketing, tutorials, or app walkthroughs, and of course, with the actual images in our content. After all, seeing is believing. A picture is worth a blah blah blah. We know this one.

5. Do No Harm

Correlating with that “Don’t Struggle” bit, philosophical Taoism encourages people to be themselves, to live how they want, and do what they feel is right, with just one very important caveat: don’t hurt anybody else. Violence is a last resort for self defense, and infringing on the freedom of others is anathema.

What we designers have discovered is that bad designers—the ones using dark patterns, trying to abuse SEO, and injecting two hundred trackers and a Bitcoin miner through ads—make the Internet worse for everyone. As the ecosystem of the Internet tries to defend itself, the bad actors find their gains are short-lived, sites find themselves struggling to make any kind of ad revenue, and the reputation of the whole industry is tarnished.

6. Contribute With no Expectation of Reward

Conversely, Taoism teaches that when we do good, we should do it without expectation of thanks, or reward. People who do this are often (though I’d say not always) given that recognition, and greater access to the community’s resources. Meanwhile, people that do good for recognition are usually found out, and fade into obscurity.

We’ve found this out in our community: the names we recognize in the design world are most often those of people who made our lives as designers easier. The people who wrote tutorials, ran educational podcasts, made videos, and did it all for free. Eventually, many of them did get recognition, and money, and invaluable contacts in the industry, but they had to put in a lot of thankless work first. People like me are design writers. They are design heroes.

1 Lao Tzu is the reputed author of the original Tao te Ching: a collection of 81 verses that outline principles for good living and leadership.

2 There is a branch of Taoism that is steeped in a fair amount of mysticism and incense which makes it look, sound, and smell like religion, but even these practitioners may tell you it’s not one. And then there’s another branch that is rather religious, with various gods and so on. There are lots of branches, and it gets complicated.

3 Wikipedia is your friend. Heck, I started my study with Dudeism, a form of Taoism that uses the movie The Big Lebowski as the source of all its symbolism.

4 There is a famous Taoist parable which illustrates this type of indifference and its utility: A farmer has only one horse. When the horse runs away his neighbors say “What bad luck!” The farmer merely says, “Is it?” Days later, the horse returns and brings with it a beautiful wild stallion. His neighbors say “What good luck!” The farmer replies, “Is it?” Enchanted by the new horse, the farmer’s son tries to ride it, but is thrown and badly injured. The neighbors say “What bad luck!” To which the farmer shrugs, “Is it?” Not long afterwards the country is under threat and every able young man is conscripted into the military, but the son cannot go because of his injuries. “What good luck!” the neighbors say. The farmer again only says, “Is it?”

– Benjamin, Oliver. The Tao Te Ching: Annotated Edition (pp. 75-76). Abide University Press. Kindle Edition.

Featured image via DepositPhotos.

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Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/10/css-border-radius-can-do-that/

TL/DR: When you use eight values specifying border-radius in CSS, you can create organic looking shapes. WOW. No time to read it all ? — we made a visual tool for you. Find it here.

During this year’s Frontend Conference Zurich Rachel Andrew talked about Unlocking the Power of CSS Grid Layout. At the end of her talk, she mentioned something about an old CSS property that got stuck in my head:

The Image is set round just by using the well-supported border-radius. Don’t forget that old CSS still exists and is useful. You don’t need to use something fancy for every effect.

 — Rachel Andrew

Shortly after I heard this talk, I thought that you certainly could create more than just circles and started to dig deeper into what can be done using border-radius.

Mastering Border-Radius
Single Value

Let’s start with the basics. Hopefully this will not bore you. You are probably familiar with CSS, and you also know border-radius. It has been around for some years now, mostly used with a single value like this: border-radius: 1em and was maybe one of the most discussed/loved CSS3 features back in 2010 when css3please.com was your best friend.

Whenever you only use a single value, all corners are rounded by this value:

As you can see in the example above, next to fixed length values like px, rem or em you can also use percentages. Those are mostly used to create a circle by setting border-radius to 50%. The percentage value is based on the width and height of the given element. So when you use it on a rectangle, you will no longer have symmetrical corners. Here’s an example showing the difference between border-radius: 110px and border-radius: 30% applied to a rectangle.

Notice that the corners on the right side are not symmetrical and keep that in mind. We’ll come back to this later.

Four Different Values

When you use more than one value, you start setting values for each corner, beginning in the top left corner and then moving clockwise. Again you can also use percentages, and you could also mix percentages with fixed-length values.

Eight Values Separated by a Slash (This is Where it Gets Interesting)

I think most of you have already done everything I explained above. Now we get to the exciting part. What happens, if you separate values with a slash and specify up to eight values? Let’s see, what the spec says about that:

If values are given before and after the slash, then the values before the slash set the horizontal radius and the values after the slash set the vertical radius. If there is no slash, then the values set both radii equally.

— W3C

So, values before the slash are responsible for horizontal distances whereas values after the slash define the vertical lengths. But what does that mean? Remember percentage values on rectangular shapes? We had different absolute values for vertical and horizontal distances and asymmetrically rounded corners, and that is precisely what you get when you use the slash syntax.

So when you compare border-radius: 4em 8em to border-radius: 4em / 8em the results are quite different.

The symmetrical corners on the left form quarter of a circle, whereas the asymmetrical corners on the right are part of an ellipsis.

The shapes that you get with this look a little odd, to be honest. But remember the circles you create with border-radius: 50%. You get a circle because both values defining one side add up to 100% (50% + 50% = 100%) and there is no straight line left, that reminds you of the original square. If you apply the same logic to the full eight value border-radius syntax, you can create a shape that looks a little like a plectrum or an organic cell:

In the end it is four overlapping ellipses that build the final shape. Easy ha!

Don’t Panic…We Made a Visual Generator for You

It took me some time to get used to this syntax. Somehow it is not that intuitive. To make things a little easier for you, we built a little tool, that helps you create your very own organic shape.

Do(n’t) Cross The Streams

Now that you know about the 8 values in total, you might feel a little sad, because our border-radius-tool doesn’t give you the option to set each value separately…Sit tight, here is the 8-POINT-FULL-CONTROL version.

If you’re old enough, you might remember this quote from the 1984 Ghostbusters movie:

“Don’t Cross The Streams.” — “Why?” — “It would be bad.”

There is something similar going on here: If you cross the handles on one side, the shape behaves…let’s say unpredictably. But see for yourself, after all, it’s not going to end up in total protonic reversal or something, but don’t say, that I didn’t warn you.

PS. Many Thanks to simurai. Back in 2010, he created some CSS3 BonBon Buttons. Even though they look a little outdated, it is the only place I ever encountered and learned about the slash syntax.

See This Cool Feature in Action

Photos by gratisography.com

See the Pen border-radius by Nils (@enbee81) on CodePen.

This article was originally published on Medium, reposted with the author’s permission.

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