Shift — When mobility inspires change

The Bell TV project is the epitome of “thinking and working mobile first”. After all, we wrote a native iOS and Android application and then, ported it to the desktop. The goal of our team was to make the already existing mobile experience accessible on a desktop through a web browser. Our assumption was that we could use the superior computing power of desktop computers to create a very a high-quality experience using web technologies instead of native code, like we did for the mobile devices.

At first, our main objective was to avoid duplicating the efforts by writing two mobile applications with the exact same feature set. Our team used time and effort to use a transpiler to share logic between the Android application, written in Java, and the iOS application, written in Objective-C. Since our goal was to replicate the mobile experience, it seemed ridiculous to rewrite all the logic already shared between iOS and Android when the time came to create a web version. Defining a way to share the logic between three different platforms (iOS, Android, and Web) was the first big challenge the team had to tackle. It has been really puzzling to find a solution but in the end, it became obvious that we had do the same thing we did for iOS and Android, and translate the Java code for the Web. To achieve this, we wrote our own Java to JavaScript transpiler. Even though these two languages have a similar name, they are entirely different. Writing a transpiler is no simple task and was quite a risk for the project. However, from the moment the team did a proof of concept, we were convinced that it was the best solution for our client, our users, and the product.

To the more technically minded reader: It might seem a little insane to translate perfectly good Java code into Javascript. After all, Java code can be used on the server without modification. We could have created server-side services that use the shared logic and a web browser could just use those to display information. This approach was considered for a brief moment at the beginning of the project.

However, it had one big issue: scaleability.

In the mobile application, the shared logic assumes it is working for one particular user. It gives information intended to all users, like the TV guide but then it tailors and filters that information to show only what’s relevant to that user; and all of this occurs on the user’s device.

Doing the same on the server would mean that, as the number of users increases, the number of servers also need to increase. This option didn’t make sense either to us or to our client. Understanding that the shared logic needed to live on the user’s device and not the server really made translating the existing Java logic to JavaScript a more reasonable alternative.

Today, the Bell TV app is available as a single-page application (a collection of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files) and it means that the entire application runs in the user’s browser and uses the same code as the mobile application to talk to the web services. This allows Bell to maintain a single set of servers to meet the requests from both mobile applications and web browsers. As for the users, they have the features they love in the mobile application available on their Mac or Windows computers. Finally, for the development team, it means that we can make new features available to all three platforms much faster since they share common core logic.

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“The key for us is that each team member can blossom at work, at home, in their passion and with those around them, without compromise. Since Mirego’s early days, the culture is at the heart of our actions and influences all of our decisions. For us, a company’s culture is lived, radiates and is spread by all team members. ”

“It’s been several years now that we had in mind to create a Book Culture. We wanted to find a way to share the our office’s unique atmosphere and I am extremely proud of the result,” said Albert Dang-Vu,Mirego’s President and CEO.

Already well established in Quebec, Mirego plans to double its team in Montreal for next year. Moreover, the construction of new offices is underway in Griffintown. Work will be completed in summer 2017. The team is currently looking for many talents in Montreal.

To get a copy of the Mirego Culture Book, contact us at [email protected]

Companies such as Bombardier, Yellow Pages, La Capitale and Agropur have already turned to Mirego to transform their workplaces through Business to Employees custom iOS apps. This shift has helped them reduce costs, build brand engagement and significantly improve their internal processes.

“Apps are no longer developed only to benefit the consumer market; they are also a great asset for the workforce. Businesses can truly benefit from custom-made mobile solutions that empower their employees and increase their productivity. Nowadays, many of clients come to us with their need for enterprise apps.” explained Albert Dang-Vu, President and CEO of Mirego.

About Mirego

Why should I care about native?

I’m a foodie (bear with me, I’m taking a short detour) and, as a foodie, I love to cook. However, one ingredient I do not like to work with is tofu. It’s not that one can’t make a wonderfully tasty tofu dish, it’s just that I find it takes a significant amount of effort to go from the white block of tofu, no matter its level of quality, to a good meal, since the flavouring comes from all the work you put into the dish. On the other hand, with next to no effort, one can take just a decent cut of beef and make a good meal out of it. I find the same analogy applies to a hybrid application (the tofu) and a native application (the beef). Putting a small amount of effort into a hybrid application, one gets something that’s passable. Putting in a large amount of effort will make it great, most of the time. Native can give you a good experience with a small amount of effort.

Deciding to go native is not a choice about capabilities. You can do a lot with a hybrid application. It’s about the effort you want to invest in order to provide a great user experience. The most widely reported example dates back to 2012, when Facebook’s mobile application went from being a hybrid application to a mostly native application. The change was noticed by most tech media and applauded by most users. A year later, LinkedIn did the same, choosing native over HTML5  to give users a better experience.

Does native application development cost more?

Generally, for a similar level of finish, a native application does not cost more than a hybrid. At least not according to our measurements. Hybrid application proponents promise that you will write most of the application once and that it will then run everywhere. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s Java was making the same promise. What it turned out to mean was “write once, debug everywhere”. The reason for this broken promise was simple: every version of every operating system had (and still has) its own peculiarities. Java had to try to make all operating systems work the same way and ultimately failed.

In writing a hybrid application, one encounters the same issues that Java had. HTML, CSS and Javascript promise you’ll get the same result everywhere. If that was true, we would not have a browser war, and we wouldn’t have to do feature detection, for example, to know if a browser supports specific CSS animations. All web browsers on every OS are not created equal: web and hybrid applications have made allowances for those differences. This is where hybrid can get expensive.

The typical story goes like this:

The developer starts by making the first few features on one device with one version of the operating system. Everything is great.

She then tests the same feature on another OS. It’s not rendered in the same way. Some features of HTML, Javascript or CSS are not available on the new OS. Now she has to adapt to support this new OS.

The developer then goes back to the first platform and finds that the feature does not have the performance it once had, so more adjustments are needed.

The story then repeats itself for the next features.

If the measure of the cost of a feature is how much time was spent to write it for one OS, then yes, it’s less energy. However, looking at the data that I have, the cycle of adapting and debugging on all platforms ends up costing just as much as writing it twice.

Does native require developers to learn each platform?

It doesn’t matter if it’s a hybrid application or a native application, the team still needs to learn each platform. It’s not even a question of SDK, browser or limitations. It’s about knowing how the platform behaves and how users of a platform expect their applications to behave. Just like you should not break the back button for an Android users, you should not take away the swipe gesture for an iOS user. Knowing the platform and how its applications are expected to behave allows team members to create an application that does not require training the user.

Are hybrid applications a bad thing?

No. As I’ve mentioned previously it’s about the effort you put into it and the degree of user experience deemed acceptable. Hybrid applications can be a great way to reuse existing web functionalities in an application. If there’s an existing web application that already offers a good mobile experience, you can move quite quickly and provide functionality to your users straight from their home screen of their phone.

Parting words: focus on your users, and the answer will come to you

Native application development can seem daunting. And the prospect of forever-debugging cycles on hybrid apps is less than appealing. No one said mobile was easy. But we can all agree mobile is where our users are, and we must serve them there.

When deciding between hybrid and native, here are 3 questions to guide your reflection:

What kind of user experience are you going for?

What kind of functionalities are you trying to build and how are they best delivered to the user?

What do you need to call your application a success?

Don’t forget that it does not matter how good the application UX is, you have to bring the user value and simplicity.

Paper cuts productivity

When paper moves, it doesn’t move that fast. Best case is the speed of a jet. More likely, someone is walking around with it in their hand. Worst case is it sits somewhere. Waiting.  And because both the information and the workflow is paper-based, it doesn’t even know that it is time to move, or who it is parked with. Paper’s pretty dumb that way.

Often the paper you need sits somewhere where you are not. You may even need to create more paper using paper information that exists elsewhere. Which makes no sense, but it means that you need to physically move somewhere to create or change information. All of this gives rise to common business expressions like:

“When I get back to my desk, I will pull all this into a proposal”

“Let me drive to the plant office and get the blueprint for that”

“I don’t have that information with me right now, let me call you back when I have it in front of me”

“Have you seen the resume for that candidate we met last week? I can’t find it”

“Someone call the document storage place and get those contracts from 2009.”

So much waiting, and so much searching is stressful for your customers and your employees. While the waiting can be annoying, the increased cycle time slows productivity, strains cashflow and stalls business. During the wait, customers go elsewhere, employees miss deadlines. KPIs get squashed. Real, measurable benefits are left behind.

Paper cuts collaboration

Through the magic of something called “photocopying”, paper can exist in more than one place at a time. Except that it may or may not be the same version. And the highlighting and note-taking that happens on one copy doesn’t make it to the other versions that may be out there. Worse, each copy doesn’t notify the others that something has changed. And fixing a mistake on one does nothing to address the same error on the other copies. And don’t get me started on the issues faced by team members who don’t have a current copy.

Business is now global and mobile. Teams need to connect and collaborate as never before. Their information needs to flow and sync between them. This is true whether the team is defending a criminal case, maintaining heavy equipment or running logistics for a rock concert. Missed or outdated information grinds business to a halt.

Paper cuts insights

Imagine implementing a new training program and employees getting stuck on question 9. Or maintenance workers taking twice the budgeted time to complete a particular procedure. Consider healthcare workers who start seeing more positive tests for a disease in a particular geography.

In a paper-based system, these realities happen and they are recorded; however, the insights that stem from this information may never come to light. It’s not that we don’t have computers powerful enough to track the correlations, it’s that as paper data, the information isn’t accessible. Even with advanced imaging technology, processors struggle with paper-based information. It needs to be digital to make it to the world of big data where it can be analyzed and correlations can be made, opex saved, customers retained and new opportunities found.

A year ago, my rental home water heater stopped working. The service man arrived, cut open the pipe at the top of the heater, removed a faulty valve and reconnected everything. Took about an hour. He then wrote up the operation on a three-part form and handed me the pink copy. No charge to me, but likely cost the company a good $300. I asked what percentage of the heaters needed the valve replaced? His reply: all of them. I asked whether they continue to install new ones with the faulty valves. His answer: Yep.

Clearly there is an opportunity to change a process, and capture significant savings, but the insights to inspire that change are locked up in the pink, white and yellow copies -- likely in a drawer somewhere.

Paper cuts accuracy

So you are out for dinner with a group of friends and after some discussion of the menu, everyone places their order. The food arrives and all of the dishes look outstanding, except yours. You’ve got a tiny piece of what looks like boiled chicken, swimming in a thin, oily broth with some rice on the side. The description on the menu painted an entirely different picture.

Actually, there was no picture. What if the menu was an app that had pictures of the actual dishes so diners could see what the chef had in mind, how big it is, what it comes with and so on. Restaurants with menu apps often include wine or beer pairings, sorted by price and type. Better liquor up-sell, no shaming from the sommelier, larger checks, happier customers. And no disappointing chicken.

A menu mishap could impact business, but imagine the issues that arise in medicine or jet engine maintenance when values are recorded on paper, then keyed into a system. With a typical order entry error rate of 2%, there is ample opportunity to skip a decimal point, transpose a letter for a number or misspell a name. The errors could be life threatening.

Paper cuts into the customer experience

Look at the process of signing up for services at a traditional bank or applying for life insurance with a long-standing insurer. What follows is paper. Stacks of it. Sheets of detailed questionnaires to be filled out and, you guessed it, keyed in later in the back office.  What’s more: once correctly completed, you are given the right to provide them with a paper cheque to pay the bill. If only you could  find an envelope and a stamp -- in many cases this is still the only approved payment method. And once the deal is done, you are rewarded with…that’s right, more paper. Often it’s beautiful paper:  a handsome 9”x14” folder with a nice picture of a happy couple on their sailboat. Inside is more paper - things to fill in and return, and certificates, processes and records. Where to store it all? It sure won’t fit on that sailboat.

I can sign up for Uber by taking a picture of my credit card. I can order my Starbucks from their app and have it waiting when I arrive at the store. Why all this paper to buy life insurance? Or have someone manage my money? Or insure my car? Why isn’t there an app for that?

What does it say about a company that still lives in a paper world? How valued does a customer feel when faced with a paper form to complete? It sends a clear message that the company not only doesn’t value their time, but would rather invest its revenue in antiquated manual processes.

Paper cuts green credibility

A couple of years back, I installed solar panels on my home. Trying to do my bit. The installation included a nifty app that lets me track my solar production by the hour, day and month, and even compare the data with last year. Very fun. And green. And how cool is it to become an electricity vendor and get paid by my utility?

That is, until the first payment arrived. As a paper cheque. Cruel irony: producing solar power in 2016 and getting paid with a paper cheque. Perhaps they were just unaware of my preference. But no, a phone call confirmed that paper cheques were the only option. I protested, pointing out that I am able to pay my hydro bill electronically, so why do I have to receive payment by paper. Crickets. Then the obligatory call centre questions.

“Was there anything else they could help with?”

Well no.

“Did they solve the reason for my call today?”

I said no.

They argued that they did since they informed me that paper cheques are the only option, so in their world they solved my issue by answering the question. Sigh. I left them to their dusty processes and used my iPhone to take a picture of my paper cheque and deposit it to my account.

No more Band-Aids

Have you seen some of these paper cuts at the companies you do business with? Or, the horror, does any of this sound like your organization? Now is the time to take a good look of this paper and take action. Here are a few places to start.

Map out processes and identify any that rely on paper

Look at pacing items  

Where are you building a paper wall between you and your customers

How is paper preventing employee productivity?

What about employee collaboration?

Where are you at a competitive disadvantage because of paper-based processes?

Once you can answer these questions, you can define the processes that are candidates for mobile apps and solutions.

Many of our customers at Mirego start with one of our workshops.  We use a structured approach to define the customer and employee journeys and the limiting factors and opportunities in each. Together we consider new possibilities, and assess ways to apply mobile solutions to build collaboration, reduce cycle time and drive business results.

Enough with the paper cuts.

Your main KPIs should reflect your ultimate goals. Don’t rely solely on KPIs normally used. They may not reflect your industry’s challenges, the positioning/size of your company, or your context.

Here are four guidelines to help you determine the most relevant KPIs for your product.

1- Measure your primary source of conversions

Your first KPI should measure where the majority of your conversions come from. Sounds obvious, right? You would be surprised to learn that many companies have an internal debate as to what this number actually is/should be. For example, is your overarching goal to acquire new clients or to increase repurchase activity from your base? In this case, the number of users who complete their first purchase would be a logical choice for your first KPI. However, this KPI becomes less relevant when you are trying to increase customer loyalty.

2- Measure conversions that support your primary source of conversions

Now that the main goal of your digital product has been determined, it’s important to identify the steps that will enhance the user experience and incite your users to perform the actions you want them to take.

The following KPIs could be very useful to increase your sales volume: number of new user accounts, number of products viewed by each user, number of items added to a cart, etc.

Depending on your user experience, you may opt for two KPIs in order to better monitor the progress of your users within your app. However, as previously mentioned, don’t get caught up in too many KPIs. Stay focused. You can always access other KPIs later on when you need to further analyze the performance of your digital products. Keep in mind that that these KPIs are also good tools to set up A/B testing. The results of these tests will allow you to fine-tune your UX and UI, as well as ensure the continuous improvement of your digital product.

3- Qualitative metrics do matter

Once you have reduced the number of KPIs, you need to set your sights on data that will give you insight into the quality of your traffic, such as user demographics or customer satisfaction in using your mobile app. You can measure the age of your users, their geographical location, reviews of your app in different stores, and the number of positive or negative comments. These KPIs will help you to improve the messaging that is vital to the success of your app. 

Oftentimes, businesses minimize the importance of the texts and wording used in their apps. Of course, good text is required for your app’s usability and features. However, a change in tone, which is more aligned to your brand, can help to reassure or trigger the interest of your users. Never underestimate the power of communicating with users in a way that they understand. This will go a long way to improving the overall user experience—and impress them enough to create an account, make a purchase, or share their love for your app.

In addition, qualitative KPIs give you a good idea of how your users feel about using your digital product, as well as why they behave the way they do. Are they looking for information on a store or product near their homes? Are they just researching for fun? This data will help you better determine the role each digital product plays in achieving your objectives.

4- Money talks

We can’t talk about KPIs without talking about money. It stands to reason that any entrepreneur and manager will want to evaluate costs. An app’s ROI is often at the top of the list of KPIs to track. However, in order to clearly identify a KPI that will measure an app’s bottom-line performance, an entrepreneur or manager must know how much was initially invested. For some, the acquisition cost per user will be a viable KPI. For others, straightforward expenses vs profits will, pardon the pun, fit the bill. But one thing is for sure; everyone will want to monitor this KPI first. People will even evaluate all other KPIs based on this one. Regardless of the KPI you choose, make sure you double-check with the team that developed your digital product. Sooner or later, this question will have to be addressed.

Now what?

Great! You’ve identified four or five main KPIs and they have been CFO approved  (double kudos!). Your next step? Religiously monitoring their progress. First, agree with your team on how often you want to review and report on your KPIs. Who do you have to send an updated to? Make sure that you format different reports depending on the information required and type of internal/external stakeholder. The last thing you want is to recreate a mind numbing report that a boss or shareholder doesn’t truly understand.

A word on reporting. Before diving head first into purchasing an expensive reporting tool to gather data about the performance of your digital product, go the extra mile with standard solutions, such as Google Analytics, your preferred spreadsheet application, and Keynote. At Mirego, we use Mixpanel to monitor the performance of the apps we develop.

You’ll quickly notice that you have a lot of data to sift through in order to optimize your digital product. Don’t wait until the end of a financial quarter before calling your results into question. To accelerate our clients’ analyses, we often recommend organizing strategic sprints in which we analyze, determine, develop and test different solutions to optimize results and improve their turn around time.

In a nutshell, get stoked on analyzing, and get ready for amazing results!

Vincent is Vice President of Brand Strategy @Mirego. He helps clients to better position their brands in the marketplace by developing amazing digital products.

I think most of us have shared this experience. And how could it be that none of the hotel executives had found this problem? Do they not stay in their own hotel?

By taking the time to live the journey of the customer in your organization, you can open your eyes to a wealth of opportunity. Opportunities to enable your customers to discover some of your other offerings, ways to provide better services at less cost, the opportunity to deepen your relationship with them and make their experience with you delightful.

Sometimes this internal shopping points to a simple, low tech solution. Like a plug for an iron.

Increasingly, the solution includes mobile technology that can go well beyond removing a customer pain point and springboard a company to a whole new value proposition. Like Uber did in taxis.

If you have a retail operation, spend some time on the floor. 

How well does the sales team know your products and your culture?

Do the associates leave your customers and disappear in the back looking for products? 

Can staff rapidly identify relevant alternatives or rapidly source products from other locations? 

Consider the idea of retail apps to make omni-channel shopping a reality. Or provide a way to help store associates learn 10,000 SKUs and their company culture in between serving customers. Great retail apps can make the black size 7 shoes appear from the stockroom and help a customer understand whether a given product will fit their application. Or eliminate lineups at clunky fixed cash registers by using sleek mobile point-of-sale solutions that let every associate complete the sale.

Invest a day with your outside sales team. 

What percent of the day do they spend looking for information? 

Do they need to “go back” and work on quotes and proposals? Why?

Are they still brandishing paper brochures? 

Through mobile technology, sales teams can have the up-to-date information they need with them. The “let me go back to the office and…” step goes away. The industrial product can be configured directly with the customer and the insurance quote can be completed on the spot. The wealth plan can grow on the advisor’s iPad as the client provides information. Lower cycle time, better service and airtight loyalty.


Go ahead and download your consumer app.

Give it a test drive. Does it provide an enjoyable and intuitive experience? 

Does it allow functionality beyond your website? 

Mobile consumer apps can provide freedom and choice allowing customers to select, configure and buy 24/7. With immersive experiences that go far beyond a catalogue and price list. All of this can free up your teams to provide incremental value. Great apps can save consumers time, help them connect and collaborate with you and let you co-create new offerings.

Ride along with your field service teams. 

Do they have the information they need at the work site? 

In field services, apps can eliminate a 5 pound technical reference binder, allow workers to get peer input on a difficult maintenance puzzle and save trips back to the field office for parts and tools. Even optimize their service call routing. In real time. And the masonite clipboard with the 3 part form gives way to digital information workflows that share updates, checklists, analytics and sign-offs in real time.

Mobile solutions such as these can be built and deployed in weeks and often have compelling business cases. They can change the game in every aspect of your business.

Take a fresh look at your company through the eyes of your employees and customers. Look for the redundant processes, paper workflows, un-empowered front line workers, and long lead times. Think about the opportunity to lead a renaissance in your industry.

And don’t forget the basics. Like wall outlet to let customers press their shirts.

An enumerated type (or enum) is a set of named values. When a variable is declared as having an enumerated type, it can only contain one of those values. A very simple example would be a classical card game where a card can either be of clubs, spades, diamonds or hearts. When it would be time to play a new round, using an enum would ensure that let’s say only 3 of the spades, diamonds, hearts or clubs could be played. A lot less safe versions of this would be having a list of 4 “available types” for your cards. In your code, you would then send the “index” of the type of the card being played: 0 being “Spade”, 1 being Diamonds… It’s not really pretty but it would probably do the job! What happens if you encounter a bug in your codebase  though? What if somehow the index of the type was swipped to -1 or 17? That’s a lot of not-so-edgy-cases you’d have to think about that Swift would take care of for you. A card would have a number and type. A type is either Spades, Diamonds, Hearts or Clubs. Period.

In Swift, the code would look like this:

enum CardType {     case Spades     case Diamonds     case Hearts     case Clubs } struct Card {     let number: Int     let type: CardType }

You would then create a new card using the following code:

let card  = Card(number: 3, type: .Spades)

Of course, this is the kind of example that you would find in programming book (and not a very good one!) An actual game of cards would imply a lot more rules than that (what happens if I want a Queen? A King? Can I have multiple 3 of Spades..?).

Unless you’ve found a way to break the rules and submit a gambling app on the App Store, chances are this won’t be of any use. Instead, we had the idea of this article when we refactored an application with a timer feature. By pressing on a button, a screen would appear, letting you choose a duration for setting a new timer or clearing the existing timer. Taping anywhere on the screen or on the close button would dismiss this screen. This means at the end of the action, you’ll have 3 possible results to handle in your application:

The user decided to start a timer of a specific duration

The user simply decided to clear the current timer

The user cancelled the action by tapping somewhere in the screen

These 3 cases can be expressed as an enum the following way:

enum TimerAction {     case Add(Int)     case ClearCurrent     case Dismiss }

What can get extremely powerful with Swift enums is being able to add extra informations for each and any value of this enumerated type. In this case, we want the duration selected to set the timer:

func didSelectAction(action: Action) {     switch(action) {     case .Add(let duration):         print(“User created a timer for \(duration) minutes")     case .ClearCurrent:         print(“User want to clear the current timer")     case .Dismiss:         print(“Dismiss the current screen")     }

}

Swift comes with a great deal of awesome features like this one and enums can be used to implement a lot more of different concepts. If you’re curious about how else you could use them in your application, the [official documentation] would be a good place to start.