There has been a surge in preferences for temporary ownership over permanent ones. People want the benefits of owning without having to buy. Uber, Lyft, Curb and other on-demand ride services are cited to have a drastic impact on automobile sales due to the ease of use without having to buy. There’s a drastic shift in the customer mindset that has urged companies to manage a direct, responsive, multi-channel relationship with their users, giving rise to a complex subscription-based economy.

The intent here is to break down these complex structures into user-friendly designs, which can be easily comprehensible.

Since businesses capture data of their current users, it helps to create personalized offers through target marketing and build custom communication and pricing models. This increases the LTV (lifetime value) of a user or consumer.

A subscription model provides predictable and recurring revenue for a long-term engaged user base. Click to Tweet

The business can concentrate on the retention of users overspending on acquiring new ones. Similarly, subscription strategies allow for price diversification, accommodating a broader, diversified income group of users over a fixed ‘one-price-for-all’ model.

Subscription plans are also psychologically attractive to users as they don’t have to make long-term commitments nor do they have to pay a large amount at a single go. It’s thereby no surprise that a lot of industry giants as well as mid-size companies are using subscription models as the basis for their business.

These strategies can be broadly categorized into 3 types:

1. Traditional Models

The simple relationship of regular exchange of certain goods or services at a fixed price for a certain period that creates a long-term understanding between brands and it’s users. These can be broadly divided into:

a. Unlimited use: Set price for unlimited use of product or service for a fixed amount of time.

b. Pay as you go: Pay for usage as and when needed at a fixed price per-use.

c. Premium: Additional/Upgraded services or features for an additional fee.

d. Pay per unit/user: Based on the number of people using product or service.

Examples of traditional subscription models

2. eCommerce

A newer subscription model type based on the supply of fast-moving consumer supplies that are needed regularly to reach repeat users. These can be divided into :

a. Curation subscription: Surprise the user with a curated selection of different products based on their preferences.

b. Refill subscription: Replenish the same or similar items (usually commodities).

Examples of e-commerce subscription models

3. Innovative

Novel subscription models that combine one or more pricing strategies, that offer products and services catering to multiple needs. These can be broadly categorized into:

a. Buy-back subscription: Exchange the used subscribed product for virtual money or other products.

b. Hybrid subscription: Merging two different offerings symbiotically for wholesome user experience.

c. Consumer durable subscription: Use and switch multiple durables (that are usually long term purchases) for a set price and a short term period.

Examples of innovative subscription models

The adoption of these models has helped businesses’ stand apart from the rest. But the question remains, how do we create a holistic blend of pricing strategies, coupled with the best UX practices to give the users exactly what they need.

Let’s explore some of the strategies that can help you build a model conducive for your business as well as the user’s wallet

1. Feature-Add Value

Increase pricing with added features exclusively.

Eg. InVision: Instead of just showing incremental features with pricing, Invision shows the user various kinds of features they can offer and what they are missing out without these. It highlights the most popular package based on user behavior to buy/upgrade prompts the user towards a particular purchase.

Image source

2. Interactive Pricing

A customizable pricing model calculating real-time numbers for B2B services and products.

Eg. SketchApp: Instead of having the users contact the support team for a definite number of users or a large enterprise pricing, Sketchapp allows the user to customize the volume with a slider, keeping the pricing interactive and engaging with real-time costs.

Image source

3. Paywall

Limited access to content to influence subscription.

Eg. Medium: Medium lets users experience featured content, by allowing 3 free stories to read. This helps the user to gauge the quality of content available on the platform that has a greater probability of influencing long-term subscriptions.

Image source

4. Freemium

Unlimited access to the platform with basic features, to get the user glued to the product before adding a fee component with value-added features.

Eg. Spotify: Spotify allows the users to access unlimited music (with ads), playlists and podcasts, but only access the shuffle mode on mobile. Similarly, it allows on-demand content on its web portal and not on mobile. This way the user gets a taste of the content and adopts the platform faster, moving from being a free subscriber to a paid subscriber.

Image source

5. Sell a story

Elaborate the benefits to a user to add value instead of highlighting just the features. This also projects the tone of voice and persona of the brand.

Eg. MailChimp: In the below example, MailChimp has put down the features, in an incremental form, by listing down its features, not merely as bullet points, but as a story to tap into the reptilian brain of the user. This creates a personal association with the brand and builds a connection.

Image source

6. Fair billing

Bill only for the number of people using the product or the number of units used. If it is prepaid, return in the form of credits or discounts in the next billing cycle. This helps in building long-standing relationships.

Eg. Slack: Slack follows a ‘fair billing’ policy, where it provides its subscription fees ‘per active user’ per month. If a user becomes inactive during this period, Slack adjusts the payments for the inactive members in the next billing cycle. This assures the users that the brand cares for them, creating a loyal base of users.

Image source

The above strategies can help you build a model conducive for your business as well as the users’ wallets. Let’s understand the parameters on which these strategies have been built that will help you create a pricing strategy for your own business.

a. Strategic pricing for business objectives: A well planned strategic pricing is the base of a good subscription model. Tiered pricing models that suit all types of users helps to accomplish business goals to scale business, acquire and retain customers as well as increase the lifetime value of the users.

b. Multi-Channel user acquisition: Create a seamless experience for the users to subscribe via multiple channels, viz., mobile, desktop, tablets or via customer support. This helps in adapting diverse pricing strategies while staying flexible to user needs.

c. Monetize long-term relationships: The formula for growth in this subscription economy is monetizing long term relationships rather than just shipping products (Click to Tweet) — that can help you in creating better variations of your products. In turn, you spend less money on marketing and on-boarding.

d. Adapt pricing to user behavior and needs: Understanding the user psychology that comes into play while making a purchase will help increase the conversion rates in subscriptions.(Click to Tweet) For eg., The left digit of a price gives the perceived value, making $2.99 more desirable than $3.00.

f. Aim for consistent, positive interactions with users: Strive to create a long-lasting user relationship even after the transaction has been made. Timely communication with users and personalized recommendations encourage the users to stay subscribed to a particular offering over another.

g. Give user total control & transparency in payments: Strive to make the billing easy and accurate for different pricing models. Keep the invoice easy to understand and informative to develop transparent and honest relationships between users and the brand.

The formula for growth in this subscription economy is monetizing long term relationships and offering value above all;(Click to Tweet) by creating different versions of your products that cover a wider audience that includes different customer personas.

It is imperative for companies to create a symbiotic relationship between the brand and users, by understanding their basic needs and expectations. It is now essential to understand and tap into the user’s emotions and craft experiences, which they can connect with and value. By using a holistic blend of effective information, usability best practices, and design guidelines, a brand can ascertain the purchase decision and retain user loyalty for an extended period.

“Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating.”–Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things.

Organizations that manage to make a positive emotional connection with their customers in the digital era will experience positive results. Given the rise in the average time spent on mobile and connected devices, brands must harness emotional data and create meaningful customer connections.

So how can we identify the influencers that drive these connections?

The surge of internet users around the world is at an all-time rise. 400+ million as we talk, representing an annual growth of 10 percent. And if the trends continue, we are soon to witness some truly remarkable digital milestones as we tread into 2022.

Considering the overwhelming surge in technologies and digital platforms, the way ahead for brands is to differentiate themselves by creating deeper customer connections and garner a competitive advantage. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is by incorporating a human-centered design approach. It can help brands build trust, loyalty & customer value, which will invariably influence customer acquisition & retention. Human-centered design triggers positive customer responses, that can amplify your business performance and boost ROI.

What is Human-Centered Design?

Human-centered design is a consumer-centered problem-solving approach that prioritizes the consumers’ needs when approaching a challenge. To be able to incorporate this as part of the creative design process requires a deep perspective of the challenges users encounter and what are the solutions they are most likely to embrace.

As per research conducted by Deloitte, 58% of consumers prefer a brand for an emotional reason overriding the other rational factors. This has perhaps made it evident for brands that the customer experience can no longer inspire brand loyalty, human-centered design is ruling the digital space. When emotional data, like user behavior patterns, pain-points, purchase triggers, and motivators are integrated as part of your creative process, consumers are more confident about your brand as they are heard and understood.

Regardless of the industry, you belong to, or the designation you hold, it’s imperative to understand the human-centered design principles to ensure that this ideology can be infused into the products you develop. Click to Tweet

With the overarching objective of serving your customers better, the human-centered design approach can help to nurture and retain your current users and garner your competitive advantage.

Stages of the Human-Centered Design Process

While there are many forms of the Human-Centered Design process, it can be broadly categorized under these 5 key stages.

• Empathize – The foundation of the human-centered design process is to truly understand the people who experience a problem before you begin to design a solution to serve them. As Design-consultants, it is crucial to directly engage with the people experiencing the problem, observe the environments they operate in, ask a lot of questions and completely grasp their challenges. This is one of the most integral parts of the design thinking process as it’s not about anticipating but participating with the consumer, to brainstorm, model and prototype.

• Classify – After gaining all insights and learning about the problem, define the challenge you wish to address. As a human-centered designer/brand, it is important to define the ‘why’ behind addressing the problem. It is ultimately the problem statement that will guide you towards formulating the potential solutions.

• Ideate- This phase is about arriving at as many solutions and more preferably in a team setting. The key is to generate many ideas without judging the idea, as it inhibits the creative process. This is the best way to arrive at solutions from a wider, bottom-up perspective.

• Prototype – This phase is all about experimenting with what you’ve created, whether it is a virtual interface or system. A good practice for designers is to create multiple prototypes to experiment with the ones that meet the requirements of the consumer.

• Test & Iterate – Put your ideas to test. This phase is about testing the prototypes you created, to identify the gaps in design and areas for further improvement. In an ideal scenario, it would be best to test your prototype with a few consumers, whom you created the prototype for.

While this may seem like the end, the human-centered design process is a dynamic and fluid process, that runs until all participants are satisfied with the solution that addresses the problem. It is often not a linear process, but you can ascertain the next steps while you’re mid-way into the design process. In the prototyping stage, for instance, one might realize that the prototype doesn’t align with the defined problem statement. This requires designers to be agile, constantly reiterate, brainstorm and go through the nuances of the problem more deeply and to most importantly keep in mind the overarching objective, which is to invoke a positive emotional response that will increase the likelihood of customer acquisition and retention.

How to create a Human-Centered Design that invokes positive emotions?

Emotion is the cornerstone of the human-centered design experience, which requires customer experience strategies to influence positive consumer emotions. Click to Tweet

With effective product testing, user-research and subsequent touch-point mapping, it is easy to gauge the impact of the product on end-users and the pain points users may address while using the product. A good design will not only focus on addressing these challenges but convert these pain-points into positive emotional experiences. A Human-Centered Design can transform functional products into memorable and enduring experiences.

To create a successful product, the design elements should cover the needs to visceral, behavioral and reflective aspects, as per Don Norman’s seminal book on ‘Emotional Design’

Visceral Design

“This looks so amazing, I want it”

A visceral reaction is prompted by a preliminary sensory experience, which is an immediate, deep-level gut reaction to your product. It is the very first impression, the initial mood which sets the ground, due to which one begins to explore the product. As they say, there never is a second chance to make a positive first impression. Users are more likely to forgo faults in the future if the initial experience was overwhelming and positive. A visceral reaction can set a positive context for subsequent interactions. It impacts the perception of your product’s reliability, dependability, consistency, quality, appeal, and also the perceived ease of use.

Behavioral Design

“I can master this. It makes me feel so confident.”

A behavioral reaction is how we feel as part of being immersed in the product experience. It is the reactions and interactions with the product and the value we derive from the products we use, also referred to as the usability.

A product has to look good, feel good, and perform well. It’s ultimately about the pleasure associated with a product’s ease of use and effectiveness. A Behavioral design element focuses on how the structure or system, meets the requirements of the end-users. Invoking positive behavioral reactions allows users to feel more empowered, develop trust, reliability and invoke repeat reactions. A product will not last long if its design does not align with the user’s behavior. Here’s a fact: 77 percent of users never use an app again 72 hours after installing. Most successful apps are those which people can’t imagine life without, as a result of good behavioral design. From an emotional viewpoint, when our interaction behaviors are more familiar and anticipated, then we are in agreement and derive joy and contentment from the product’s usability. The behavioral design aspect covers functionality, performance, usability, and ease of use.

Reflective Design

“This is so much like me, I love the way it makes me feel”

A reflective reaction is about how we feel after experiencing the product. It is about whether we remember the experience and how it made us feel, which will determine if we desire to experience the product all over again. It’s about self-image, satisfaction, memories, reflecting on the experience. A positive, reflective design can invoke customer advocacy, by encouraging other users with their experiences. A good reflective emotional design captures the essence of the product, impact of thought, share-ability and the cultural impact.

For a design to have an emotional appeal, users need to feel connected to a product in a way such that life feels incomplete without it. Click to Tweet

Designers then, need to constantly strive towards creating products with a ‘personality’, something that simplifies real-life experiences; if they truly want their products/brand to be successful and meaningful.

Techniques to Augment an Emotional Impact

• Personalization— Give room for the users to feel in-control with personalization. This makes them feel a sense of ownership, which gives them the power to tailor experiences based on their preferences.

• Powerful Imagery —Use of appropriate imagery that users can connect and relate with can have a significant impact on product success. Use images, colors, animations and illustrations that invoke empathy and trigger an emotional response.

• Delight— Try to keep the element of surprise alive, let there be something fun and pleasant to look forward to. Invoke positive emotional reactions by surprising and delighting your users.

• Relatable Voice— Relate to your users in a more empathetic Express compassion, encouragement, and emotion through a conversational user interface.

• Storytelling — Help users understand the journey of the experience with powerful, relatable and engaging stories that stay etched in their memory.

• Humor — Evoke a sense of joy, eliminate room for uncertainty and fear with a good sense of humor. Laughing and glee are powerful emotions that trigger a sense of joy and contentment.

• Micro-interactions — Subtle affordances and indicators make the product interface feel more vibrant and alive, which can influence greater user-engagement and interactions.

“The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a ‘product.’ What is paid for is satisfaction. But nobody can make or supply satisfaction as such—at best, only the means to attaining them can be sold and delivered.” – Peter Drucker

Heuristic Principles – Why are they integral to product interfaces?

What is a heuristic approach?

A heuristic technique is any approach to problem-solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient to accomplish immediate goals. Heuristic principles are most appropriate when concise guidelines do not exist. In the absence of guidelines as with UI & UX design, heuristic methods can be used as a point of evaluation for optimal design solutions. They speed up the process of finding a practical solution while easing the cognitive overload of making a decision.

Jakob Nielsen, a web usability consultant collected and released a set of evaluation principles for usability heuristics that help in identifying the problems in a user interface design to address these as part of the iterative design process. As the Human-centered design augmented the importance of the user, design processes have adapted accordingly. However though Nielsen’s principles have remained universal across all digital product interfaces.

Here are ten heuristic principles that are inspired by human-centered design and usability thought leaders. They help as guidelines for usability evaluations to identify if the UI falls short of delivering a user-friendly experience.

1.Visibility of the System Structure

The UI should always allow transparency in the system structure and make the user feel in control. Make a few elements and structures visible so that the user has a complete understanding of the context. They should be able to understand where they are and where they can head to next. When the system is transparent, the user is in control of his journey and gains incredible confidence in the product interface.

2. Immediate Feedback

The user’s action should be followed by an immediate response, which confirms that the system is in receipt of the request. Instantaneous feedback reassures the user that his response is right and reveals what can be expected next. Without feedback, the user can feel frustrated and uncertain, which can lead to an interrupted journey.

3. Highlight Errors

Barriers and dead-ends often lead to interrupted product journeys. Users are bound to feel frustrated when they find themselves in a situation that does not accomplish their needs. When a user is given awareness about the errors, it helps in immediate recognition, diagnosis, and recovery from the error. Striking a perfect balance with simple & linear communication is the key to avoiding cognitive overload. Remember, all the user needs is to understand how to solve and prevent the error in the future.

4. Ease of Use

An interactive product experience must be independent of external user guidance. Whether it is a first time experience or the tenth, the interface should accommodate both scenarios. While a seasoned user has access to a deeper systematic understanding and short cuts, the new user should experience flexibility in maneuvering the interface without being interrupted. When the UI is flexible, the user can be in control and choose a journey based on their needs and capabilities. The key is to find balance, both, a restrictive or an overwhelming interface can be a frustrating experience.

5. Universal Experiences

Create design elements that relate to common human experiences and expectations. It is important to cater to universal user expectations as we spend more time involved in digital interfaces. A “+” sign ideally expands to give more information, by tapping into easily comprehensible references like these, users will understand its purpose and the interface becomes more intuitive.

6. Minimalistic Aesthetics

Create minimal design features and eliminate elements that can interfere with the overall experience. Display data in a manner that is clear and aids easy navigation. Stick to a theme by using a layout, color, and typography, that guides the user without any distractions.

7. Prioritize Function over Form

The visual design of an interface must always begin with defined functions. Design decisions focus on what an element is meant to do, rather than emphasizing on its visual style. When the style, overall look and trends are prioritized, it may perhaps draw a lot more attention, but functionality is the key.

8. Availability of Information

Make information available to ensure users have information available on their fingertips rather than having to rely on memory. One of Nielsen’s heuristic principles suggests the designer should “minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”It’s important to keep in mind that a user experiencing an interface for the first time will not have the knowledge and familiarity with the information that the designers do. While the repetition of information may seem excessive to design experts, this is very essential for new users.

9. Maintain Consistency

As humans, we are drawn to patterns, and use them to make sense of the world. Representing information in familiar frameworks like metaphors & schemas and consistent elements helps in creating a cohesive experience that’s easily retained.

10. Reflect & Align

To ensure that the design principles and usability heuristics align with the overall purpose of the product and user needs, it is important to reflect and align periodically. It is up to the design experts to establish the best decisions for their unique use cases. All in all, if the product is human-centered and built to align with the user needs, the design and product will have a strong sense of purpose.

Conclusion:

It’s no longer enough to create products that push the boundaries of technology. What’s more important is to understand your customers’ motivations and behavior patterns, and translate this into a robust design interface to deliver customer experiences that can garner your competitive advantage, brand recognition, and growth.

Regardless of the industry you belong to, it’s mission-critical that you are aware of the process of the human-centered design process. By putting your consumer at the forefront of your creative process, you can build products that beautifully align with your consumer’s needs. When done right, it can provide optimum user experiences, maximize engagement and have a direct impact on customer acquisition and retention.

According to a recent report, digitally matured organizations are those who take the road less traveled i.e. their business processes are different than the majority. However, doing things differently is not enough, planning and implementing things differently is the key to success.

Most prudent companies realize how important it is to have a focused and customized digital strategy to excel in a connected world; thereby most digitally matured organizations have a well defined digital strategy in place.

Before embarking on this journey, assessing the organization’s digital maturity will help enterprises in analyzing where to start their digital transformation journey and how to go about creating a ‘digital roadmap’ for the future.

How can organizations start assessing their digital maturity?

Which are the areas to focus on while creating a digital transformation plan?

These are some of the critical questions that we as a digital advisory can help you answer. The right digital partner can help organizations visualize, mobilize and realize their digital transformation strategy.

What does this imply?

So, where do organizations take the first leap of visualizing their digital future?

At Robosoft, we follow a 5As framework to help find some truly comprehensive solutions that can scale an organization’s digital journey.

The 5 A’s framework – Access, Autonomy, Alliance, Agility and Algorithms

Digital Maturity Assessment – Using 5 A’s Framework

Let’s delve deeper into each of these dimensions.

Access

Today millennials desire access over ownership. With a change in consumer behavior we are rapidly moving towards an access economy.

Access economy is the one where resources are shared – tangible or intangible both – it may mean sharing of the workforce, workspace or even knowledge sharing. With this shift businesses too are imbibing processes and technologies to adapt to an access economy.

What does this mean for enterprises?

• Collaborative working ecosystems
• Optimal usage of resources
• Faster processes

The mantra is ‘value unused is waste’ and that represents a shift in cultural consciousness towards valuing experiences rather than goods. Uber the world’s largest taxi services own no vehicles, Airbnb owns no real estate, Alibaba has no inventory, the advent of sharing or access economy has truly changed the rules of the game.

Here are a few examples of organizations across industries leveraging the access economy-

• Mahindra has recently invested in 2 start-ups Trringo and Smartshift. Trringo is an online platform that gives farmers pay-per-use access to expensive farming equipment. Smartshift is a load exchange platform that connects small commercial vehicle owners with people looking to transport their goods within the city.

• With the dual goal of reducing vacant warehouse space and reaching customers in a new way across mainland Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, DHL Supply Chain has pioneered a platform called DHL Spaces to broker unused warehouse space.

Access economy helps is improving the efficiency of resources and optimizing their usage to increase productivity. Co-working spaces companies like WeWork are helping enterprises optimize their fixed space costs and platforms like Upwork are helping organizations in hiring resources as per the need.

Image source

Autonomy

In a digital economy, consumers seek customization alongside flexibility and autonomy. They like making informed decisions with all the information about a product or service, available on the digital platform. It is thereby upon enterprises to leverage digital media to empower consumers in making more informed choices.

While consumers prefer autonomy, they do not want to lose human contact entirely. They reach out to consumer groups for advice and seek assistance before and after a purchase. The need for the human element is also pushing enterprises to custom-build their bots via technologies like machine learning, AI, NLP, etc.

So how can organizations empower their customers at every step of the customer journey?

• Pre-sales

As per this excerpt, 57% of a sale is made even before the actual purchase. It’s thereby crucial for enterprises to ensure their presence on the right digital platforms at the right time, with essential information about their key offerings.

• Sales

Consumers expect convenient & faster services. This is one of the reasons why e-commerce growth has rapidly scaled in the past few years. Even at physical touch points enterprises are offering options for self-service. For instance, McDonald’s has introduced kiosks at their outlets for consumers to order & receive their food much faster.

• Post-sales

In a self-service economy, customers turn to other customers for feedback, reach out to groups and seek assistance with a faulty product or service. Chatbots help in addressing their grievances in real-time.

However, autonomy is not something that is only desired by customers, but it is sought by employees as well. When it comes to creating a digitally matured organization, creating autonomous processes across stakeholders – internal and external is the key.

Alliance

‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’

Today economy collaboration has become a critical factor for success. Here are some examples of collaborations that are thrusting the business ecosystem way ahead.

• Home Depot, is working with manufacturers to ensure that the connected home products it sells are compatible with the Wink connected home system, thereby creating its own connected home ecosystem, with a wide range of services that are easy to install.

• Philips’ healthcare practice is collaborating with Salesforce to build a platform that they believe will reshape and optimize the way healthcare is delivered. The platform will create an ecosystem of developers, building healthcare applications to enable collaboration and workflow between doctors and patients across the entire spectrum of care, from self-care and prevention to diagnosis and treatment through recovery and wellness.

The norms of competition to have changed drastically. Netflix is a competitor for Inox, Uber is a competitor for automotive companies, so on and so forth. Businesses will have to move beyond the traditional industry silos and build well-collaborated ecosystems, creating new opportunities for innovation. However, every business will need to team up with other players; competition or outside the industry, basis what their core objectives are. Identifying what kind of collaborations and to what extent is the key to developing a robust digital strategy.

Agility

An agile approach is not just limited to software development. It’s an integral part of every business. In the broadest sense, agility refers to an enterprise having an operational structure that gives it the tools to react quickly and efficiently to the ebb and flow of your market. To achieve this type of responsiveness, you need a huge degree of adaptability and flexibility at every level of your organization.

Fast moving, flexible and robust firm capable of rapid response to unexpected challenges, events and opportunities. Built on policies and processes that facilitate speed and change, it aims to achieve continuous competitive advantage in serving its customers. Agile enterprises use diffused authority and flat organizational structure to speed up information flows among different departments and develop close, trust-based relationships with their customers and suppliers.

An agile business model should be all-encompassing. The IT architecture needs to be adaptable and transformative to respond to market trends as they occur. Internal teams need to operate on an almost ad hoc basis if need be, without being bogged down by outdated hierarchical structures and poor digital tools that only slow down operational responsiveness.

Becoming agile is more about adopting a mindset that determines how people work across every aspect of the business.

To deploy an agile system, organizations will have to alter their operating model. For instance, software firms do not go about launching a full-blown product, rather they create an MVP, which allows them to test, experiment and improve, more often and faster. When it comes to adopting an agile system, it encompasses three aspects of the business – Decision making, Learning & Processes.

Algorithms

In a digital economy, data is the new oil. However, as pointed out in this Forbes article “data inherently is dumb”. So, data alone isn’t enough, we need to enhance it to make the most of it. And, thereby algorithms have become more important than ever. We need algorithms to analyze and bring relevant insights from data to the forefront. And, this is how business leaders will be able to identify specific areas to address.

The Airline industry has been using algorithms to set their passenger fares for ages now. There are a lot of variables that come into picture when setting airline prices like class, the position of seat in the aircraft, the rate at which the tickets are being booked, the time of the year, etc. The yield management program used by the industry constantly monitors supply and demand to get the highest revenue for a given seat inventory. E-commerce websites such as Amazon and Alibaba use the algorithmic business model, mainly for pricing, inventory and seller matching.

However, the level of advancement of an algorithm and the degree to which an organization should invest in algorithms will depend on their industry, business objectives and where they are in their digital journey.

Conclusion

When it comes to creating a digital strategy the ‘one size fits all’ approach doesn’t work. Every organization will have its trajectory while going digital. However, where your organization stands when it comes to the 5As as mentioned in this article will be a critical aspect of defining the journey ahead.

When Apple launched Siri in 2011, no one predicted the success of voice technology. 8 years later, almost 100 million mobile phones have a voice assistant. While Industry leaders such as Google and Amazon hold a major market share, voice technology is useful across varied industry channels. From banking to the corporate sector, every industry is observing an increasing number of voice integrations to fulfill customer demands.

Let’s explore why voice is popular, its applications, the technical aspects, and best practices.

Why Voice is Popular

The increased awareness, ever-changing user-demand, and improved user-services through voice integration have triggered a digital shift. The increasing need for speed, convenience, efficiency, and accuracy has added to the increased demand for voice optimization in mobile and other devices. Voice assistants are being integrated into several IoT devices such as appliances, thermostats, and speakers which offer an ability to connect to the user.

Here are some reasons why voice technology is popular in multiple operating devices.

• On average, we can speak 130 words per minute and write only 40 words per minute. This count can be more or less dependent on the user but the idea behind using voice is clear. The speed of speaking is 3 times more than the speed of writing. Users can save time that they have to spend typing.

• In 2012, the speech errors were 33%, and in 2017, it was reduced to 5%. Due to evolving and improving technology, voice search has become more accurate. So, whenever a user speaks something to instruct the device, it is highly likely for the device to understand the instructions clearly without errors.

• It is easier to access voice technology through hardware. Due to the high adoption rate and easy availability, several users have smart devices such as smartphones, smartwatches, and smart speakers. The accessibility of voice search and integration is also high, which justifies the popular demand.

Voice Assistant: Use Cases

Voice technology is not just valuable in the entertainment industry. Healthcare can benefit from voice integration as it will help patients manage their health data, improve claims management, and seamlessly deliver first-aid instructions.

Let’s explore further to find out where voice technology can be utilized.

Enterprise Support

Consider the following two scenarios, in which you will also find two separate use cases of voice for the enterprise.

1. A sales representative is on the market run and he is making notes of the activities and important pointers as he hops from client to client. He is writing it all down but at the back of his mind, he is thinking of how he would have to populate the fields of his office software with this data at a later stage. This is tiring to even think of, right?
2. Everybody is using office supplies and no one is making an effort to replace anything. This goes on until the inventory runs dry and there are no office supplies to use anymore. Assigning this task to a person is such a waste of manpower because his time can be better utilized.

In the first case, the sales representative can directly utilize the smartphone to populate the software field. As he speaks, everything is entered directly to the database, which can be edited later, but the major part of the job is immediately accomplished.

In the second case, Echo Dot can be utilized as a shared device to order inventory supply. You have to maintain the inventory levels and feasibility of the purchase but wouldn’t it be nice to ask Echo to order a box of pens?

Healthcare Support

Voice assistants can lead to seamless workflows in the healthcare industry. Here’s how:

1. There are multiple healthcare devices to help you monitor your health. For example, a diabetes monitor which can be integrated into your Alexa. The solution can help you follow your medication, diet, and exercise properly – everything through voice.
2. Similar to health management, non-adherence to medication is a reason for declining health. Voice control can be integrated into Alexa to remind elders to take medication on time.
3. Alexa Skills are also being utilized to deliver first-aid instructions through voice. When in an emergency, you don’t have to read it, you only have to hear it and move ahead.

Banking Support

The application of voice technology in banking is obvious. You can check your account balance, make payments, pay bills, and raise a complaint. Although these are basic functionalities to help users accomplish the task in less time without any hassles.

In an advanced version, voice technology in banking is currently being explored in collaboration with NLP (Natural Language Processing) and machine learning. In the future, users can expect advanced support from the voice assistant. You can ask the assistant if you are investing in the right fund and the assistant will present statistics to help you understand the situation.

Automobile Support

Another known application of Alexa Skills and Google Voice is in the automobile industry. It is possible to utilize voice technology integration to offer roadside assistance. The voice commands will help you execute emergency automobile tasks without reading it online or even typing it in the search engine. You only have to call out your phone and ask for help.

Application Chatbots

Amazon Lex is a valuable service offered by Amazon to create voice and text conversational interfaces in an application. This service has a deep learning functionality is achieved through automatic speech recognition, which can automatically convert speech to text. Further, the Amazon Lex has natural language processing abilities which offer engaging customer interfaces for high user satisfaction. Both these features of Amazon Lex makes it easier for developers to create conversational bots in the application.

Google Voice and Alexa Skills

Alexa Skills and Google Voice are extensions that help build voice-enabled applications. These are the tools that enable us to make virtual assistants and speakers.

Alexa Skills

Image source

1. In Alexa, headspace is a known skill. Headspace Campfire, Headspace Meditation, and Headspace Rain are all different skills.
2. To invoke these skills, the user has to speak an invocation phrase. This can be anything but we are using Headspace as the invocation phrase as an example here. This phrase is necessary as your skills discovery is dependent on the phrase.
3. It is compared on the web and searches with different utterances such as ask headspace, tell headspace or open headspace. Sometimes, it can trigger even when you say, “Alexa, I need to relax.”
4. The intent of the voice command is to achieve the task a user is trying. Start meditation. The start is the intent here.
5. If a user says start <game>, the start is the intent and <game> is the slot.
6. It is also possible to execute a command with intent such as Alexa, launch headspace. This is similar to opening the home page on the browser.
7. A Fulfilment is an API logic to execute the action or intent such as start <game>.
8. Lastly, Alexa has its built-in intent which is not governed by an external function. If you say, “Alexa, stop,” that is an internal command.

Google Voice

Image source

Google Voice is similar to Alexa Skills with some minor differences:

1. In Google Voice, headspace offers actions (similar to intent), conversation logic is a dialog flow, and the agent is at backends such as headspace meditation or headspace rain.
2. Agent in Google accomplishes actions – “Ok Google, start headspace meditation.”
3. You can also use “Ok Google, launch headspace” to start an action with no intent.
4. Google has in-built intents like “Ok Google, help me relax” which gives Google several options and one of these is headspace.

VUX Design Research

When you are building actions or skills in Google or Alexa, it is necessary to know various research outcomes given below:

1. Understand how different types of users are interacting with the platform or a specific category.
2. Understand the intent of the user and know the why of using the voice assistant.
3. Understand how actions and skills are performed with the help of different phrases or utterance.

1. Be Specific – Every user can consume more graphical information compared to voice. No one can sit through the voice commands for a long time. So, ensure that your app is visually appealing.
2. The introduction is the Key – When the user starts the action with no intent, “Alexa, launch headspace,” introduce yourself. Welcome them and help them adjust to your application.
3. Prompt Again – When the user stops responding, prompt again. But, do this without overdoing it, just a short re-prompt is enough.
4. Include Error Messages – You need to include error and help messages to pass certification. For example, ask the user to keep the mic close for the response (tip).
5. Include Invalid Inputs – When the voice command is unclear, have invalid responses stored for better interaction.
6. Immediate Response – Avoid delays. You can’t give a 10-second speech before playing the song user wants. If the user says, “Play XYZ,” simply say “Playing XYZ” and just play. When the user says pause, Pause.
7. Don’t Include Unavailable Intents – Do not include any intent on the app which is not feasible for voice commands. This can lead to certification rejection.

How to Set Up Voice Skills?

Alexa Skill

1. Start by signing in or logging in to your dashboard and then click on ‘Get Started’ under Alexa Skills Kit. After that, click ‘Add new skill’.

2. As we are creating a custom skill, click on the ‘Custom interaction model’ and add name and invocation name. Name is defined for your dashboard and invocation name is defined to activate the skill on Amazon Echo. Once you have entered the skill information, move to the interaction model and ‘Launch Skill Builder’. Here, add the intent name and utterances. The intent is the intention of the user behind a skill.

For example, if the intent is ‘Hello World’, utterances can be, ‘Hi’, ‘Howdy’, etc.

Save this model and go to ‘Configuration’ to switch to AWS lambda.

3. Now, go to the lambda page and select ‘Create function’. There are several templates for ‘Alexa-SDK’, in our example, we will use ‘Alexa-skill-kit-SDK-factskill’.

Enter the name of the function and select ‘Choose an existing role’ from the drop-down. The existing role is ‘lambda_basic_execution’.

In the ‘Add triggers’, you will find ‘Alexa skill kit’ which will help you add ‘Alexa skill kit’ trigger to the created lambda function.

4. Before moving forward, create a test function and copy the ARN endpoint for the next step.

5. Lastly, complete the process by going to ‘Configuration’ and completing the Endpoint section by selecting ‘AWS Lambda ARN’ and pasting the copied ARN here. Click on the ‘Enable’ switch and you are done.

Google Voice

1. Create a Dialogflow account or log in to an existing account. Click on ‘Create Agent’ and add details such as name, Google project, etc.

2. Go to Intent and click on ‘Create intent’. Give your intent a name and add utterances or sample phrases. (Similar to what we discussed above).

3. In the ‘Response’ field, type the message that you wish for your intent to respond with.

1. Asynchronous Information Gathering

Voice applications are hosted on the cloud and asynchronous gathering of information can improve response time. When extracting information, there are several data points, which are on different server endpoints. If there is latency, you can reduce the experience immediately. Your user would have to watch the Light on Alexa Spin until the data is fetched. This is why it is best to use an API to bring data from various endpoints to one endpoint for real-time interaction.

2. Mapping Conversations

Your answers on Alexa should be updated. If you are confused about what to add, look at the FAQ section of your website. If there are FAQs that can’t be added without graphical representation, it is best to not add these.

3. Support Linguistics

Different users can express themselves differently. For instance, you may ask, “Alexa, book a cab to XYZ,” but your friend may say, “Please book me a ride to the airport.” The difference in linguistics is natural to most of us and we don’t want to change it just to interact with an application. If the application itself adjusts to our linguistics, that is something useful. So, add these utterances in your voice assistant to improve the experience of your users.

4. Use Short Responses

If your responses are long, your users will soon lose interest. It is hard to concentrate when the voice assistant is delivering long commands. Users get impatient and leave the conversation in between. Ensure that your voice responses are short and sweet. Also, understand that the sentence that seems shorter in writing may be irritatingly long with voice. So, take extra measures to remove these responses.

5. Use minimum Choices

If you are giving your user choices, stick to maximum 3 choices. Fewer choices are always better, so keep your options to a minimum, always. If you have more choices, it would be hard for the user to recall 1st choice when the assistant is reading out 3rd or 4th choice.

6. Reduce Pressure

Reduce the pressure on the audience by improving your response time and responses. If your voice assistant stays quiet for a very short duration after speaking, you can put the user under stress. Allow a considerable time or even if you have to keep the wait time short, the next sentence should be supporting. For example, would you like me to repeat the list?

Challenges of Voice Assistants

Voice Tech is Ambiguous

Voice tech is often ambiguous because it fails to reveal what users can achieve with it. With visual tech, it is possible to extract functionality through buttons, images, labels, etc. However, something like this is not possible with voice.

Further, hearing something and retaining it is usually harder than reading and seeing something to retain it. That is why it is hard to know what could be the best way to deliver options if the application has several options for a particular action.

Privacy Concerns

Privacy is a reason of concern for every business and more so for ones that offer voice assistants.

Why? Let’s find out:

While Siri is programmed to your voice and it activates whenever you say ‘Hey Siri’, anyone can ask a question. Siri just doesn’t know the difference between your voice and someone else’s voice.

How it can impact us? Of course, it affects permissions.

Think of a child ordering several toys from Alexa. This would happen without parent authorization. This also means that anyone can misuse your credit card if they are anywhere near your Alexa. Voice technology and assistants are convenient but security concern is a major issue.

Conclusion

The consumer-led era today demands platforms and technologies that can simplify and step up the customer service experience. Voice technology is revolutionizing customer experience and enabling personalization at a whole new level. Proactive strategies based on customer feedback, browsing, and purchase trends have become much easier to implement, enforcing companies to upgrade their customer experience models backed by technology.

Factors like speed, convenience, and personalization are key differentiators that influence customer decisions and buying behavior. And Voice Technologies like, Google Voice and Alexa Skills are facilitating this process matchlessly. With most businesses switching to technology-based solutions, Voice Technology is likely to play a crucial role for organizations driven by customer service excellence.

Java has automatic memory management. It performs routine garbage collection to clean up unused objects and free up the memory. However, it is very important for us to know how the garbage collector works in order to manage the application’s memory effectively. Thus avoiding OutOfMemoryError and/or StackOverflowError exceptions.

Let’s start with the memory structure first. For effective memory management, JVM divides memory into Stack and Heap.

Stack Memory

Java Stack memory is used for the execution of the thread. They contain method-specific values which that are short-lived and references to the other objects in the heap that are getting referred from the method.

Example:

public void methodA() {     
      int a = 10;
      methodB(a);
}
public void methodB(int value) {
      int b = 10;
      //Rest of the code.
}

Stack Memory

From the above picture, it is clear that local variables of the respective method will be created in the same frame. For example, variable “b” of “methodB” can be accessed by “methodB” only and not by “methodA”, as “methodA” is in separate frame. Once the “methodB” execution is completed, the control will go to the calling function. In this case, it’s “methodA”. Thus, the frame for “methodB” will be removed from the stack and all the variables in that frame will also be flushed out. Likewise, for “methodA”.

Heap Memory

Java heap space is used to allocate memory to the objects. Whenever we create Java/Kotlin objects, these will be allocated in the Heap memory.

Garbage collection process runs in the heap memory. Let’s go through the basic garbage collection process and structure of the heap memory in detail

Garbage Collection Process

Garbage Collection is a process of cleaning up the heap memory. Garbage collector identifies the unreferenced objects and removes them to free the memory space.

The objects that are being referenced are called ‘Live objects’ and those which are not referenced are called ‘Dead objects’.

This process can be triggered at any time and we don’t have any control over it. We can also request the system to initiate GC process in case we want to. But there is no guarantee that it will be initiated by the system, it is up to the system to decide.

Let’s go through the basic process involved in Garbage collection.

Step 1 : Marking

Most of us think that Garbage Collector marks dead objects and removes them. In reality, it is exactly the opposite. Garbage Collector first finds the ‘Live objects’ and marks them. This means the rest of the objects that are not marked are ‘Dead objects’.

Step 2 : Normal Deletion

Once Garbage Collector finds the ‘Dead objects’, it will remove them from the memory.

Step 3 : Deletion with Compacting

Memory allocator holds the reference of the free memory space and searches for the same whenever new memory has to be allocated. In order to improve performance, it is better if we move all the referenced objects to one place. Thus, this step helps in improving the memory allocation process.

Basic GC process

This algorithm is called a mark-sweep-compact algorithm.

As the number of objects increase, the above process i.e., Marking, Deletion and Deletion with compacting is inefficient. As per the empirical analysis, most objects are short-lived. Based on this analysis, the heap structure is divided into three generations.

Heap Structure

The heap structure is divided into three divisions namely, Young Generation, Tenured or Old Generation, and Permanent Generation.

Heap Structure

Young Generation – This is where all the new objects are allocated and aged. This generation is split into Eden Space and two Survivor spaces.

Eden Space – All new objects are allocated here. Once this space is full, minor Garbage Collection will be triggered. As mentioned, when the Garbage Collection is triggered, it first marks all the live objects in Eden Space and moves them to one of the Survivor spaces. Thus, Eden space is cleared so that the new objects can be allocated there again.

Survivor Space – After Minor GC, the live objects from Eden space will be moved to one of the survivor spaces S0 or S1.

The below diagram describes the Garbage Collection process in Young Generation.

GC process in Young Generation

Let’s see how the object is allocated and either flushed (Garbage Collection Process) or moved to an older generation in detail. Each point below explains the respective state number mentioned in the above diagram:

1. Initially, all objects are allocated in Eden Space.
2. Once Eden Space is full, Minor GC will be triggered. Minor GC is always “Stop the World Event”. This means that when this process is executed, the application thread will be stopped.
3. The first step in GC Process as mentioned is Marking. Garbage Collector identifies live objects and marks them. As shown in the above picture, two of the objects are referenced while others are unreferenced objects.
4. Once marking is done, live objects in Eden Space are copied to one of the Survivor spaces and the rest of the objects are removed. Thus, clearing Eden Space. This algorithm is called a mark-copy algorithm. In order to understand the aging of the objects, let’s consider the age of the object in S0 as 1.

This shows the state of Young Generation after Step (4)

1. Now, if new objects are to be created then these will be allocated in Eden Space.
2. Once again Eden Space is full, which in turn triggers Minor GC. Here, objects in the Eden Space and Survivor space S0 are scanned. Garbage collector marks all the live objects in Eden Space and S0. As shown in the diagram, at this stage Eden space and S0 have one live object.
3. In Step (7), the marking process is completed. Thus GC will move all the objects from Eden Space and S0 to S1. This clears both Eden Space and S0. Let’s calculate the age of the object. The age of the object moved from S0 to S1 will be incremented by 1. Thus, its age will be 2. The age of the object which is moved from Eden Space to S1 will be 1.
4. Now, if new objects are to be created, they will be allocated in Eden Space of the young generation.
5. Once again Eden Space is full, which in turn triggers Minor GC. Here, objects in the Eden Space and Survivor space S1 are scanned. Garbage collector marks all the live objects in Eden Space and S1. As shown in the diagram, at this stage Eden space and S1 have two live objects.
6. All the live objects from Eden space and S1 will be moved to S0. The age of the objects moving from S1 to S0 will thus be 3 and 2 respectively as shown in the diagram. This means that in this process, age will be incremented by 1. The objects moving from Eden Space to S0 will be 1.
7. This stage shows the object moving from the young generation to the old generation. Let’s set the threshold for the age of the object to move to the old generation to 9. Consider the scenario where the age of the object is 9 in the young generation. As the age of the object has met the threshold, this object will be moved to the Old Generation.

Note: Observe that, at any given time only one survivor space has objects. Also, note that the age of the object keeps increasing when switching between the survivor spaces.

Old Generation – Here, long-surviving objects will be stored. As mentioned, a threshold will be set to the object, on meeting which it is moved from the young generation to old or tenured generation. Eventually the old generation needs to be collected. This event is called a major garbage collection.

Major garbage collection are also Stop the World events. Often a major collection is much slower because it involves all live objects. So for responsive applications, major garbage collections should be minimized. Also note, that the length of the Stop the World event for a major garbage collection is affected by the kind of garbage collector that is used for the old generation space.

Note: Responsiveness means how fast an application can respond. The applications that focus on responsiveness, should not have large pause times. This in-turn means, memory management should be done effectively.

Permanent generation – This contains metadata required by the JVM to describe the classes and methods used in the application. The permanent generation is populated by the JVM at runtime based on the classes in use by the application. In addition, Java SE library classes and methods may be stored here.

Types of Garbage Collectors

1. Serial GC
2. Parallel GC
3. Concurrent Mark and Sweep (CMS) collector
4. G1 Collector

These garbage collectors have their own advantages and disadvantages. As Android Runtime (ART) uses the concept of CMS collector, we will only discuss Concurrent Mark and Sweep (CMS) Collector here.

GC Algorithms

An important aspect to remember is that, usually two different GC algorithms are needed – one for the Young generation and the other for the Old generation.

We have seen the core concepts of GC process. Let’s move to the specific GC type which is used as default by Android Runtime.

The default GC type used by ART is CMS Collector. Let’s look into it further in detail.

Concurrent Mark & Sweep (CMS) Collector

This collector is used to avoid long pauses during the Garbage collection process. It scans heap memory using multiple threads. It uses parallel Stop the World mark-copy algorithm in the young generation and concurrent mark-sweep algorithm in the Old Generation.

As discussed, Minor GC occurs in young generation whenever Eden Space is full. And this is “Stop the World event”.

GC process in Old generation is called Major GC. This garbage collector attempts to minimize the pause duration that occurs during the GC process by doing most of the Garbage Collection work concurrently with the application threads.

We can split the Major GC into the following phases:

Phase 1 – Initial marking

This is one of the “Stop the World” events in CMS. In this phase, the objects that are either direct GC roots or are referenced from some live objects in the Young Generation are all marked. The latter is important since the Old Generation is collected separately.

Note: Every application will have a starting point from where objects get instantiated. These objects are called “roots”. Some objects are referenced with these roots directly and some indirectly. GC tracks the live objects from those GC roots.

Phase 2 – Concurrent Marking

During this phase the Garbage Collector traverses the Old Generation and marks all live objects, starting from the roots found in the previous phase of “Initial Mark”. This phase runs concurrently with the application thread. Thus, the application thread will not be stopped.

Phase 3 – Concurrent pre-clean

This is again a concurrent phase running in parallel with the application thread. While marking the live objects in the previous phase, there is a possibility that few of the references would be changed. Whenever that happens, the JVM marks the area of the heap called “Card” that contains the mutated object as “dirty”. This is known as Card Marking.

In the pre-cleaning phase, these dirty objects are accounted for, and the objects reachable from them are also marked. The cards are cleaned when this is done.

Phase 4 – Concurrent Abortable Preclean

This phase again runs in parallel with the application thread. The purpose of this phase is to mark most of the live objects, so that the next phase will not take much time to complete. This phase iterates through the old generation objects to identify the live objects. The duration of this phase depends on a few of the abortion conditions such as the number of iterations, elapsed wall clock time, amount of useful work done etc. When one of the mentioned conditions is met, this phase will be stopped.

Phase 5 – Final remark

This is the second and last stop-the-world phase during the event. The goal of this stop-the-world phase is to finalize marking all live objects in the Old Generation. Since the previous preclean phases were concurrent, they may have been unable to keep up with the application’s mutating speeds. A stop-the-world pause is required to finish the marking.

Usually CMS tries to run final remark phase when Young Generation is as empty as possible in order to eliminate the possibility of several stop-the-world phases happening back-to-back.

Phase 6 – Concurrent Sweep

The purpose of this phase is to sweep off the dead objects in the old generation. As the final marking is done, there is no dependency on the application thread now. Thus, this phase runs concurrently with the application thread.

Phase 7 – Concurrent reset

This phase which runs concurrently with the application thread, resets the inner data structures of the CMS algorithm, preparing them for the next cycle.

ART GC Overview

As described, ART uses CMS as the default GC type. CMS tries to reduce pause time by doing most of the work concurrently to the application thread. The basic GC algorithm remains the same. However, ART further optimizes the algorithm process which uses mostly sticky CMS and partial CMS. In addition to the CMS plan, ART performs heap compaction when the app is moved from background to foreground.

Sticky CMS is ART’s non-moving generational garbage collector. It scans only the portion of the heap that was modified since the last GC and can reclaim only the objects allocated since the last GC. As it frees the memory objects allocated only since the last GC, this is much faster and has less pause time.

Partial CMS means it collects all the spaces except for image spaces and zygote spaces.

ART also introduced a new bitmap-based memory allocator called RosAlloc (Runs of slots allocator). This outperforms DIMAlloc by adding thread-local buffers for small allocation sizes.

Overall, the ART improves the CMS GC plan further to optimize the performance of the system.

Restricted App Memory

The heap size limit for an application varies from device to device. To maintain a functional multi-task environment, Android sets a hard limit on the heap size of the app.If an app tries to allocate more memory when it has reached max heap capacity, then it will throw an OutOfMemoryError. However, one can call getMemoryStatus() to know about the memory status of the app’s heap. Also, if the pause time of the GC process is more, then there is a high chance of “Application Not Responding” error. Either way, it results in a bad user experience.

When a user switches between the apps, Android keeps Apps that are not in the foreground in Least-Recently-Used (LRU) Cache. This means that, when the user switches back to the previous app the state/process will be restored. Thereby, improving the user experience.

As an app process is cached, if it retains memory of the objects which are no longer used then it affects the overall performance of the system. When the system runs low on memory, it starts clearing the processes in LRU starting from the least recently used app. Also, the garbage collector estimates which app is consuming most of the resources and tends to kill the process.

Thus, less memory the app consumes, the more likely it is to remain in the LRU cache which inturn increases user experience.

In addition, we need to avoid memory leaks. A memory leak happens when you hold on to the object long after its purpose has been served. This means that if the object which is no longer needed is not unreferenced, then the garbage collector still thinks it as referenced one, due to which it will never be garbage collected.

Tools to detect memory leaks

As discussed, we need to avoid memory leaks to run applications effectively. There are tools to monitor memory usage and detect memory leaks. A few examples include, Android Profiler and Leak Canary.

Android profiler tool provides real-time data to help understand the CPU, Memory, Network and Battery usage of the app. Android profiler is compatible with Android 5.0 and above.

Leak Canary is a memory leak detection library in Android. This library runs along with the app, dumps memory when needed, looks for potential memory leaks and gives a notification with a clean and useful stack trace to find the root cause of the leak.

Conclusion

Even though garbage collection is quite fast, it still can affect app performance. One cannot control when garbage collection will be triggered. Thus, it is very important for us to know how the GC process works and what should be avoided to improve app performance.

‘Walk a mile in their shoes’ is often used an expression to convey that the design thinking process is built on empathy. As Design Thinking professionals we work on diverse projects and user needs. Sometimes, we may not be able to fully understand the motives, pressures of others’ lives.

Is it really possible for an urban male executive to truly feel how it is to be a single working mom or experience the challenges of say, working in an oil rig? I can never truly feel how it is to be a doctor using a critical patient information app, that too in the pressure of a hospital scenario. I can at best, get a peek into their lives in such a situation.

Hence, in my view, we have to understand ‘empathy’ within a context and realize its limitations as we are all shaped by our own influences, limitations, experiences and biases. That’s where Usability Testing comes into play as it can provide first hand information and insights for actual users.

Design Thinking is a holistic problem-solving framework and involves these key stages:

• Empathize: Understand the user’s needs and problems
• Define: Analyze the observations to define the problems
• Ideate: Think of solution to each aspect of the problem
• Prototype: Develop solution prototype for each aspect of the problem
• Test: Test the product using the best solutions identified

The last phase is as critical as any other as it provides directions to product owners, strategists and designers for iterations and tweaks. Also as Design Thinking can play a role in transformation of any process – business development, operations, finance, marketing or product development it can truly impact business growth. In that context direct feedback from actual users eliminates guess work. It can also save expensive re-work in correcting flaws well before they are discovered in the marketplace.

Usability Testing: the fundamentals

The key intent of a Usability Test is to test the functionality of designs with real users in order to get a flavor of ease of use, navigation and other parameters. However, instead of leaving it all to observation and gut feel, the process involves thorough documentation and follows a process. A website, mobile app or any other digital product could be tested through this method.

There are two types of methods:

(a) In-person testing in a laboratory environment and (b) remote testing using a set of software tools. The former has an observer who is silent throughout the process and only monitors the behaviour of users and then reports the outcome. In the latter case, the screen activity, facial expressions are recorded by automated software applications.

The process involves 6 broad stages:

User groups: the participant characteristics are naturally determined by the product intent. As a thumb rule, the sample size should have 9 participants per country (2 pilot, 5 regular and 2 backup).

Tasks: we need to identify key user journeys based on the objective of the app or the digital product. It could be completing a transaction for a banking product or completing a survey in a website.

An example task scenario for a restaurant table reservation app could be:

• Finding a restaurant
  You live in Charlotte and would like to reserve a table at an upscale restaurant to mark a special occasion

• Choosing the location
  You would like to find a restaurant which is not very far from your place of living

• Finding types of cuisines
  Since it is a special occasion, you’d like to experiment with gourmet food, maybe an exotic cuisine which you have not tried before

• Making a reservation
  You have identified a suitable restaurant and would like reserve a table for two

• Receiving confirmation and viewing a reservation
  Once booked you would like to receive a confirmation alert and also view the upcoming reservation

• Editing your reservation
  You would like to change the timing of your reservation and increase the number of guests to 4.

Metrics: we then need to create standards of measurement by which design, ease of use, efficiency and performance can be assessed. The metrics could be objective (metrics that you can measure without relying on subjective interpretation) or subjective (metrics that rely on subjective interpretation of the test participant)

Environment: this includes creating a setup to make the users feel comfortable and have all the necessary equipment at hand. These could include relevant devices, documentation for ratings and a suitable lab test location.

Usability tests: among the various methods used are Task Sheets, heat maps, observations and rating charts. A task sheet typically records the success rate (2 = Success; 1 = Needed Support; 0 = Failed) and time taken to complete a task. While Heat Maps provide a high level overview of the drop and success rate, observations add the human angle by noting facial expressions and other emotional reactions. Finally, asking the users to rate their experience while using the product gives testers and stake holders a feel of the ease of use.

Test Reports: a typical test report will include an executive summary, goal of the test, methods used, data overviews, walk-through of the results of each task and actual quotes (positive & negative) from the users.

Usability Testing is increasingly being adopted by enterprises to minimize risks and validate product features before launch. Across the globe, there are several venues, including academic institutions which host Usability Testing Labs. Moving forward, co-working spaces which offer cost savings and convenience through shared infrastructure equipment, utilities etc., could offer such services to enterprises – all it takes is a room and some basic equipment.

The benefits of Usability Testing

More than ever before, customer experience defines business success today. A poor experience on a website, mobile app or any other digital product can mean loss of a customer forever. Very rarely do customers give brands a second chance to serve them.

At Robosoft, we believe in simplifying lives through delightful digital experiences. A robust Usability Testing exercise gives enterprises a better chance of providing a great customer experience, the new battleground. It can help get validation from actual users and get a first hand feedback if it meets their expectations. It can point to barriers which need to be overcome, help point out errors and assumptions. Those working on any creation can get far too attached to it and lose a sense of objectivity – they may not see the features and navigation methods the same way as the actual user.

Usability testing is a great way to manifest empathy, which is the starting point to any Design Thinking effort. In other words, it is a small but effective investment in the larger scheme of things – well worth the effort in crafting delightful digital experiences.