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Keeping Up with Consumer Demands in 2021
Last week we were put into a room with 70+ executives who almost universally shared the same...
Design & Innovation
Seeing the Member Experience in a “User-Experience” World
In the world of product development, we are often always saying “user” _______. User-centered design, user analytics, user personas, user journeys, etc, etc.It’s a term that holds importance because it is a genuine focus on the end-user experience. It’s also often...
Becoming a Product Person: Q&A with Dominion Energy’s Jebediah Mease
Jeb Mease is a Business Process Consultant with Dominion Energy, although his 18-year career at the company has gone through several permutations. As a business lead in the Emergency Preparedness Center, he was tapped to oversee Dominion Energy’s first consumer-facing...
7 Tips for Utilizing Amazon Alexa to Engage with Customers
Amazon first released Alexa virtual assistant and smart speaker Echo in late 2014. An in-home virtual assistant is an impressive tool, but creating a seamless user experience with it can be a challenge. So how do companies overcome this challenge? What engagement can...
How to Engage Customers With QR Codes and Augmented Reality
When one of our clients approached us with the idea of building an entirely new customer engagement app for their grocery stores, we were very excited. Their goal was to build a mobile application that customers could use to learn about products, find them in the...
The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Business
Virtual reality and augmented reality are two of the most innovative technologies to gain mainstream traction over the past several years. These nascent media have taken content cues from the related fields of cinema and video gaming: that is to say that a significant...
How to Create Moodboards that Help You Better Understand Your Client
For new design projects, blank artboards can strike fear in many designers. Approaching a new task with a blank slate is never easy, especially under a deadline or without a clear objective. That blank rectangle can be the biggest block to any momentum in getting a...
3D Design: Journey Through Character Modeling
In June of last year, I was at work minding my design business when our COO asks to meet with me. When we sat down to talk, he asked me to make our company’s Mascot (the Mobile Monster) in 3D in two months. I got to say I was a little surprised. Not just surprised,...
How Gen Z is Shaping the Future of Technology
Like any generational label, the boundaries of what birth years are considered Generation Z are hazy, loose, and basically up anyone’s own interpretation. Gen Z is characterized as having grown up in the age of internet and social media. They don’t know a world...
The Design System: The Hero Your Brand Needs
The Case for Design Systems Maybe you want to build a design system. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you have no idea what one is. Regardless of where you’re at on the scale, you need one. Does your life depend on it? Well, no probably not. But does the success of your product...
Effectively using AR for Brand Loyalty
With the rise of AR integration in many mobile apps, we are beginning to see a clear delineation between what drives meaningful and lasting loyalty versus momentary enjoyment. While creating a momentary boost to brand visibility & traffic these kinds of augmented...
Mobile Apps & Emerging Technology for Supply Chain Efficiency
Using Technology to Support the Supply Chain Workforce and Its Processes While computing in the supply chain is nothing new, many existing systems are running on bulky and dated equipment, limiting the flexibility and efficiency of employees. The issue isn’t confined...
Designer-to-Designer Feedback: Tips in 2019
Let’s face it, some of the things in life that help you to grow and improve are not always the most pleasant experiences, but if you put in the work, they can lead to exceptional results. Training for a marathon and studying for the LSAT are just a few examples....
The Top 10 Strategic Tech Trends for 2020
To quote Gartner, “Technology is now on the cusp of moving beyond augmentation that replaces a human capability and into augmentation that creates superhuman capabilities.” What boundaries can we push when we consider not just how technology makes life livable but...
Bringing Balance to the (Work) Force
From early in life, balance is a key attribute we strive to accomplish. From learning to sit and walk, to juggling sleeping with waking hours, we figure out how to navigate the world. This carries through to school years where our parents help us learn to...
Using Artificial Intelligence to Improve your Brand Strategy
Artificial Intelligence (AI), the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and translation between languages, has become a...
Development
Keeping Up with Consumer Demands in 2021
Last week we were put into a room with 70+ executives who almost universally shared the same sentiment: there is a vital need to focus on technology growth and expansion after a year of protection and entrenchment. Studies show the return of shopping confidence in...
Digital Privacy in 2021
In 1999, a prophetic Aaron Sorkin wrote a line for one of his characters in the West Wing when discussing the “next big thing” the President should be focused on: "In the 20s and 30s it was the role of government. In the 50s and 60s it was civil rights. The next 20...
Staying Agile to Stay Ahead: The Post-Pandemic Era
Marketing leaders face new challenges around acquisition, retention, and loyalty due to evolving customer behaviors and accelerating digital change due to the epidemic. Shockoe recently joined a group of 70+ senior executives at a summit where these issues were laid...
Prototype Purgatory in the Government Space
Those in the business of national defense have a grasp on use cases. They understand how AR/VR could impact the future. But there are major hurdles in getting from here to there. The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) brought together industry leaders who...
Tackling Payments in Mobile Apps
Handling payments within an application can be a daunting task. As a developer, you want to handle the user’s payment information securely. There are many options available to handle payments, but when selecting an implementation you need to consider your...
Solving Corporate Challenges through Simple Code
As developers, we often encounter challenges when tasked with introducing new features to an existing application, especially if the application had been built on an older technology stack. One inevitable decision that we as developers have to make is whether...
Apple WWDC ’20: Key Takeaways for Mobile
WWDC, Apple’s worldwide developer conference, took place this year despite current events impacting the world. The event highlights almost all of the new software, hardware, and tools Apple users can look forward to in the upcoming year. Typically this conference is...
Supplementing Business Data with Public APIs
Many businesses have unique private data which, when surfaced correctly, can offer novel insight of their industry to customers or internal teams. While this data already exists, it likely contains only the necessary fields to enable functions of the business...
How to Combine Bottom Tabs, Top Tabs and a Hamburger Menu in a React Native Application
Shockoe builds digital products and services for the world’s leading companies so they can meet the demands of their customers, employees and businesses.
Creating a Push Notification Server with Node.js
At Shockoe we're used to integrating our clients' complicated backend systems into our apps, and this often includes push notifications. However, to get that initial proof that our app is playing nicely with GCM and APNS we'll sometimes rig up a sandbox server of our...
How to Setup Configurations and Schemes in XCode
The beginning of any new or existing iOS application development cycle should start off on the right foot. A solid foundation to support each environment level within the configuration of the XCode project is a great first step to the success of your application. This...
Creating Dynamic Web Pages with EJS
If you have been following along with our series on how to create your own web server, you should now be familiar with node.js and Express. Node.js lays the groundwork for the web server and Express builds upon it. If you haven’t already, I...
Asset/Inventory Management Apps in Record Time with Flutter
Shockoe specializes in utilizing tools which can most efficiently provide a beautiful experience for a given project. We have a history with cross-platform frameworks, as they can often quicken the development period for a mobile app considerably. Many of our projects...
5 Useful Tips for Kotlin Users
In 2017 Google announced first-class support for Kotlin on Android at Google I/O, and shortly after I started looking into using Kotlin for our Android projects here at Shockoe. It took a few years before we officially started using Kotlin as our preferred language...
How to use ADB with Multiple Devices
Have you ever had multiple emulators or physical devices or a combination of the two attached at once? It's frustrating to shut off or unplug your devices in order to single out the one that needs to be targeted. Look no further, adb includes a command line switch to...
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