Digital Scientists gets recognized for its efforts in mobile app development services by GoodFirms for providing functional yet user-friendly app designs. The firm is even expected to win over the title of the best web development company and top IOT company in the near future.

About the company

Digital Scientists, a custom software development firm dedicated to improving the human experience and ensuring clients and partners get a measurable return, proves true to its words with the kind of services it provides. This firm was established in 2007 and is based in the United States, with three locations in the southeast. From Atlanta, the firm serves across the country providing innovative custom software and product development. As an integrated team of designers, product managers and developers who deliver outstanding new software products, Digital Scientists creates mobile apps, websites, e-commerce stores and “internet of things (IoT)” applications.

With the use of the latest frameworks and tools in order to provide their users with the best experience, they never fail to provide quality services. They believe in taking a design-thinking approach to solve complex problems for users and are driven to create better user experiences via research and interviews, validation and taking the entire customer journey into account. As their name suggests, they try to operate as a lab in both spirit and function: Applying the scientific method to create innovative digital products that provide superior user experiences. Those digital products solve clients’ problems, leverage new market opportunities and even build new businesses.

Some of the well-known clients whom Digital Scientists have served include BoxLock, Park ‘N Fly, Intent Solutions, NAPA, Lamar, and Gables.

GoodFirms assessment process

The B2B research and review firm, GoodFirms, specializes in ranking the listed companies on its prestigious platform with the help of a research process. This research process comprises three crucial parameters:

• Quality
• Reliability
• Ability

These parameters help in analyzing the company’s performance with respect to the clients’ reviews, quality of service, punctuality and how they adhere to the needs of their customers. Also, these rankings help the companies to allure more clients to opt for their assistance with respect to their service performance in the evaluation process. Hence, such one of kind research creates a link between service providers and their clients helping the clients to find responsible and agile industry leaders.

GoodFirms similarly evaluated the services offered by Digital Scientists with its research process.

Mobile app development services

Leveraging the latest tools and frameworks for developing apps that end users find easy and amazing to use, Digital Scientists develops multiple sorts of mobile apps on various platforms ranging from Android and iOS to even hybrid. They have a local team of UX designers and developers who are very well experienced and are dedicated.

Client review for mobile app development services

Research scorecard by GoodFirms’ analysis

Their use of the latest technologies allows them to stand taller in the market among other competitors. Their use of these technologies efficiently and such other factors lead them among the top mobile app development companies in Georgia.

Web development services

Digital Scientists provide services in the domain of custom web platform development. Each website is built to meet the specific needs of the business, leveraging responsive design approaches and mobile web development to craft solutions that are a true fit for customers. They have a team of experts in this and each such field which guides their clients to reach their desired target. Researchers at GoodFirms expect that in the coming time, Digital Scientists will soon be seen among the top web development companies pinned by GoodFirms.

Internet of Things (IoT) services

Strategies and designs that Digital Scientists adapt are great enough to make sure that all client requirements are fulfilled. They serve in IoT development by connecting software to physical devices in order to ease the manual load and data storage issues. It does its work with integrity and the researchers at GoodFirms are encouraged to list the firm among the top Internet of Things development companies globally.

About GoodFirms

Washington, D.C. based GoodFirms is a maverick B2B research and reviews firm that aligns its efforts in finding the top web and mobile app development companies delivering unparalleled services to its clients. GoodFirms’ extensive research process ranks the companies, boosts their online reputation and helps service seekers pick the right technology partner that meets their business needs.

About the author

Anna Stark is presently working as a Content Writer with GoodFirms – Washington D.C. based B2B Research Company, which bridges the gap between service seekers and service providers. Anna’s current role lingers her to shape every company’s performance and key attributes into words. She firmly believes in the magic of words and equips new strategies that work, always in with ideas, something new to carve, and something original to decorate the firm’s identity.

The post GoodFirms applauds Digital Scientists as top mobile development company appeared first on Digital Scientists.

Thanks for coming along with us in celebration of Digital Scientists’ 12th anniversary. We enjoyed taking a look back and each office location marked the occasion differently, but with two common threads…food and fun. 

Our teams ate breakfast in Alpharetta, cake in Midtown, and a late afternoon gelato (fancy!) in Greenville. Even though the celebrations were different, they all revolved around commemorating the work and the people who are driven to create better experiences.

Hmmm, notice a trend? We like to eat as you can tell from these other fun company pics! 

Since our start in 2007, we’ve tried to weave the following values into each and every endeavor:

• We love what we do.
  We’re an integrated team of designers and developers who take the time to listen, ask questions, and understand your business. 
• We are committed to your success.
  We’re flexible in our approach and uncompromising about quality.
• We are makers at heart. 
  We believe that everyone is capable of creativity when it comes to improving the human experience. We love experimenting with new technologies and tools.
• We care about the people who use our products. 
  We listen closely to them to better understand their needs.
• We are humble in our approach to problem-solving.  
  We understand that a collaborative approach that includes all stakeholders often leads to the best results.

We also like to be transparent and share what we’ve learned.

Here are a few things we’ve picked up over the years:

We’ve learned that shorter feedback cycles are a necessity.

Our clients can see the progress with tools such as RealtimeBoard and stay up-to-date with twice a week progress reports. 

Team collaboration at its best!

We like to keep the fidelity of our designs low in the beginning. This offers a chance to really focus on the interactions and concepts without the distraction of how it looks. We are able to gather feedback and make immediate changes in real-time.

We pride ourselves on building useful products and advocate for the research behind customer motives. Fully understanding the customer experience is the goal – “build it and they will come” is not our motto. We use research to discover and validate user behavior, needs and motivations so that when built, the product is purposeful.

From our first app Mission Zero that debuted in the App store in 2009 to all the recent IoT products (like Intent Solutions) that keep us connected, we thank you!  

Here’s to the next 12 years. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.  

The post Celebrating 12 years of improving the human experience appeared first on Digital Scientists.

That’s what we heard recently from a caller trying to sell us something. The call ended with them hanging up on us (Ha!) and we thought, “Hmm, who wouldn’t want to work with someone who asks questions and is curious?” Not us. 

One of the great things about working with our team is that they are always inquisitive, and always asking questions. We regularly host “Lunch ‘N Learns” to share information and new techniques. Just yesterday, one of our developers gave the team an update on user analytics and some of his recent learnings with a client’s product, and we thought we’d share. We’re nice like that. 

What is User Analytics?

User analytics tells the story of how a user interacts with your product and informs decision-makers by surfacing deeper insights and revealing the full picture of a user’s behavior. What it doesn’t do is report on the number of bugs or errors the app has or focus on stats common in business analytics. Think of this in terms of how the user navigates through the app. 

By capturing and analyzing the user data, product teams are able to:

• Understand user behaviors – where do they come from, what features do they use, why do they come back and more importantly, why do they drop off?
• Track the impact of new releases and experiments
• Help teams build products users love

With the data and insights collected, design, development and marketing teams are able to ask increasingly important and in-depth questions and learn more about the user’s journey, ultimately leading to a better product and user experience. (And don’t we all want that!)

Up until recently, little has been done with this data except use it to address user complaints or to provide incremental improvements to the user experience. Data should be used to inform decisions and support customer growth efforts to create engaging, personalized user experiences that will keep users in the app for as long as possible. The more friction a customer experiences on the website or when placing an order, the more likely the customer is to go to a competitor’s site. Applying user analytics can increase the chances of success and keep the customer from roaming. 

For example, high bounce rates could signify users are being frustrated by the initial screens they see. Being able to pinpoint just what these issues are (and when they happen) would certainly be helpful in retaining users. It reveals vital information that ranges from session time to bounce rates as well as geo-location factors and the specific activities that your users did while in the app. 

While we agree that the analytics are helpful and necessary, when do you introduce them? We believe that this process should be implemented early in the MVP process, even if it’s only a few metrics. The earlier the better…this helps define the roadmap and the end goals, not only for the designers and developers but for the client as well. If these goals are not outlined in advance, make it a priority to work with the client to nail these down. It just makes sense.

One thing we learned early on in our discussions with clients is that they would love to add as many data points as possible into the dashboard. “Capture it all” was a common mantra – the more the better. In reality, while it’s always good to capture metrics, sometimes “less is more” and just because you can capture it, doesn’t necessarily mean you should, especially all at once. Too many metrics in the beginning can become confusing and can distract from and water down the end goal. Educating the client on what metrics make the most sense is always a tricky line to walk, but a worthwhile one nonetheless. 

There are many different user analytics systems out there – we’ve researched most of them and worked with many. Sometimes it comes down to developer choice or the specific goals funnel the solutions down to a few. Other times the client expects to use a specific system because it’s what they are familiar with. While we are flexible in our approach, we do have our favorites of course but are not tied to one specific brand. It is determined by the end goal, the resources available, the budget and any time constraints.

With that in mind, there are two key elements of analytics that should always be defined and tracked: the “Critical Event” and the “Average Usage Interval”.  According to Amplitude (a first-in-class analytics platform), these are defined as:

• Critical Event: An action that users take with-in your product that aligns closely with your core value proposition. This may be an in-app purchase, membership subscription, or other key action.*
• Average Usage Interval: The frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) with which you expect people to use your product. This can be estimated at first, but proper analytics implementations will measure and surface this number over time.

The Critical Event and Average Usage Interval form the cornerstone of any user analytics implementation. Other measurements like user retention, Critical Event funnel progression, and user life-cycles rely on these two primary metrics. Such secondary metrics and measurement can be extremely helpful in decision making, but a house is only as solid as its foundation. Woah, wise words from our development team.

And lastly, stop measuring Daily Active Users (DAU)**. It’s a vanity metric and, while it may look great when a million people land on your product, it cannot inform you of trends when those users stop coming back.

In summary, incorporating user analytics is good practice and provides a useful barometer for gauging the success of the app. Adding metrics early is key and keeping the number of metrics to a realistic number makes the data more digestible and focused. In today’s competitive environment, understanding the user’s journey is essential. A good experience keeps the customers coming back.

We’d love to chat with you about your experiences with user analytics. Contact us today.

Credit where credit is due. Thanks to Amplitude for their great blog posts:

*USER RETENTION DEPENDS ON YOUR APP’S CRITICAL EVENT

**YOU’RE MEASURING DAILY ACTIVE USERS WRONG

The post User analytics: understanding the entire experience appeared first on Digital Scientists.

We are proud to announce that Digital Scientists was just named to the Clutch 1000, a list of the top thousand B2B service firm on their platform. According to Clutch, “‘The accolade is reserved for companies that show a superior commitment to their clients.”  

Some of the specific categories on Clutch where we have been featured as a leader include mobile app development and IoT consulting. In addition to being featured as a top IoT developer (#31 of 100), our CEO, Bob Klein, also provided his expert analysis for Clutch research on the topic. You can read our blog post on the topic here.  We are committed to leveraging the latest frameworks, tools and technologies to improve the human experience.

We currently hold an impressive 4.8-star average on our client reviews. Check out an excerpt from one of a recent project for an airport parking app:

“Digital Scientists effectively implemented solutions that significantly improved our previous app. We’ve seen an increase in customer activity, downloads, and satisfaction overall. We’ve been very impressed with our project manager.

Their team is very proactive about taking thorough notes and documenting their work, checking in with us regularly.”

Clutch is the leader in mobile app development research and reviews. Their research can be found across the web on other leading platforms including The Manifest and Visual Objects. Our team is waiting to hear from you if you want to learn more about our award-winning services.

The post Digital Scientists achieves Global Leader Award appeared first on Digital Scientists.

Check out the graphic below showcasing 4 top security challenges for IoT and tips for resolving them.

The post Top security challenges for IoT appeared first on Digital Scientists.

Listen to the replay of the Innovation Leader Master Innovation + Technical Research Class, Collaboration and Partnerships with Outside Teams with Bob Klein that aired Thursday, November 15th.

Bob Klein, CEO & founder of Digital Scientists, explains how best to partner with outside teams and why they can become a vital part of your product development team. This Master Class explores partnerships with internal teams beyond the innovation department, working with other companies that specialize in specific services (e.g. hardware development or electrical engineering firms), or partnering with other companies on R&D efforts. Bob also explains how to facilitate a successful transfer and ensure longer relationships, as well as leveraging outside partners to accelerate speed to market while building your own team.

Why collaborate & partner with outside teams?

For organizations, surviving in the face of change requires their leaders to do two critical but contradictory things:

• Exploit existing assets and capabilities through continual incremental innovation and change 
• Explore new markets and technologies where their existing assets and capabilities can give them competitive advantage over new entrants

Free download
Collaboration & Partnerships with Outside Teams

This Master Class was open to both members of the Innovation Leader community and non-members.

Collaborator:

The post Master class: collaboration and partnerships with outside teams appeared first on Digital Scientists.

Digital Scientists CEO, Bob Klein, recently provided insight for new research report about how people use IoT devices published by Clutch, a B2B ratings and reviews firm based in Washington, D.C.

Digital Scientists is currently ranked among the top Internet of Things developers.

Smart home appliances are how most consumers experience IoT technology.

People own and use smart home appliances the most among IoT devices, according to Clutch’s survey of over 500 people who own an IoT device. The survey found that two-thirds of people (67%) own a smart home appliance.

Despite the number of people who own an IoT device, most don’t depend on their devices to live their everyday lives.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents (64%) say they don’t need their devices to accomplish their daily activities.

For Klein, this indicates that consumers generally find that connected devices are useful, but not life-altering, especially compared to smartphones.

If you left your phone at home and drove off to work, how many people are going to go back and get it? And how will not having it impact their day?

More devices will include IoT technology in the future.

The report’s findings about consumers future IoT investment plans are concerning for brands and IoT developers, at least on the surface. Over half of people don’t plan to invest in a connected device over the next 12 months.

The choice in whether people own a connected device, however, may not actually be up to them, Klein posits in the report.

Many modern devices, particularly smart home appliances, come equipped with connected functionalities.

Connected functionality is going to be built into everything. It may be more of an issue of ‘How do I turn it off?’

Modern televisions, for example, are often equipped with connected functionalities – for example, the ability to sync with Netflix, Hulu, or HBO accounts through applications that can be accessed using a remote or voice command system.

For these devices, the actual concerns IoT companies may have is people adjusting their devices so that they can’t be connected.

In all likelihood, though, people will not intentionally disconnect these functionalities from their devices – they’ll use the connected functions if devices come equipped with them, the same way they currently fail to connect their IoT devices.

People still do not download the same applications on multiple connected devices: less than 10% connect IoT devices through applications, the survey found.

To create an ecosystem of connected devices (an “internet of things”) that people can use to control aspects of their lives, it’s often necessary to download applications to actually connect their devices.

The focus for IoT developers and companies, then, should be to convince people to connect devices to each other.

The more people use their devices, the more benefits they can receive from using connected devices, particularly smart home appliances.

For example, people can earn energy and cost savings from syncing IoT devices with each other.

Find verified reviews for Digital Scientists from former clients on Clutch and The Manifest.

Guest blog by Grayson Kemper, Senior Content Developer and Marketer at Clutch.

The post Digital Scientists CEO shares insights for new research about consumer IoT adoption. appeared first on Digital Scientists.

Stranger Things definitely happened at this year’s Halloween mixer!

Did you join us in the Upside Down as we celebrated all things IoT? Special thanks to the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and Tech Alpharetta for their participation.

In case you missed it, here’s a quick pictorial recap:

While a great time was had by all, we did highlight a few key learnings we’ve discovered from working on IoT products:

IoT development requires you to work with “stranger things” than in traditional software development:

• Raspberry Pi
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Battery life

There are many things to keep in mind with IoT:

• Hardware? You may need to work with hardware (and also electrical, engineering, etc) companies for IoT.
• Wifi may not work outside – how do you stay connected?
• The overall process can seem foreboding – how do you manage all aspects – development, testing, maintenance, updates, multiple partners

But in the end, after “controlling the stranger things,” it will really just become the internet.

See the entire Internet of Stranger Things presentation.

Interested in IoT?

Our team loves to create cool, connected IoT solutions and we’ve been doing so since 2013 when we built a beacon-based, mobile shopping rewards and loyalty program to help local stores attract and reward their repeat shoppers. We are design led, customer experience focused and we love it when we have the opportunity to connect software to physical devices to create a better user experience…and it’s just cool.

Want more information about the challenges of IoT?
Here you go:

How is developing an Internet of Things product different?

How to use voice technology now

An IoT smart padlock – BoxLock, Inc. 

A case story about a voice activated inventory management system

The post Internet of Stranger Things: Halloween mixer appeared first on Digital Scientists.

User research in its most basic definition is the process of understanding user behavior, needs, and motivations. 

User research places people (the end-user) at the center of the design process and your products. User research inspires your design and evaluates solutions. This is important for a few reasons. First, the team (everyone required in making the product: client, stakeholders, vendors, partners, etc) needs to be aligned on a clearly defined goal. Second, the team should define what success will look like and how it will be measured. Third, the team would be wise to validate existing assumptions about the problem and the users. For some reason, this last one always seems to be the trickiest for teams to put into practice, even though it is no less critical to the success of the product. Far too often, teams create products as if they were the user. 

TIP: If you want to be on the lookout for this behavior in your organization or team, it sounds like this: “I have a problem and I would solve it in this way. Let’s build a product that represents my solution and sell it to others with the same problem.”

This line of thinking isn’t necessarily wrong. It is absolutely limiting. You are not the user. And the biggest problem with thinking you are is that it introduces bias. To create the best product you need the best solution. Which means you’ll have to understand all the people who experience the problem you want to solve and be open to the solution being different (and often greater) than you imagined.

There are different methods and techniques teams use to discover user behavior, needs, and motivations. Which of these methods your team employees will largely depend on what you are trying to accomplish, what you have available, and where you are in the process. User research is a part of a cycle. It should never be one-and-done, and in theory it could go on forever, continuing to inform improvements to products already on the market. The cycle looks like this:

Research > Design > Build > Test

With testing being its own form of research that starts the cycle over again. 

Let’s bring this cycle to life with a recent case study from our design team here at Digital Scientists. We believe in working together with our clients to hypothesize, experiment, and analyze with the end goal of creating simplicity for our users.

We worked with our client to define the following:

• What is the problem to be solved? (opportunity)
• Who are the people affected by the problem? (users)
• What type of product should we build to solve the problem? (goal)

We began with a deep dive of the landscape this product would enter. We identified current products in the existing and adjacent landscapes and conducted a competitive analysis. This helped us identify patterns and gaps in what was currently being offered. 

Based on those findings, our team began iterating, designing, and refining several concept solutions for our client. Eventually we landed on three strong concepts that independently satisfied the goal we set out to achieve. Where the three concepts differed was how the users would approach decision making on their path to a specific end result.

• Would they prefer a product that provided the fastest path to the end result?
• Or a product that offered many options to determine the best path to the end result?
• Or perhaps a product that was somewhere in between?

We were missing key information about what motivates our users in their decision making processes. Therefore we were unable to determine which of these three concepts was the right solution. The only way to determine which concept provided the right solution was to run a test. 

We created a clickable prototype for each concept so we could run a concept test with live users and gather feedback to inform what the right solution was. We reached out to our network with a screening survey to find people who fit the profile of our users. We identified ten people and offered them an incentive to come into our office and test our three prototypes. We used an online service called Lookback to record the sessions so we could watch them again and share them internally and with our client. Video evidence is a powerful tool to deliver insights and hearing from the test users helps clients make decisions with more security. 

During the tests, we worked from a script containing necessary contextual information, a set of tasks for each concept prototype, and questions to investigate the behavior and approach around those tasks. We also added some deeper debriefing questions to really get to the core of what motivated these test users’ decisions on the path toward that defined end goal. Having a good script with the right questions is an integral part of the process. Poorly framed or leading questions return answers that limit and bias the research process and could ultimately lead to outcomes that don’t represent the user accurately.

After all the interviews had been conducted, it was time to sort through the data. We believe It is important to re-watch user interviews even if we conducted interviews in person. Watching things a second time and taking a second set of notes can help identify new things that might have been missed the first time. We jotted down interesting things, comments, questions, stated assumptions, etc. on Post-it Notes. Next, we dove into an affinitizing exercise looking for patterns and themes. This process turned our close to 150 Post-it Notes into four high level feedback themes and a clear concept winner. This type of exercise insures that all the feedback informs the recommendations and insights that follow.

To present these findings back to our client we created a highlight reel of all the interesting and positive things test users had said about the product. Then we announced the winning concept. Since we came away with plenty of other insights related to the four high level feedback themes, we created a deck of recommendations to address each of those themes. We were prepared to not only choose a concept for moving  forward, but also provide insights on ways to continually enhance the concept for an even better product.

We achieved our goal. We discovered that the right solution was the concept that offered many options to determine the best path to the end result. In the process, we learned why that was the right solution. It turns out that comparing options when making a decision was directly tied to the user’s level of confidence in their decision as they pursue that end result. This was a massive insight for both our design team and our client that we wouldn’t have known had we not run a test. 

INSIGHT: This debunked a key stakeholder assumption that users were going to prefer a product that provided the fastest path to the end result. The assumption might have been rooted in logic, but it was still an assumption. The concept test proved otherwise. 

Design is an iterative process. The insights informed almost an entirely new design for the product. We started out with the winner from the concept test then consolidated it with client approved recommendations from the high level feedback patterns. Additionally, we created features inside the product to accommodate the insight about users having a higher level of confidence in their decision after comparing options. Everyone was pleased with the new product design. What do we do next? We are now ready to build a functional prototype and conduct a usability test to validate the MVP design. 

This process left us wondering:

• What would have happened if we’d never asked the question that led to the concept test?
• What would have happened if we’d asked the question sooner?
• How might the product be affected in either case? 

We don’t have to live in a world of “what ifs” when we can use research to discover and validate user behavior, needs, and motivations. What we can do is continue to learn and improve just as the cycle suggests. If you or your team find yourselves facing “what ifs” on the road to creating a great product, know that the best next step is to test it. You’ll pass with flying colors. 

Want to learn more about how we approach to research at Digital Scientists? Or work with us to leverage insights on your product? Check this out.

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