What’s happening at Vokal.

• Web
• Development

Vokal mentors next-generation web developers

When it comes to Systems Engineering, Vokal is primarily a Python shop. Since a significant amount of Python code is open source—what to speak of Python itself—our engineers strive to be active members of the Python community. Two of our Systems Engineers recently had an opportunity to give back to the community by serving as mentors under the Chicago Python Users Group Mentorship Program. And this January, the mentees coached by Senior Systems Engineer Chris Foresman and Systems Engineer Adam Bain earned top accolades in from the community for their efforts.

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Five Ways to Make Prioritization a Piece of Cake

There is never a shortage of product ideas.  Whether good or bad, ideas come from anywhere. The challenge comes when deciding which ideas to pursue and which to postpone or leave behind.

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• Mobile Apps
• iOS
• Android

New Metra App Isn’t Perfect, But Anything is Better Than Ventra

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• UX/UI
• Design

Thinking Beyond the Screen: Designing in All Dimensions

Designing beyond the screen is the result of constant collaboration, keeping designers and clients ahead of the curve.

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• News
• UX/UI

CES: An All-You-Can-Eat Buffet

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• News

Vokal Toasts to the Old, the New and Each Other!

The holidays are always a great time of year to reflect on accomplishments, key learnings, and the challenges and opportunities ahead.  At Vokal, we do that too, but sometimes it’s equally important to focus on “us” and have fun with each other.  

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• UX/UI

Industrial User Experience Trends To Watch in 2016

"What's Trending?" is a common question I often get asked as the world of User Experience, specifically in the Industrial space, rapidly spreads. There’s no better time than now to offer some insight into what we, as digital experience and UX experts, see trending as 2015 comes to a close and we look beyond to 2016. Industrial User Experience innovation is maturing every day. The organizations that embrace this innovation, will most certainly see great returns on their investments. 

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• Hack Days
• Development
• Quality

A Culture That Fits

A challenge that every software company faces is striking the balance between staying relevant and staying productive. Software is aggressively evolving; it seems that every day there is a new tool, framework, API, or version of software trending on Y-News, and staying apprised of these evolutions is essential to success. If you fall behind, you run the risk of losing business to a more advanced competitor. In addition, without constant vigilance you may well expose your users to security vulnerabilities. Both outcomes are inevitable, and it is a company’s responsibility to adapt.

 

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• iOS
• Development
• iPhone
• iPad

iOS 9 Adoption: Looking Good!

After two weeks, iOS 9 adoption appears to be chugging along significantly faster than iOS 8 adoption. First, I'll show you with some pretty, pretty graphs how much faster iOS 9 is being adopted than iOS 8. Next, I'll talk about some of the reasons why that's been the case. Finally, I'll discuss what that means for developers and app owners.

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• Android
• Development

Reactive Forms with RxAndroid

Reactive Programming has been getting a lot of attention in the Android community lately. While it has uses throughout the application stack, we're going to focus here on using it to validate forms (exciting!). This approach cuts down on ugly nested if statements and transforms all of the validation logic to just a few simple lines using the RxJava framework. More, it's robust and testable.

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