Software is a process
August 13, 2014
It can be difficult for clients who are new to software to understand what we do, and especially how we do it, or why we do it the way we do it.
Read MoreIt can be difficult for clients who are new to software to understand what we do, and especially how we do it, or why we do it the way we do it.
Read MoreAt VOKAL, we like to insert a little wisdom to compliment our weekly lunches. Our Lunch & Learn is one such opportunity. At least once a month, a fellow VOKALite may share a discovery, researched topic, practice or skill to inform the rest of the team. Presentations often end in a lively discussion of the topic.
Read MoreSince we subscribe to agile development principles here at Vokal Interactive, one maxim we try to impress upon our clients is to "ship early, and ship often." Sometimes its not always easy to get clients on board with this approach; it's easy to get into a trap of thinking that your app has to have every cool feature you thought of before or since development began, and that every feature has to be "perfect." However, such thinking can lead to roadblocks and delays, pushing an app's release date further and further away while competitors are busy building a user base.
Read MoreMy employers at Vokal Interactive have been kind enough to let me use my downtime to tackle of one of my biggest irritations with the new Asset Catalogs in Xcode 5: The fact that you still have to use the fragile imageNamed: system to call images in code.
Read MoreFor this week's Lunch & Learn, Interaction Designer at VOKAL, Brian Flavin, applied his user experience know-how to the world of game experience and engagement. Brian kicked off with a high level definition of HCI and its relation to game engagement. Applying the objective of Traditional Human Computer Interaction, which is focused on the facilitation of user-defined tasks, and comparing this to the objectives of game engagement, which is based on value systems attributed to the player (or as Brian revealed, his value of launching arrows at the heads of his enemies), he concluded that game design is rather, evaluated from an HCI perspective, by measuring the value a player gains from participation in a game. i.e. The Value Systems Theory.
Read MoreHey Sportsfans!
Guess who's got a Softball team? That's right the bros and gals of VOKAL. Jealous? You should be. Going by the epic team title of Wireless Pizza, this team is league quality all the way down to the official t-shirt. All we need now is a big fuzzy mascot. Check out some highlights from the top of the summer season...
For May's Lunch & Learn, Web Engineer at VOKAL, Jarrett Widman, dropped some knowledge on using Knockout and the MVVM pattern . He introduced the concepts of two-way databinding, how MVVM is different than MVC, and showed a number of simple examples to demonstrate the features and usage of Knockout.
Read MoreFor the last couple months, Sean Wolter of VOKAL has been hosting the NSCoder Chicago meet-ups at the VOKAL offices and Mobile Makers campus. On the last Tuesday of every month, fellow Chicago developers get together to enjoy libations, pizza pie and great conversation. It's an opportunity to share projects, advice and maybe do little coding to boot!
Read MoreAs web apps increase in popularity in the mobile space, designs traditionally built for native iOS or Android apps have started to find their way into the hands of web developers. Web development and native app development can pose some very different challenges. If you've designed a lot of native apps, knowledge of the process a web developer goes through can really help your designs hit the ground running.
Read MoreEveryone has a pet project that may either devour many an evening here, a weekend there, or perhaps has become a full-time commitment. Max Bare from the VOKAL design team falls into the semi-committed category. For this month's Lunch & Learn, Max shared with the VOKAL fleet, his topic: Hope to Create Comics. Referencing his personal project Mystery Afoot.
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