Articles

Apache Doris Storage Layer Design and Storage Structure

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Doris is an interactive SQL data warehouse based on MPP architecture, mainly used to solve near real-time reporting and multidimensional analysis. Doris’s efficient import and query are inseparable from the sophisticated design of its storage structure.

This article mainly analyzes the implementation principle of the storage layer of the Doris BE module by reading the code of the Doris BE module, and expounds and decrypts the core technology behind the efficient writing and query capabilities of Doris. It includes Doris column storage design, index design, data read and write process, compaction process, version management of Tablet and Rowset, data backup, and other functions.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

17 septembre 2022/par Service comm.

How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Two

Actualités, Actualités

Last week, you started a web design agency. This week we’ll help you take the next steps towards making your agency viable.

The first couple of days were spent on legal checks and taxes. After that, you’ve picked a niche to specialize in, an awesome name, worked out how much you’re going to charge, and set up business accounts. Then, finally, you took a day off to prepare for this week. (If you skipped any of those steps, go back and catch up now.)

This week, we’ll start defining who you are as an agency. The process is the same as last week: focusing on one task per day. By the end of the week, who you are as an agency will start to become apparent.

Day Eight: Choose Your Clients

For any new business, the temptation is to grab any work you can get to keep the money flowing in. However, chasing money is counter-productive; you end up clutching at opportunities instead of taking a targeted approach.

Last week you selected your niche. Today, you will choose the clients you intend to work for. And we mean that literally: draw up a list of target clients.

Do you want to work for Nike? Fine, add it to the list. Think Apple would look good in your portfolio? Add it too. Make sure you add a few that are more realistic but don’t aim too low.

By the end of the day, you should have a spreadsheet of companies to target.

Day Nine: Tech Stack

Now you know who your agency is planning to work for, it’s time to identify the technology stack you’re planning to offer them.

It may be that you will be a full-service agency handling everything from branding to custom apps. Alternately, you may perform better handling one aspect of the job well and outsourcing the rest.

However you plan to approach the actual work, you’ll need a full-stack solution for most clients. That means brand design, web design, marketing and content, front-end code, content management, and SEO.

The best advice is to focus on your existing strengths and develop a skill to an expert level. Then, once you’ve done so, you can expand sideways to plug any gaps.

For example, moving into WordPress development is a good option if you already know HTML and CSS. On the other hand, if you’re more design orientated, a site builder approach using SquareSpace or Shopify might be a better fit.

Technologies change, so you shouldn’t expect your core technologies to stay with you throughout your career. But these are the solutions you’ll become an expert at over the next few years.

Day Ten: Define Your Red Lines

All companies have brand values, whether they define them or not. So at this stage, it’s more practical to look at what you’re not prepared to do.

Everyone has red lines that they’re not prepared to cross. Would you work for a pornography company? Would you work for a radical political group? Would you work for a controversial religion? Would you work for a company with a patchy human rights record? Would you work for big pharma?

There’s no right and wrong answer to this; it all comes down to your personal values. However, you will be asked to cross the line at some point. It’s easier to say “no thanks” if you know where the lines are in advance.

If you don’t have red lines, that’s valid too. But be aware that once you’ve crossed a line, that line will stay crossed; you’ll attract more of that type of work, which will define you.

Day Eleven: Write Your Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a short couple of lines that can be delivered to a prospective client on a (hypothetical) elevator ride between two floors.

When someone asks you what you do, “Um, well, you know, mostly just websites and stuff.” Is not a good answer.

Your language should be natural, non-technical, and self-assured. Something like, “We help startups like yours outperform their competitors on Google.”

Once you’ve settled on a good elevator pitch, practice it over and over. Write it on a post-it and stick it to your monitor, screenshot it and use it as your phone’s wallpaper. Say it over and over in the shower, in the car, and in the elevator. Learn it so that when someone asks, it trips off your tongue effortlessly.

Day Twelve: Pick a Coffee Shop

You don’t need fancy offices to start a web design agency, and in fact, the first agency I worked for tanked primarily because they couldn’t afford their office lease.

People are used to remote work now, and most meetings can be conducted by video call. But you will still find clients who like to meet one-to-one, especially for a kick-off meeting.

It’s always best to visit a client’s premises if you can, but coffee shops are a good alternative, and every new agency should have one.

Consider your coffee shop your meeting room. If you’re lucky enough to be in a town or city where there are a few to choose from, try to pick one that matches your values: quirky and independent, efficient and corporate, etc.

Check when the quiet times are (you don’t want to be shouting over the buzz of rush-hour orders). Make sure you know where the nearest parking or public transport is so that you can direct clients. Ensure the wi-fi is OK, preferably free, and find out the password in advance.

Day Thirteen: Start Your Branding

Two weeks in, you finally get to do something creative: design your logo.

If you’ve been matching days to the days of the week, then it’s Saturday. That should give you more time for this task, but don’t go to town. Your logo is going to change and evolve. It is far too easy to get wrapped up in tiny details like logos and lose sight of the bigger picture.

Remember: no logo, no matter how cool, ever won a pitch.

If you’re a designer, you probably ignored us and started the logo on day one. In fact, you’ve probably had something knocking around in a sketchbook for a while.

If you’re not a designer, type out your name in a geometric sans-serif, tighten the tracking, and call it a day.

Either way, by the end of today, you’ll have something that fits your niche, ties into your elevator pitch, and appeals to your target clients.

Day Fourteen: Rest

Hopefully, you learned the benefits of a rest day last week, and this week was easier as a result.

It’s time to do whatever you do to relax. If you can, do it outside away from your computer. Create some distance and recharge your batteries.

Next week, we’ll start putting together the assets you will use to present your business professionally.

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

The post How to Start a Web Design Agency in 28 Days: Week Two first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

10 août 2022/par Service comm.

Release Management for Microservices: Multi vs. Monorepos

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Imagine a microservice application consisting of dozens of continuously-deployed autonomous services. Each of the application’s constellation of services has its own repository, with a different versioning scheme and a different team continually shipping new versions.

Riddle me this: How can I tell the (whole) application’s version? Being that the change history is scattered among dozens of repositories, what’s the most efficient approach to keeping track of changes? And how do we manage application releases?

Source de l’article sur DZONE

9 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

Building an E-Commerce API Using Nestjs, SQLite, and TypeORM

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

Introduction

Nestjs is a cutting-edge Node.js framework for developing server-side applications that are efficient, dependable, and scalable. It is simple to integrate with NoSQL and SQL databases such as MongoDB, Yugabyte, SQLite, Postgres, MySQL, and others. It supports popular object-relational mappers such as TypeORM Sequelize and Mongoose.

In this tutorial, we’ll create an e-commerce application with SQLite and TypeORM. We’ll also look at Arctype, a powerful SQL client and database management tool.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

3 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools

Actualités, Actualités

An unreliable, semi-broken and unresponsive website is an excellent way to lose leads and visitors — regardless of how aesthetically pleasing or well-designed, the visual elements are.

Over the past decade, we’ve seen more initiative to deliver faster internet to regions of the world that were previously devoid of it. With online communities expanding and more people becoming receptive to online shopping, ensuring your site’s dependability is now more important than ever.

One way to achieve this is by employing uptime and downtime monitoring tools. This guide will examine the best ways to get alerts when something goes wrong and your website falters.

Why Is Website Uptime Monitoring Important?

Downtime is bound to occur occasionally. Nonetheless, the goal is to minimize it. The longer the downtime occurs, the more traffic and potential clients you lose. A dysfunctional website is also detrimental to your credibility and reputation. People may associate your website’s unreliability with your real-world products or services.

With web developers charging an average of $200 per hour, high-quality websites can be expensive to build and maintain. Nevertheless, it’s often worth the investment. However, an unreliable website can backfire on you. Instead of attracting more customers, it could potentially repel them. This can result in lost revenue.

An uptime monitoring solution can help you prevent or reduce these losses. It verifies if your website is up and functional and notifies you if it’s not. This allows you to troubleshoot the issue and get your website back up and running as soon as you’re alerted. The most common issues behind your website’s downtime include:

Server faults;
Network outages;
Power outage;
Traffic spikes;
Cyberattacks;
Domain name issues;
An erroneous web application deployment;
Increased server loads;
DNS Resolve issues;
Human error.

Thus, you must employ a dependable tool that detects downtime or any interruptions related to your website as soon as they occur. They are must-have tools for web designers, developers, and network administrators. However, not all of them are built the same. So how do you identify the best uptime monitoring tools?

Essential Features of Uptime Monitoring Tools

Uptime monitoring tools typically detect interruptions by running network tests such as pings and trace routes. You could practically monitor your website’s uptime by constantly running these tests yourself.

However, this isn’t an efficient way to monitor your website’s uptime. A comprehensive uptime monitoring tool will automatically monitor your website’s uptime in the background. It will then alert you through various channels as soon as it senses that your website may be down.

Furthermore, high-quality uptime monitoring solutions tend to offer additional information regarding your website’s uptime/downtime and its performance. These tools commonly feature dashboards, status pages, badges, exportable records, etc., to help you keep track of your site’s overall health.

9 Best Features of an Uptime Monitoring Solution

The ideal uptime monitoring tool or service should feature:

Website security features that notify of and repel potential cyber attacks;
24/7 uninterrupted background website monitoring;
Multi-channel alerts (email, SMS, push notifications, instant messages, social media, etc.);
Report generation;
24/7 customer support available through different channels (email, phone, chat, etc.);
Be capable of monitoring multiple websites and proxies at the same time;
Offer insights and suggestions to improve your website’s performance;
Be affordable;
High customizability should allow you to choose which features to enable and disable.

Another optional feature to look out for is public status pages that your clients can access to determine if all your services are up and running. GetWeave is an excellent example of this. The website features a well-organized systems status page where customers can check if all of Weave’s services are functional.

Nevertheless, you can use the above information as a buying guide when assessing potential uptime monitoring tools. The rest of this guide will supply a few suggestions as to which tools you should use for your website.

3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools

Some of the best uptime monitoring tools for website downtime alerts include:

1. Uptrends

Uptrends isn’t just a downtime detection tool; it’s a complete web performance monitoring solution. It will notify you as soon as it detects any disturbance in your website’s performance. It features highly customizable checks. For instance, you can set performance check limits for load times. Uptrends will notify you instantly if your website takes too long to load.

You can also configure from which locations you want it to monitor your website. Uptrends will then point you to where your website usually suffers performance dips in the real world.

The service uses multiple communication channels to send users notifications: email, phone calls, and SMS. Alternatively, you can download one of Uptrend’s mobile applications and receive push notifications. Additionally, you can integrate Uptrends with messaging and communication applications such as PagerDuty, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

Another impressive Uptrend feature is its ability to emulate your website’s performance on different browsers. It runs Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge on its servers. Thus, you can compare how your website runs on these web browsers without installing them on your servers or computer.

Uptrends supplies users with various charts, reports, and graphs to help identify sudden spikes or dips. Waterfall reports display the complete page-load from the initial request to the last download. This allows you to compare the history of your website’s performance element by element. It comes with three price plans whose costs depend on the number of monitors you would like. Starting at $16.21 (at the time of writing) the Starter Plan is the most affordable.

2. Oh Dear

Oh Dear is a slightly cheaper option than Uptrends, with the most affordable plan starting at $12 per month (at the time of writing). However, while Uptrends offers a 30-day free trial, Oh Dear only provides a 12-day trial period. Nevertheless, Oh Dear’s interface is a lot cleaner and more minimal.

Since Oh Dear runs servers in different locations across the globe, it can track how your website performs in various regions. Oh Dear will scan through your website and index all the pages. If it detects any issues, it will alert you immediately.

Oh Dear also features a continuous certificate monitoring function. Site owners who are concerned with their website’s security may find this feature to be especially useful. It will verify your SSL certificate expiration dates and alert you of any changes.

Oh Dear’s public status page enables your clients to keep track of your website’s availability.

Oh Dear uses email and SMS text messages to alert site owners of any issues. It also features integrations with communications and social media applications such as Telegram, Discord, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc. Oh Dear ensures that messages are as detailed and user-friendly. This makes it easier to troubleshoot and find the origin of your problem. Oh Dear is more than a worthy alternative to Uptrends.

3. WP Umbrella

WP Umbrella is a little different from the previous entries. It’s intended to help users manage and monitor multiple WordPress sites. Thus, it is far more particularized in its approach to website uptime monitoring. Again, as is the primary function of the uptime monitoring tool, it offers a real-time alert system that will contact you through email, SMS, Slack, etc.

WP Umbrella employs a simple minimal UI. Its main screen consists of a dashboard that allows you to view all your WordPress websites. By default, this dashboard features four columns: Site, Uptime, Speed, and Issues.

WP Umbrella will alert you of any outdated or erroneous plugins or themes. While it doesn’t offer dedicated public status pages, it does have a client report generation feature. You can automatically send these reports to your various subscribers or clients when your website is down.

WP Umbrella is the most affordable option on this list. Users are charged $1.99 per month (at the time of writing) for each website monitored. In addition, WP Umbrella offers a 14-day trial and does not require your credit card details. It’s an excellent option for anyone running a WordPress website or two.

Conclusion

This guide has only explored three possible uptime monitoring solutions. They won’t only assist you in detecting downtimes, they can also help you find the reason your site may be slow.

These solutions are an excellent place to start. But there are many other options coming to market all the time. You may find that this is the first step to converting more leads and reducing your bounce rate.

Source

The post 3 Best Website Uptime Monitoring Tools first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

1 juillet 2022/par Service comm.

A Complete Guide to Generated Columns in MySQL

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

MySQL generated columns pose as a powerful, easy-to-use, and advanced tool for anyone who wants to add automatically generated data to their tables – in this blog, we will learn everything you need to know to master them.

Generated columns allow you to store automatically generated data in a table without using the INSERT and UPDATE clauses. This useful feature has been part of MySQL since version 5.7, and it represents an alternative approach to triggers when it comes to generating data. Also, generated columns can help you make your query easier and more efficient.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

30 juin 2022/par Service comm.

Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2022

Actualités, Actualités

Automation is the theme of this month’s collection of exciting new tools for designers and developers. There are tools to make your images better, tools to create illustrations, and tools to make your workflow more efficient. Plus, a whole host of tools that are just plain fun.

Here’s what is new for designers this month…

designstripe

designstripe lets you create beautiful illustrations with no design skills. Drag and drop different elements into place, then customize them for your brand.

DesignMaestro

DesignMaestro is a free keyboard extension app that lets you automate the tasks you repeat daily. Set up a macro with a keyboard shortcut, and tap the shortcut to perform the action.

Ghost 5.0

Ghost is one of the best personal blogging platforms around, and version 5 enhances it with custom code, support for video, and performance upgrades.

Yep

Yep is a new search engine from the makers of Ahrefs. Built from the ground up, Yep will give 90% of its ad revenue to content creators.

The CTO Field Guide

The CTO Field Guide is a free ebook for anyone newly promoted to a technology officer role or looking for a tech leadership role. It’s a simple guide to making the most of your first 90 days on the job.

ASCII Art Paint

ASCII Art Paint is a free, open-source web app for creating images made up of text characters and hieroglyphs. It’s a great way to add pictures to text-only formats.

Effekt

Make your own fun, wallpaper art at up to 8k resolution using Effekt, a mix between an image editor and a visual toy.

Animatiss

Animatiss is a fantastic collection of CSS animations that you can use for free. Tailor the speed of the animation, preview it, then copy and paste the code into your project.

Skiff

Skiff Mail is an email app that features end-to-end encryption. This means your email stays private and secure, so you’re free to discuss sensitive matters.

Super Designer Tools

Super Designer is a collection of design tools for performing simple tasks. There’s a background generator, a pattern generator, a blob generator, and more—all free to use.

Web UI

Web UI is a collection of UI kits and templates for Figma and Adobe XD. Most designs are free to download and use for projects, and some require payment.

Free Online Background Remover

Use this free online background remover to quickly and easily delete the background of photos, leaving you free to paste the foreground over flat colors, gradients, or even different backgrounds.

Untitled UI Icons

Untitled UI Icons is a set of clean, consistent, and neutral icons made for Figma in Figma. There are 3,500 icons in total. The line style is free to download.

OS

Turn your Mac or iPhone into an old-school Macintosh with this retro wallpaper and icon set, and transport yourself back to 1984. OS is a premium download.

Shrink.media

Shrink.media is a free app for web, iOS, and Android that lets you reduce the size of your image file size and dimensions to reduce its footprint.

3D Avatars

This big library of 3D avatars is perfect for any project that needs staff images. There are different ethnicities, clothing, facial expressions, and accessories, so you never run out of options.

Felt

Felt is a modern map maker for the web that gives you more control, more design options, and easier sharing than Google maps.

SureScan

SureScan is a helpful app that hunts through terms and conditions for dubious conditions on your behalf, so you can spend your time doing something less boring.

Reform

Reform is a no-code form builder that you can use to create clean, branded forms for your business without any design or code skills.

Copy Foundry

Discover how the best brands evolve their messaging over time with Copy Foundry, a brand positioning, and copywriting library to help your products stand out.

Source

The post Exciting New Tools for Designers, June 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

13 juin 2022/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: May 30, 2022 – June 5, 2022

Actualités, Actualités

Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.

The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!

Bob Ross Ipsum

22 Apps Designers Can’t Live Without

15 Best New Fonts, June 2022

Payload is Now Completely Free and Open Source

Why Does Every Movie Poster Design Look like This?

Web Design Tools for Fast and Efficient Design

Developers: Stop Feeling the Pressure – Do this Instead

What People Think that Web Developers do Vs. What We Really do

Anytype: A Local, Privacy-first Notion Alternative

Rumor: Apple to Announce New Search Engine Next Week

Background Grids, from Paper to Display

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

5 juin 2022/par Service comm.

Case Study: Redesigning Todoist for Android

Actualités, Actualités

Todoist is a to-do list app that 25 million people rely on every day to keep their lives organized. As part of the Doist design team’s goals for 2021, we aimed to redesign the Todoist Android app to take advantage of the latest Google Material Design guidelines.

In this post, we cover the design decisions and processes behind redesigning the Todoist Android app for Material Design. We explore the Design and Android team’s collaboration practices that brought the app update to life, which resulted in winning the Material Design Award 2021 in the large screen category. Let’s get started!

Opportunity

When we started the project, our design implementation on Android was ready for a major overhaul. The last milestone redesign on Android was initiated after the release of the first Material Design guidelines in 2016. Since then the team successfully worked on continuous improvements to the Android app, but we saw the opportunity to improve Todoist on Android on a more holistic level.

We set out to clean up instances of older UI components, colors, and text styles and update them with the latest Material Design components. We observed that some interactions and navigational patterns had become inconsistent with what users were expecting on newer Android devices and were eager to modernize this experience. With new hardware and software changes in mind, we set out to make the experience on larger phones and tablets even better, so Todoist could take full advantage of the latest generation of devices. Material 2 and 3 provided an incredible new framework to rethink the current app experience. With this in mind, we set out to challenge what a modern Android app should look like and innovate on top of the default user experience.

Solution

The team set itself the goal of redesigning our Todoist Android app and aspiring to make it the best-designed productivity app on Android. The project was ambitious and scheduled to take several months to complete. We set ourselves the following targets while working on the project:

Review the current implementation and older design specs.
Study the latest Material Design Guidelines and assess what is relevant for our project.
Research great Material Design apps and case studies and learn from their execution.
Define the new Todoist Android app design language and document the changes.
Design and development work together to assess the proposed solution and implementation.
Test an early version of the new app internally to gather feedback and make adjustments.
Invite beta testers to the new app to gather feedback and make adjustments.
Refine the app and address core issues before launching to the public.

Review

The project was kicked off by reviewing the current Todoist Android app implementation, noting down what areas needed to be fixed and what was up to date. While reviewing, we took screenshots of the app implementation for reference. This way we could easily see the current state of the app and compare it to the new design proposals that would be created. Once the review process was finalized, we had a comprehensive overview of the current state of the app and the layout, component, and styling changes we wanted to make.

Study

We continued the project by studying the latest Material Design Guidelines, assessing the components and practices that were most relevant to Todoist.

When the project kicked off in February 2021, Material 2 was the most recent version of their design system. Since Material 2 had already been released for quite some time, we anticipated that design changes to Material would be announced soon at the Google I/O event in May 2021. Rather than wait, because we expected the changes to be iterative, we pushed ahead with our work.

We identified 25 components and UI patterns that we wanted to change across the app. The changes included buttons, forms, menus, sheets, navigation drawer, app bar, system bars, text and color styles, and more. We started by creating a table view in a Dropbox Paper document with the component changes and references links to Google’s Material Design Guidelines.

This components list was a starting point for discussion to plan the scope and complexity of the changes. Close async discussions between the design and development team in Twist and Dropbox Paper comments helped us make decisions about scope and complexity early on and set a solid foundation for the project.

Research

In the initial Material Design study, we also researched inspiring Material Design apps, Material studies, Play Store apps, and Google Workspace apps to learn from their execution.

We started out by studying the Material Design Award Winners 2020 and tested out the products that were showcased. The showcased winners struck a good balance between implementing the Material Design Guidelines while maintaining their own product’s brand within the system. This balance between Google’s guidelines and the Todoist brand was also key for us to get right and so we strived to find this mix across the work we created and implemented in the project.

Along with the MDA winners, we researched the Material Studies that Google produced to showcase what apps could look like with branding and Material Design guidelines applied. It was a great reference to see how far components could be customized while maintaining the core platform principles. The Reply case study in particular offered valuable insight to us as its content type and layout came closest to Todoist. It showcased how components like the app bar, navigation drawer, and large screen layouts worked while being customized.

We continued our research by searching the Google Play store for inspiring app examples. Google Tasks, Press, Periodic Table, and Kayak stood out to us as the level of polish and quality of the apps were on par with the experience we were aspiring to create.

Sometime later in the project when Material You was released (more on that later), we stumbled upon the Google Workspace apps blog post which previewed Material 3 changes that Google was introducing to their own products. It offered a great glimpse at what was to come before the Material 3 Design Guidelines were officially released. This post sparked new internal discussions and further design explorations that we considered for future Todoist Android updates.

Design Spec

As we started to define the new Todoist Android app design language and document the changes, we opted to create a design framework, focusing on creating components rather than designing every screen in the app. This allowed us to consistently apply the design system in the app. We did so by using the previously defined component list that we created during the review and study process.

Core screens from different areas of the app were chosen to demonstrate how the components could be applied. We chose to mock up the Todoist project view, navigation drawer menu, project view edit screen, settings, and project detail view, among others. These screens gave us a good overview of how buttons, forms, drawers, lists, and other components would work together and in different states; selected, pressed, disabled, etc.

During the project, we were transitioning our Doist design system to Figma and started creating our first components in the new Doist Product Android Library. We started by using some components from the Material Design UI kit – Components library from the official Google Figma resource file and added them to our Doist design system. We then continued to build up the Product Android Library file with our Todoist-specific components such as task list & board views, detail views, sheets, colors, typography, etc.

We continued by documenting color and typography changes that were based on the Material Design guidelines. The design team opted to implement a new Design Token framework that would share the same values between our design system and the development implementation. The development team would output the values they had in the current implementation and the design team would analyze which values were needed and which could be merged, changed, or deleted. This informed the new Design Token color and typography system which we then documented and discussed with the team to implement. Later in the project, we were happy to see a similar token system introduced by Material 3 in the latest guidelines which validated our thinking and principles behind the new design system.

The design documentation expanded to hold other edge-case mockups that could sit alongside the design system. We documented different responsive screen experiences between phones and tablets against the previous implementation. Additional sections were created to document the motion that should be used for certain components and screens by referencing existing Material Design guidelines examples or prototyping custom motion in Principle and After Effects. The design spec also touched on haptic feedback that should appear on touch targets, how dark mode should work across the new components, documenting Todoist themes within the new design language, and more.

Design Implementation

At Doist, the benefit of the squad is that cross-team collaboration is built into the make-up of the team. Designers, developers, support, and product managers work together in a squad to deliver the project. This close collaboration from the start is key to bridging the gap between scope, estimations, design, development, and delivery. The squad discussed their findings on a daily basis and came up with the best plan of action together.

Designers started by creating components in Figma and shared them with developers in Dropbox Paper. We used screenshots to document the current implementation next to the new designs and linked to the default Google Material Design components. This allowed the team to compare all references in one place. Developers shared their feedback, adjustments would be brainstormed together as the designs were iterated.

Designers on the project would share their work in progress on a weekly basis with the rest of the design team in a design review Twist thread. Here details about the designs were discussed, alternatives mocked up and bigger picture plans made. Design reviews brought up topics like FAB (Floating Action Button) placement, theme options, accent color usage on components, consistency with other platforms, navigation options, and shadow elevation. After thorough discussions and alternative mockups were presented, the design team aimed to find the right balance between Material Design and Todoist brand guidelines. The development team, also part of the design reviews, gave their feedback on the solution and raised technical complexities early on.

Eventually, the design was stabilized and consistencies updated across components and mockups. The design spec was kept up to date so the development team could always review the latest designs in Figma.

Testing

As soon as the development process started, the Android team provided early screenshots and videos in Twist threads while they were implementing the design spec. This practice allowed us to review the app implementation early and often. Designers could review the development work and share feedback in Twist, which resulted in getting the implementation to a high quality. Alongside Twist discussions, the team set up a Todoist project to track ongoing issues and fix bugs. Designers logged new issues, developers would solve them and share the new implementation for designers to review.

When the team had the first stable version of the Android app, we shared it internally at Doist to get more insight and feedback. Other Doisters could access the redesign via a feature flag that could be turned on in the app settings and test the new version for however long they wanted. The feature flag system allowed people to give us early feedback on the design decisions we made and report bugs. Feedback was submitted by the wider team through a dedicated Twist thread and designers and developers could discuss how best to address the feedback during the active project implementation.

After we refined the app implementation further and addressed early feedback we opened up the app update to our beta users. Here users had access to the new Android redesign and were able to give us feedback. Our support team gathered feedback and shared it with us in a dedicated Twist thread. The squad aimed to analyze every comment and looked for patterns where we could make tweaks and improvements to the user experience.

As part of these tweaks, we made changes to how the bottom bar and navigation drawer worked. Some users reported frustrations with the way the new bottom navigation and menu drawer worked. In its first implementation, the drawer was half raised when opened and had to be swiped up to be raised again to see the full content list. This was an issue for some users as it was slower to get to the content below the list. So we decided to fully raise the drawer by default when opening. We also made it easier to open the navigation drawer by sliding up from the bottom app bar. This was a small shortcut but it enabled users to get to their content faster.

Material You

While we were in the testing phase and about to wrap up the project, Google unveiled Material You, and sometime later the Material 3 Guidelines were published. With the newly announced resources, we went back to study the latest guidelines and references we could find to see where the Todoist Android app redesign fits in and which adjustments we might need to make now or in the future.

Dynamic Color was a big new feature that was announced as part of the Material You update. As Todoist supports many different themes the Material You Dynamic Color feature seemed like a good fit for our product. We decided to prioritize this feature and implement Dynamic Color light and dark themes as part of our Todoist theme settings options.

To implement Dynamic Color, the development team started off by creating a demo prototype that utilized the Dynamic Color system and showcased how we could select from a range of color choices that the system defined based on the wallpaper choice. From there, we tried to incorporate system behavior in our design mockups. We designed a range of different color mockups and components to see which ones could fit with which components. We then came up with a color system that worked for the Todoist app and the new themes. These new Dynamic Color themes would sit alongside our current theme options in the Todoist app settings. From here users could choose between Dynamic Color Light and Dark themes.

Along with Dynamic Color, the team also created a customizable bottom app bar, allowing users to set up the app in a way that’s most convenient to their workflow. The location of the Dynamic Add Button can be changed to the center, left, or right corner of the screen. The order of the Menu, Search, and Notification buttons can be rearranged to best fit the ergonomics of the user’s dominant (left or right) hand and optimize their navigation patterns.

Launch

As critical beta feedback was addressed and stability tweaks were made, the squad felt ready to release the new Todoist Android app to the public. The team logged the issues that could not immediately be addressed for future reviews and updates.

The design and marketing team readied the launch by creating What’s New banner artwork and copy that are displayed within the app when launching the update. The Doist marketing team also created release notes and shared the app update announcements on our social channels. The brand and product design team worked together to create custom image assets and copy that summarised the project work in a simple and beautiful way.

What’s Next: Material 3

After a successful launch of the redesigned Todoist for Android app, Google contacted Doist to announce that Todoist was selected as the Material Design Award 2021 winner in the Large Screen category. The team was excited to be recognized for their hard work and it felt like we achieved the goal we had set out to accomplish.

Internally, designers and developers continued to study and discuss the Material 3 updates. The design team started exploring mockups and design changes inspired by Material 3 and Google’s Workspace app updates. Some of our current Todoist explorations include changing the FAB styling, updating the app bar, further removing elevation shadows, and more. Here is a preview of what a future Todoist update could look like.

We hope these insights into Doist’s design process and collaboration practices have sparked your interest. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for future design updates!

Takeaways

Study the Material guidelines, Material Design winners, Material studies, and Google Workspace apps to make informed design decisions when designing your next product or app update.
Evaluate which Material Design components and practices are right for you and implement them into your product.
Carefully balance the Material Design guidelines with your brand guidelines to create a unique and consistent experience between your product and the platform it lives on.
Collaborate with your Android developers early and often to ship app updates efficiently and increase the design implementation quality.
Use design components and build a design system along with practical mockups to create an efficient design spec.
Consider how the latest Android features fit into your product and which have the most impact on your users before deciding to implement them.
Test and review builds with your internal team and external beta users to get valuable feedback and make adjustments before releasing them to the public.
Create announcement artwork to showcase your latest app or feature update along with a clear description to share in-app and on social media.

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The post Case Study: Redesigning Todoist for Android first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

13 avril 2022/par Service comm.

5 Best Newsletter Platforms for Startups in 2022

Actualités, Actualités

If you don’t keep in touch with your customer base, it can become easy for them to drift away. Newsletters are an affordable and effective way to check in with your audience occasionally.

However, you will need to craft well-designed newsletters to have the desired impact. Your newsletters should include engaging content, including images and written content. They should look highly professional and aesthetically appealing, so people are encouraged to read them. Another thing to consider is the method you want to send the newsletters. Picking the right platform can save you time and energy, especially if you have a large readership.

The good news is that there are a variety of available platforms that can help you make great-looking emails. These services can also make it easier for you to send newsletters.

Let’s take a look at some of the best newsletter platforms available:

1. HubSpot

This is a name that needs no introduction among digital marketers. HubSpot offers several powerful marketing platforms with valuable tools and features to help any marketing campaign succeed.

HubSpot’s email marketing tool includes easy drag-and-drop tools that make it simple even for novices to write killer newsletters.

When you choose HubSpot’s email marketing tool, you will also have access to its powerful customer relationship management (CRM) platform. HubSpot’s CRM platform includes various email automation tools like follow-up email tools and helps you personalize your newsletters.

HubSpot’s marketing tool includes a free plan that provides access to some of the platform’s powerful email marketing features. The free plan limits users to sending 2,000 emails/month, and paid plans start from $50/month.

2. Mailchimp

Here’s another name that is well known among marketers – particularly concentrated marketers that focus on email campaigns. Mailchimp uses a drag-and-drop email editor that helps just about anybody create professional-looking newsletters and emails.

Mailchimp also has A/B testing tools to help you fine-tune your campaigns and cross-device tools that ensure your newsletters look great on any platform.

The platform offers a selection of newsletter templates to help you get started and make it easy to manage your contact list. The platform allows you to automatically resend newsletters using different subject lines if the recipient didn’t open previous emails.

Mailchimp offers a free plan that manages up to 2,000 contacts and sends up to 12,000 emails/month with limited access to other features. Paid plans start at just $11/month per 500 contacts with access to more services. Other plans range from $17/month per 500 users to $299/month per 500 users, increasing access to Mailchimp’s tools.

3. AWeber

AWeber is a popular choice because it is so easy to use. It’s another platform that uses drag-and-drop design technology that requires no coding knowledge. The software allows users to add carousels for a truly professional look.

The platform also includes tools that simplify list management and segmentation. AWeber features 6,000 royalty-free stock photos, and it can be integrated with other platforms, including WordPress.

Some people might find that AWeber isn’t as advanced as other options and doesn’t have some of the features they need. However, the platform is ideal for smaller companies and people just getting started with newsletter software applications.

AWeber offers a free plan that lets you add up to 500 contacts. Paid plans start from $16.15/month, and other pricing plans are available to users who need to manage more contacts.

4. Sendinblue

With an expansive template gallery and efficient drag-and-drop design technology, Sendinblue is another platform that helps people create professional, aesthetically pleasing newsletters. It lets users select display conditions that determine which content recipients see.

The software offers a range of features that help automate sending numerous newsletters, including the ability to send according to the recipients’ time zones. It also provides analytical tools to show how well your newsletters are performing.

Sendinblue offers a free plan that allows you to send up to 300 emails/day. Paid plans start from $25/month for the Lite plan and $65/month for the Premium plan with 20,000 emails/month. Each tier gives you access to more features, and prices increase if you want to send more emails.

5. GetResponse

GetResponse has been around for longer than most other newsletter options, so they’ve had plenty of time to get it right. With the platform’s fluid design features, it’s easy to create impressive newsletters and emails that look professional.

Other features from GetResponse include segmentation and lead scoring features, autoresponders, and automation workflows. In addition, you can have your newsletters sent at optimal times and take advantage of A/B testing tools.

The platform’s free plan lets you manage up to 500 contacts with unlimited newsletters.

GetResponse also provides a Basic plan from $12.30/month, a Plus plan from $40.18/month, and a Professional plan from $81.18/month, each of which lets you have up to 1,000 contacts. Each plan gives access to more features than the other, and you can pay more to manage more contacts.

Start Sending Professional Newsletters Today

Choosing the best newsletter software for you depends on various factors. These factors include which tools you need from the software, your technical ability, and how much you can afford to spend.

As with any product, it’s a good idea to shop around before making any decisions. Most platforms offer free plans, allowing you to try them out first without paying a penny. If you need more advanced features or hope to scale up at some point in the future, it’s probably best to look at platforms that can do more for you.

Featured image via Pexels.

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The post 5 Best Newsletter Platforms for Startups in 2022 first appeared on Webdesigner Depot.

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

6 avril 2022/par Service comm.