Entrepreneur and small businesses usually have constraints on budget, time and reach. Offshoring helps overcome these obstacles to accelerate their success. Not every new entrepreneur or small business owner can do everything by themselves or afford highly-talented expert professionals to work for them. That apart the cost of establishing an IT infrastructure, maintaining and managing teams tends to escalate the overheads. Companies like CC Advantage make it possible to leverage expertise and experience in creatives, IT, software development at fraction of the cost.

However offshoring comes with its own share of risks and vulnerabilities which may lead to irrevocable damages both for you and your clients. Therefore in order for offshoring to be fruitful for your business, you need to do your homework and give due diligence to crucial factors before fully trusting a third party with your work and reputation. Make the most of IT offshoring by putting into practice these simple yet powerful insights:

1.Know Thyself
The age old proverb holds true for offshoring too. Introspection and self-assessment is important to know your team’s efficiency and limitations to deliver on core functions. You can then simply offshore the technically advanced functions like creative media services and software testing or even time-consuming functions. This helps you approach offshoring more strategically rather than shooting in the dark.

2.Right Credible Partner
Offshoring offers you increased efficiencies and economies of scale to shorten the growth curve, but this comes with choosing the right growth partner. Explore and evaluate the potential partner’s level of expertise and capabilities to leverage their strengths.  Dig deep on their digital footprints to know about the company, their employees, working culture, their clients and customer testimonials to find the best fit. It’s best to look for a firm that has expertise in multiple software technologies and a niche expertise relevant to your field and has worked with your national or global competitor.

3.Define Goals. Methodology & Scope at the Outset

 To fully optimize the benefits of offshore software development, it is advisable to define goals, methodology and scope at the start to keep everybody on the same page. This helps bring transparency, clarity of goals and thus contributes to faster turnaround. A transparent and realistic RFP must be prepared through an active participation by both the parties to be mutually beneficial and sustainable.

4.Maintain control/ Ownership of data:
Ensure that you have the ultimate control over the source code and ownership of intellectual rights. To avoid any discrepancy in future, the fine print about ownership of intellectual property rights must be clearly put in ink to avoid any confusion.

5.Seamless Communication
Offshore software development is akin to an orchestra that must play in unison to produce a great symphony. Similarly seamless cross-site communication and coordination is essential for a sustainable and productive offshore development. The importance of interpersonal interactions further magnifies especially in context of agile development method that emphasizes on collaboration and phase wise completion of project.

Offshore software development offers immense potential if pursued with the right growth partner and in sync with the best practices of industry. CC Advantage offers highly-skilled professionals and world-class infrastructure for creative media and software development so you can deliver your projects on time and on budget. Flexible hiring models and proven expertise makes CC Advantage your perfect growth partner for all your creative and technology solutions. Visit www.communicationcrafts.com to know more.

Five Steps to Make the Most of Micro-interaction Design Trend 2016

 

Interaction-focused interfaces, a major trend in web design 2016 helps deliver a more intuitive and rewarding user experience across web and mobile apps. 

 

So what are Microinteractions?

The Facebook like button, Microsoft’s Start button, Hamburger Menu, instances when you tap to mute your phone, set a status message, indicator that informs how much time is left while reading Medium or an eBook on Kindle, or when you rate an app are all examples of microinteractions. From websites, mobile apps to the latest new craze of wearable like Samsung Gear, Apple watch and fitness trackers, micro-interactions are the current flavor of the season.

Success with Microinteractions:

The secret of success with microinteractions lies both in the design and in the performance.As the name suggest, microinteractions is any task based engagement with a device. These brief and effortless interaction focused interfaces that make the life of a user easier. However they offer tremendous mileage in taking the user engagement to the next level. They make the website experience more entertaining, engaging and intuitive.Designed to work in a variety of environments that neither acts as an obstruction nor demands detailed explanation, the importance of microinteractions cannot be over-emphasized.In his recent book ‘Microinteractions – Designing with Details’, the author Dan Saffer reveals that microinteractions follow a four-step process

Source: Microinteractions - Designing with Details

Do you too want to make the most of this reigning web design trend of microinteractions? Here are 5 steps to use microinteractions help make UI more human and deliver a rewarding UI:

 

Simplicity – Keep it Simple Stupid:

Less is more in microinteractions. In fact too much of features or functionality can be lethal and make it complex. Probably users may even refrain from using it. Remember the age-old adage - Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Simple colors, simple designs and simple content together go a long way in achieving the result.

Fast Response Time:

Microinteractions are expected to be fast and effective so ensure that they offer a faster turnaround of action by being precise. Delay in execution or a sluggish speed is likely to annoy users.

Handle with Care:

The small pieces of functionality that make up microinteractions stand out for their attention to detail. These must be fine-tuned and polished constantly to work surprisingly well each time.

Show System Status to Keep User Informed:

Constantly deliver feedback to the user by keeping the user informed of the progress. In line with the heuristic principle, this drives engagement and also doesn’t leave the user curious as to what’s happening. 
 

Use a human voice:

Conversational tone works best and therefore your content should be human and the copy should match the human emotion. The comfortable and lighthearted human voice helps to keep users engaged.

Microinteractions are small but they can make or break your design to make the net product feel high-quality and well-designed.