• Read more about Our Work With NOAA Fisheries

In late 2016, Mobomo partnered with NOAA Fisheries to assist in restructuring and redesigning their digital presence. Merging all their core web properties into one Drupal site. Allowing users to go to one destination to find and discover information they need. Focusing on improving content efficiency, design consistency, and unifying NOAA Fisheries voice. Within one year we launched the framework for their next generation site.

About NOAA Fisheries

NOAA Fisheries is a federal agency that conserves and manages U.S. waters to promote prevention of overfishing, declining species and degraded habitats. NOAA Fisheries manages five coastal regions broken down by department, fisheries management, science centers, and labs. Each office ran their own independent site creating inconsistency and overlap in content and design as each digital property sat isolated.

How We Unified their Content

NOAA Fisheries as a whole covers many areas of information dealing with marine life. Each of the 10 core properties containing up to 10,000 pages and 5,000 pdf files. Together, we worked with 50+ stakeholders to discovery the consistency in their content and workflow. Creating ways to automation their content and move it over to a more tag driven system.

Putting the Site to the Test

NOAA Fisheries were moving to a topic based information architecture and wanted Mobomo to user test and suggest improvements. In our evationtion, we ran two types of user tests targeting four key audiences. This process took over two months to complete running 6 rounds of tests. Each test we Iterating each time based on the user insight we received improving their success rate by 13%.

First Test) How Users Group & Labels Items

We started out our evaluation by testing how users group items compared to the current sitemap. We tested over 100 people across all audiences in one week discovered that majority were not using the technical vocabulary that NOAA was using in their navigation concept. As a result, we select key categories and ran another test to see if users can still group all the items in our new groups, which provided technical terms was the issue.

Second Test) How Users Interacted with the Structure

After our rounds of sitemap revisions using the tool slickplan, we wanted to validate our sitemap again with our audiences. We used Treejack, a digital navigation tool that allow use to not only test the top level nav, but secondary and third levels of navigation. We conduct four rounds of testing focusing on only 10 individuals per audience. Each round we iterated focusing on where users clicked, improving task success as well as user directness. Our final sitemap scored 91% success rate, up from 13% from the first iteration.

Simplifying The Complexity

NOAA Fisheries site is more than a conveyor of marine life information and research, but offers a large variety types of information. From summaries of upcoming rules, archive of past rules, permits, funding opportunities, to various types of helpful resources. Each section had its own challenges for us to learn and develop automated solutions around. The goal was to automatic and simplify the content for users to locate as well as editors to post and manage.

Pushing For Dynamic Content

An unique aspect about NOAA Fisheries content is that their subject matter could cross over various topics and subtopics. Prior, content editors would duplicate information or manually link out overlapping information. This was one element NOAA Fisheries wanted to remove and streamline. As a result, we build topic templates that had auto populate feeds based on each custom tab in the template. Providing editor's the ability tag their content to have it display in specific tabs across the site. Now, Users can go into a topic and easily skim the lasted background information based sub-area of interest. Moreover, search and filter it down even more.

Simplifying Fishing Rules & Regulations

When it comes with the rules and regulation, there are a lot of nuances when trying to catch a fish. NOAA Fisheries does a great job interpreting the technical information posted on the Federal Registry for fisherman. We wanted to continue that message throughout all aspects of rules that NOAA Fisheries covers. As a result, we created key directory that allow fishermen to toggle between what matter most to them. Enabling them to view weekly fishing update, upcoming rule changes, or just view all the rules for the type of spices.

Expanding Species Profiles

The biggest draw to NOAA Fisheries site was their protected species profiles pages. Moreover, in our user testing we found that majority of users look for key information under species profile. This lead the push for expansion of species profiles. Currently, NOAA Fisheries only had profiles for protected species only and one of the five regions had for fish. We work together to create a new framework of common key information for these new revamp profiles. The goal is provided simple overview information for the general public, scientific area for the scientists, rules & regulation information for the fisherman and government employees. Furthermore, we provided them of simple species directory and category view, which never existed prior.

Designing For Success

Rapid Prototyping & Iteration

Communication and expectations are key to the success of any project. In order to maintain this throughout our project, we used Invision to create our flat designs into clickable prototypes. This allow the client to better visualize what their site will look and act like. Each week, we focused on key sections and deliver interactive designs, which would review and quickly iterate. However, as the project grew, we switch to Webflow, interactive web builder, to better showcase responsive design and better interaction. As a result, we had build an interactive reference for both the development team and stakeholders to use throughout the entire project.

Building a Design System

Consistency is the most important aspect of a site, especially larger projects like NOAA Fisheries. Inconsistencies in designs and layouts can create more complex, more code, longer load times, and increase maintenance and expansion. However, the solution is more than just online brand guidelines, but a documentation and implementation of all reusable components, templates, and styles. The style guide was first created in Sketch of all the modules/symbols, colors, and styles. We moved it to Webflow with more of site structure, which we are in the process of converting our templates to be component driven as well building a live style guide.

Road Mapping to Success

Prioritization is key in building and launching a successful project. Together we work with NOAA Fisheries to help narrow down their needs and wants to help stay pace with their timeline. Websites should never be considered done, but a work in progress that is always improving and innovating. In the upcoming years, we will be working with NOAA Fisheries in migrating their content. During that time, we will be working on new features and improvements making it more automatic and efficient for users and editors. Ensuring we are creating a creating user experience for both their visitors and the content editors.

• Read more about Good Mobile Experience Changes In Real Time

Good Mobile Experience Changes In Real Time

Since user experience is vital to the success of a web or mobile system, it is critical to establish feedback loops within the system to inform potential changes. There are multiple methods for effective feedback loops, both manual and automated the end result for either is establishing how users felt regarding their experience. 

Although user experience is somewhat subjective as a whole, metrics and analytics are one method that can provide objective feedback and insight into how effective the user experience trends may be. Analytics has traditionally been utilized for marketing purposes, informing strategy, implementations, and trends, however, more and more user-experience implementations are relying on this quantitative data source to aid in project research and design. Modern system analytics are key to tracking the user experience and should be reviewed daily when available. Utilizing the data effectively and efficiently through a well-designed system can successfully change a user’s experience (in some cases real-time) for the better.

This principle in practice:

In order to analyze metrics and data effectively, success objectives must first be established. How do you define success? To begin, here are some example goals for establishing a project’s user experience success:

Initially, one effective strategy to measure success of a project’s designed user experience is to select a few key metrics and focus on them over time. One of the most prominent issues with analytics is that without proper direction, they can become a distraction or just numbers without any context or actionable interpretation. Mobile analytics is data, which can provide valuable information when utilized in the way that furthers an agency's goals. The question then comes down to - what set(s) of analytics data is relevant in the context of the project? Why is the project gathering and tracking metrics to begin with? These are perfectly understandable questions and key to establishing an effective user experience feedback loop across any project.

These are high-level objectives that are established and agreed upon by the project’s organizational stakeholders as measures of success. With established success measures, here are some example categorizations of relevant user experience analytics implementations:

Notifiers provide continuously monitored information hourly, daily, or weekly. The analytics can be used to define specific issues or provide information supporting insight to further guide human behavior. Examples of potential notification analytics:

Identifiers are implemented analytics that are used in conjunction to better understand the overall human behavior and user experience. Identifiers fall under several categories themselves not limited to: traffic issues, technical issues, content related issues, navigation issues, and UI design issues. Some examples are below with their equivalent Google Analytics (GA) implementations as a starting point:

Once a targeted core set of analytics has been implemented and monitored, a basic feedback loop will have been established. The analytics and data can then be utilized by the project team to evaluate opportunities to improve user experience. Does the experience need to change? How should it change? Does the information available warrant additional user testing? Specifically, does it call for A/B testing?

 

• Read more about Cloud Computing: Our Interview with One-by-One Million

Our Interview

President of Mobomo, Ken Fang, did an interview with Sramana Mitra from One by One Million on cloud computing. Sramana Mitra: Let’s pick some uses cases that illustrate the types of applications that you are bringing on to this mobile cloud kind of configuration. What are some of the coolest and most impactful use cases that we could discuss?

Ken Fang: One big recent technical achievement of ours is with nasa.gov. This past August, there was a solar eclipse that basically traversed the United States over the course of six hours. It was a big event. Many people traveled to see and experience the solar eclipse. One of the things that our client wanted to do was make sure that people that couldn’t make the event could also participate. We helped them build out their website so that there were approximately 13 to 16 video streams anywhere from their broadcast to local stations. We were able to broadcast that and created a page where we would stream all the videos. People could change from channel to channel. The key thing there was that they really could not predict the overall traffic to the site. It was a huge amount of people. I think there were 12.1 million viewers. We had over 88 million visitors to the site over the course of the day. Some of the stream trumped the SuperBowl. We had three to four times the amount of online traffic as the SuperBowl. Putting that technical infrastructure as well as customer experience together is stuff that gets our team pretty excited.

• Read more about Mobomo Recognized As A Top 100 MBE®

CRMSDC Names Mobomo as One of the Best in Region

The Capital Region Minority Supplier Development Council announced last week that Mobomo was named a 2017 Top 100 MBE® winner. This award recognizes owners of minority business enterprises in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia who have demonstrated exceptional entrepreneurial accomplishments, a high level of professionalism, and have made substantial contributions to their community.

Mobomo, LLC, headquartered in Vienna, Virginia, is a premier web and mobile application design and engineer company that has extensive experience in working with federal agencies and commercial enterprises. Over the past five years, Mobomo has expanded presence in the federal sector by being named to three primary (USGS, NOAA, GSA) and many sub-primary (NASA, VA, Department of State) contracts. They have helped federal agencies and government entities such as NASA, USGS, and NOAA, NMFS to effective, cost-saving platforms that has saved the federal government millions of dollars. Commercially, Mobomo has worked with clients such as the USO, Gallup, The World Bank, Bozzuto and more to overcome technical challenges and revitalize their digital platforms. Having clients inside and outside of the beltway, Mobomo works to change technology and ultimately save the government and commercial enterprises money and time.

The Top 100 MBE Awards®, began in 2007 and evolved through a need to recognize and celebrate the creativity and innovation of regional MBEs who are role models and inspire the entire community. The Top 100 MBE Awards® will be presented at the CRMSDC’s 36th Annual Leaders and Legends Awards Ceremony, on November 2nd at the MGM National Harbor.

Sharon R. Pinder, CRMSDC’s president and CEO, says, “Our board of directors and our members congratulate the 2017 Top 100 MBEs® on their stellar accomplishments.”

CRMSDC is celebrating its 45th anniversary as a not-for-profit economic development organization supporting growth in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia through programs and services that help corporations enhance the diversity and innovation of their supply chains. CRMSDC connects corporate and government members to well established, certified minority-owned business enterprises.

This is accomplished through a rigorous process of certifying that MBE suppliers are at least 51% owned, controlled and operated by ethnic minorities; providing education and advice to certified businesses; and finally, creating strategic opportunities for corporate members and certified MBEs to connect for the purpose of doing business.

CRMSDC also operates two programs funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) grants: (1) The MBDA Business Center, Washington D.C., helps minority-owned firms create jobs, compete in the global economy and grow their businesses, and (2) The Federal Procurement Center which is the nation’s only federally-funded program solely dedicated to assisting MBEs in obtaining Federal contracts.

Together these three organization form the CRMSDC MBE Business Consortium, the largest provider of MBE support services in the region.

“It is indeed an honor to be recognized by CRMSDC as one of the top 100 MBEs in the Capital Region. I want to thank CRMSDC for their years of leadership in providing programs and services to connect MBEs with Corporate Members to create partnering and growth opportunities,” says Ken Fang, President of Mobomo.

• Read more about Cloud Migration Checklist

  Has your company decided to move to the cloud? Making the decision to migrate to the cloud is the easy part because there are so many positive benefits but now comes transferring the data which can be no easy feat. Think about migrating to the cloud as a process, one piece of the process builds off the last and once you have completed the process you have a successful migration! Take our cloud readiness assessment to see if your cloud migration initiative is moving in the right direction.   

Phase 1 Gather

Phase 2 Analyze

Phase 3 Plan

Phase 4 Execute

 

• Read more about Mobomo Sponsors Zombie Run

Zombie Run

We were thrilled to sponsor the second annual Hyattsville Zombie Run 5K on October 14th! The Halloween themed 5K race is USATF certified and timed, and the 1 Mile Kids’ Challenge and 1K Family Fun Run are opportunities for everyone to participate. People dressed up as a zombie or any Halloween costume that added to the fun! All races started and finished at Magruder Park.

The event is hosted by the Hyattsville Elementary School PTA and proceeds support HES, including the purchase of art supplies, musical instruments, coats for students, field trips, teacher professional development, and more.

• Read more about Factors that Impact your Mobile App Development Budget

In today’s world everyone is connected with their mobile device. Many companies incorporate a mobile app into their digital strategy in order to stay connected with their users.

We have talked about why your company should have a mobile app, the benefits are endless but what about the cost to design and develop a mobile app? Each app is different which means that the price points vary based on what the client found as a priority.

We outlined some important factors that may increase the cost of your mobile app - these certainly are not the only things that can impact a budget.

• Read more about Is Your Company Moving To The Cloud?

There are so many benefits of migrating to the cloud, many want to reduce cost while others want to improve their efficiencies. We get a lot of questions surrounding cloud migration so we decided to do a short Q & A - we know there are tons of questions that could be answered but this was our shortlist.

Why are so many businesses moving communications to the cloud?

Cloud infrastructure provides tools and reporting capabilities that need to be implemented as a central service to manage and report on software inventory and costing. Cost savings is a key benefit of cloud computing. Being able to dynamically inventory provisioned resources and services and match them with costing formulas, ensures continual insight into cloud expenses and continued ability to lower total cost of ownership.

What are the pain points that cloud adoption can address for cost-conscious, efficiency-minded IT and Ops teams?

Moving to the cloud requires a cost accounting model that can support charging for on-demand, dynamic infrastructure, as opposed to one that is based on purchasing dedicated hardware and depreciating it. Cloud infrastructure provides tools and reporting capabilities that need to be implemented as a central service to manage and report on software inventory and costing.

What is the tipping point for a business (your business) to make the move to the cloud?

Looks like you have done a thorough analysis of cloud environments in conjunction with physical data center options, matching application requirements and migration strategies to the appropriate environment capabilities. In addition, each application has a migration roadmap with pros, cons, and risks analyzed. That is a fantastic start to ensure a successful migration to the cloud. Prior to migration, your organization should perform a competitive analysis of various cloud options vs. physical data centers. Identify the risks and costs of migration and determine the migration strategy for each application: re-host, re-platform, repurchase, refactor / re-architect, retire, retain

What ramifications does this move have for IT/Ops/the organization?

To take full advantage of the cloud, both leadership and operational staff need to be trained in cloud best practices, communication transparency, and metric based accountability. The organization should have a plan to hire to cover any gaps. Your organization's deep understanding of cloud operations and the new skills needed to successfully maximize the value of new cloud environments will ensure success. Having already started training existing staff and recruiting new leaders is a good sign.

How does it impact end users and employees?

To take full advantage of the cloud, both leadership and operational staff need to be trained in cloud best practices, communication transparency, and metric based accountability. The organization should have a plan to hire to cover any gaps.Incentives for employees facing dramatic role changes should be implemented to ensure the organization embraces the training required for the new cloud capabilities. A strategy should be developed to identify alternate positions for resistant employees to prevent time and money costs. Moving to the cloud requires a cost accounting model that can support charging for on-demand, dynamic infrastructure, as opposed to one that is based on purchasing dedicated hardware and depreciating it. If you have questions that weren't answered, get in touch.

• Read more about How Can Cloud Computing Companies Transition From Agile To DevOps Principles?

Transitioning from Agile to DevOps 

Some ask if transitioning from Agile to DevOps principles requires a new consideration of deployment and hosting infrastructure. Many have been asking the question of "what are some best practices for companies that want to address the concern of how cloud computing companies transition from Agile to DevOp principles?" In actuality Agile and DevOps can be combined versus having to choose one methodology over another.

Check out the below Q & A to learn how they these two methodologies can complement each other. 

How can cloud companies best address the concerns of Agile and DevOps?

It is a misconception that Agile and DevOps principles have tension with each other. Rather, they each encompass a separate set of principles that apply to different parts of the software development life cycle.

Agile and DevOps principles can be successfully blended to ensure reliable, rapid and on-time deployments of working software.

Agile methodology stresses the immediacy of working software over comprehensive documentation, and embraces constant change pursued through short, rapid iterations of software development rather than well-defined "final" products.

DevOps, on the other hand, governs how the resulting software is tested, secured, deployed, and maintained as seamlessly as possible. DevOps is not an alternative or a response to Agile, but is best seen as a complement to Agile, which allows rapid release cycles that are secure, reliable and error-free.

What are the best practices and key advice for progressive IT teams?

Implementing DevOps often requires constructing a toolset based on cloud computing models, in that it advocates automation and repeatability of every aspect of the deployment process from the moment new code is committed to a project.

Continuous integration workflows are then constructed, using a variety of scripts and automation tools like Jenkins, which build the cloud components necessary to serve the application, configured from a central repository (using a configuration management suite like Ansible, Chef or Puppet) ensuring each deployment is identical, therefore minimizing the potential for human error.

Automated testing is another critical ingredient in the DevOps toolkit. From unit tests which confirm the functionality of individual snippets of code, to functional and integration tests, which verify that functional requirements are satisfied by the latest release without regressions.

DevOps thinking ensures that every deployment is as error-free as possible, all without the heavy workload of constant manual testing.

This focus on testing and infrastructure-as-code can align well with Agile's focus on rapid deployment in that it automates the most time-consuming portions of the software release process and allows developers to spend less time worrying about bug fixes and environmental differences, and more time implementing new features.

Simultaneously, it allows product owners to be confident in deployments, knowing that automated test cases are constantly checking for regressions, and CI/CD (continuous integration / continuous deployment) processes will reject a build that contains errors.

The fact that the cloud infrastructure is created from code at the time of the deployment is an important check that applications will function identically in test/development, staging/QA and production environments.

How can a new DevOps structure be best adapted for developers who have been using Agile for a while?

From a developer's perspective, implementing DevOps requires little change in workflow from an existing Agile mindset. The same focus on rapid deployment exists and work can be broken into Agile sprints or scrum periods according to the needs of the team and product owner.

The additional expectations that DevOps places on developers is that all committed code will be automatically tested for unit (functional and integration performance before being automatically deployed) and rejected if it does not pass all regression tests.

Thus, developers may need time to embrace a TDD (test-driven development) approach and write tests as a prerequisite to building the code that satisfies them.

Should there be an overlapping period of Agile and DevOps and if so, how long should the overlap be?

Since Agile and DevOps are not mutually exclusive, they can be blended together over time, with more DevOps thinking added onto a functioning Agile workflow to continue to narrow the gap between development and operations.

Both approaches stress communication within the team, although there are cultural disagreements about the level of specialization (Agile stresses that each member of the team be a jack-of-all-trades while DevOps tends to allow for more specialized roles such as systems architect, security expert, etc.) and the best way to schedule work: Agile favors dividing into short, rapidly repeated time chunks while DevOps focuses more on stability over the long term.

Again, these approaches are not contradictory but can be blended to ensure that software is delivered as rapidly and reliably as possible.

The level of automation involved in a DevOps workflow may be unfamiliar to developers who are new to the methodology, but it soon becomes apparent that all of the automated testing, code verification, and deployment processes can ultimately free developers up to do what they do best, which is build new features for the product owner.

What tools do you use or software solutions?

Mobomo works with both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure as our primary providers of cloud services. We utilize our deep experience in open-source technology to deliver DevOps toolsets based on Linux with Ansible code-based provisioning, and orchestration with Jenkins.

Automated functional testing is done with Selenium coupled with Gherkin-based test frameworks such as Behat and Lettuce. We rely heavily on scripting languages like Python, Ruby and Bash to connect these toolsets together and provide a robust DevOps workflow to deploy code seamlessly and reliably, on a velocity that is fully compatible with Agile best practices.

What are your yardsticks for success?

Time of release from code commit to production readiness; client acceptance of new features; number of bugs caught by automated testing frameworks for each release; number of bugs missed by automated testing and reported after the fact; total downtime, service interruptions and other SLA violations resulting from unanticipated infrastructure issues, either deployment-related or due to poor planning; etc.

How long do you pursue a DevOps strategy before calling it off as a failure and moving back to Agile? Is there no turning back?

Given that Agile and DevOps are not mutually exclusive, there is no need to "call off" a DevOps transition and go "back" to Agile. Rather, they can be combined in ways that reinforce each other, with Agile functioning as the development team's methodology while DevOps provides the backbone for the cloud deployment, security, networking and testing aspects of the engineering process. Thus, disruptions are minimized by DevOps which allow Agile to provide rapid iterations of working software.

 

• Read more about iOS 11 Launched, What This Means For Your App

Earlier this month, Apple held its September event and announced some exciting things involving releases of their new software and hardware! We knew the iOS 11 update was going to launch September 19th but what has the software update meant for apps in the App Store? According to Tech Insider, more than 180,000 iPhone apps are not compatible with the iOS 11 update and it is possible that Apple will stop supporting up to 200,000 apps.  If your company has an app that is currently in the App Store - contact us for a free analysis to ensure that your mobile app is compatible with the new updates. Regardless if your users or target audience has an older version of the iPhone and downloaded the iOS 11 update or if they purchase the new iPhone X or iPhone 8 there’s a good chance that your mobile app will still need to be updated in order to comply with App Store regulations. We talked about the preparations you should take for the release of iOS 11, but now that it has launched, what’s the real impact?

64 Bit Processors

Apple did give fair warning, they made it clear that they will no longer be supporting 32-bit apps within the App Store long before the iOS 11 release. Eliminating apps that are 32-bit seems to have been the most significant change because they will be eliminated from the App Store all together. In 2013, Apple started using the 64 bit processor and encouraged developers to run apps on this faster technology but it was by no means required in order for an app to exist in the App Store. The 64-bit is safer even though it seems more complicated. When searching in the new app store, you will not find 32-bit apps. This means that all apps running on 32-bits have to be updated.

App Optimization

App Names   The name of your app is critical because this is how users will find you - app names have a 30 character limit versus 50. However, Apple did add a short subtitle field that appears directly below the app name - this is a 30 character limit but will allow you to highlight features of your app.   App Description Up until now, Apple allowed developers to change an app’s description at any time. In the new App Store, you can only change the description when you’re submitting a new version of your app. It’s vital that your app description conveys the message accurately and concisely to persuade users to download the app. It is unclear as to when you can update your app description once your app has been submitted to the app store. A new addition to this is a new promotional text field, it appears at the top of the app description and is limited to 170 characters. The promotional text should highlight the latest news about your app, which you can update without having to submit an entirely new version of your app. App Reviews In iOS 11, Apple will disallow custom review prompts in all apps and instead provide its own API that you can add to your app. This will allow the user to submit their review within the app but the developers are only allowed to prompt a user for a review three times per year.  Aside from custom review prompts, users can open their settings and opt out of receiving these rating prompts for all apps they have installed. It could be time for you to consider another option in order to tell who really likes your app.

App Design

Apps will no longer scale as perfectly as they used to - especially when an app is viewed on the iPhone 8 or X. Design tweaks may be needed to ensure your app has the best look and feel for users on this new platform, some of the biggest changes are the following:

What do these releases mean for companies that have an app in the App Store? For starters, make sure that your app is meeting App Store requirements. If you have an app in the App Store and you are not sure if it meets Apple’s new standards, you should have your app evaluated to make sure it is compliant with the new App Store enhancements.