Category Archives: User Experience

Mobile Apps, User Experience

LandmarkShops now has an iPhone app!

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Earlier this year, I became part of the Landmark Group’s Web Team, based out of Dubai. The team that started off being the digital custodian for group companies, is now leading the eCommerce and Omni-channel initiatives for the largest retail group in the region.

We’ve had our Android & iPad apps for a while now and for the last few months, we’ve been working on a brand new design that we’re rolling out through a brand new app for the iPhone. I had the opportunity to directly work with Savitar, our Business Head and Creative Director. With him involved, there was a ton to learn right from user experience to writing this blog post. Read more at the Web Team’s Official Blog.

LAUNCH: The official LandmarkShops iPhone app! – Web Team @ Landmark Group

It’s been an exciting time here at LandmarkShops. Over the course of the last year, we’ve worked hard to deliver a true Omni-Channel experience to our customers. We know how much our users love to shop on their mobile devices with our iPad and Android apps.

This week, I’ve had major releases for all products in my portfolio: the LandmarkShops iPhone app, a CMS-powered  LandmarkRewards.in for our 7 million strong loyalty program in India, and an update to the Shukran Android & iOS apps. That’s a lot of action in just 6 months since I joined. I’m relieved and off to a  vacation!

I am part of the Landmark Group’s Web Team and my Product Management portfolio includes leading mobile apps for LandmarkShops in UAE & India, and all digital engagement channels for Shukran – web, mobile, in-store engagement. More on LinkedIn

Internet & Web-apps, User Experience

BitStore: the simplest app to store & access bits of information

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Full-text search & inline display of information are key differentiators
Full-text search & inline display of information are key differentiators

In the last couple of years that I’ve owned an Anrdoid, I’ve tried everything from ColorNotes to Any.Do to store small bits of information. Trivial stuff such as

  • daily medicine dosage
  • recipe of my favorite sub (which my wife needs me to text every time)
  • frequent flyer / loyalty membership numbers
  • utility / bank account numbers, etc.

Such information that needs to be handy is usually lost under complex navigation menus. I’ve seen folks saving this information as draft messages (SMS) or even using memos which does not allow tags & full-text search. And that’s precisely the problem I tried to solve with Bitstore.

Download BitStore*

My hands were yearning to write some code and this couldn’t have been a better time to try out mobile app development with PhoneGap. Before this, I did try installing the Android SDK but the learning curve seemed quite steep, and after all, my purpose wasn’t to develop coding skills. PhoneGap with jQuery mobile & Jasmine for unit testing Continue reading BitStore: the simplest app to store & access bits of information →

User Experience

Jargon: Graceful Degradation

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Graceful Degradation, in computing, denotes the fault tolerance capability of a system, technology or product. In web-designing, it refers to blocking advanced features, that cannot be handled by older browsers, without garbling the display or generating errors. Forward compatibility as offered by HTML, is a nice way of browsers ignoring stuff that cannot be understood. In multimedia, it demands bit-rate adaptation based on available bandwidth, without jitter or freezing.