Contextual

Category: Onboarding

  • Enterprise Mobility – onboarding the remote workforce

    Unstoppable Mobilized Workforce Trends

    The size of the global mobile workforce is approximately 59% of the whole workforce or approximately 1.76 billion, but only a small percentage of this workforce currently uses mobile devices to complete work related tasks.

    This shows there is a huge opportunity for growth in the enterprise use of mobile Apps. According to Deloitte*, in Europe alone there is the possibility that 45% or 100 Million workers could use their mobile device as their primary work device.

    However until recently, companies have been focused on creating shiny consumer applications and haven’t focused on creating mobile enterprise Apps. As companies start to develop more enterprise Apps, the way that people work will be transformed and the process benefits of mobile technology will blossom**.

    Challenges in Mobilized Workforce

    The early challenges of remote mobile devices were intrastructure and security based. Issues like App deployment, device theft protection, remote wipe, BYOD lockdown etc. These have largely have now been solved with MDM/EMM*** platforms like “Mobile Iron” making this easy for corporates.

    With this solved the next phase of deploying Apps and Onboarding is key – The challenge will be educating the mobile workforce on how to use and get the most out of the applications.

    Delloite’s study states employees most benefited by B2B mobile Apps are low skilled/high turnover staff and skilled industrial employees that work in the field.

    These types of roles will get the most value out of using mobile Apps if they are onboarded to Apps effectively. They have a greater need for company and job related information, communication with peers and information about suppliers, stock levels. Many of the applications will be central to:

    • Their job function
    • Customer satisfaction
    • Inclusion in corporate news and culture (which is a growing issue with de-centralized workforces of all types).

    Use Cases

    Credit: safetyculture.com

    Two examples below to explain common Enterprise App use cases:

    1. Field workers, such as builders, telco technicians or sales staff. They will be able to perform tasks from their mobile devices such as:
    • Accessing job related information in real time
    • They need to be able to log the work they have done
    • See what jobs are next and link to calendar
    • Check on stock levels internally and from external suppliers.
    • Manage timesheets, leave requests, expense claims
    • And communicate with their peers

    This process wants to be as smooth as possible, teaching the workers how to get the most out the Apps while they are using them is a great way of doing this. Companies might deploy their own Apps but examples of commercial Apps are: Handshake (Sales Orders), Safetyculture (Quality and Inspections) and of course Salesforce1 (sales/CRM)

    1. Retail staff,  mobile devices are enabling them to be decoupled from fixed POS desks, they can now complete tasks on their phone such as:
    • process sales,
    • look up stock,
    • Communicate with employees
    • Manage job allocation
    • Automate timesheet management.

    This will lead to more knowledgeable sales staff that can add more value to the company. Companies might deploy their own Apps but examples of commercial Apps are: Deputy (retail staff and rostering) and Tulip (Retail Assisted selling, on-floor checkout).

    There are many other sectors and use-cases undergoing change:

    • Previously single purpose platforms using ruggedized devices for deliveries are going through a generational change:
      • From Windows CE or proprietary software to Android Tablets. This is largely being driven by a new strategic direction from Microsoft.
      • The worker now has access to a broader range of Apps on their work device.
      • Access to delivery information from tablet or even the ability to link deliveries to  phone details and calling.
    • Warehousing and logistics now has access to Tablet devices that support RFID, NFC, Barcode
    Credit: zebra.com

    Why Onboarding is Important

    In both of these examples the challenges will be similar:

    1. Get the staff to use the mobile Apps
    2. Teaching the workers how to use the Apps.

    Traditionally costs of onboarding a new staff member was restricted to their core job function, they were physically trained by bringing them into a regional office to undergo induction. With technology and competition a worker can get started completely remotely and be productive earlier AS LONG AS they get some education and on-boarding in the Apps.

    Deployment and Rollout

    Having a well thought out onboarding process and inApp training helps to solve the second challenges. This is where Contextual can help, by adding educational in App walk-throughs, pop ups, carousels and tooltips, you can reduce the new user friction by reducing the learning curve for new staff.

    This also allows the App developers to focus on the core functionality/features of the products, while the line-of-business managers (or process owners) can work on improving engagement.

    Why not Web?

    Lastly, many (or most!) enterprises have recently re-built Apps for their workforce to access via a browser – write once, run anywhere (The older folks amongst us will remember the browser based terms “Intranet” and “Extranet”). But – a high percentage of recently rebuilt server applications will already support the REST Framework making them close to ready for Mobile Apps to access and present data to users.

    The major benefits of Mobility via Apps over “extranet” browser UI’s are:

    • Great UI and gestures
    • Local storage and caching for speed
    • Continued operation in low connectivity areas (rural coverage, urban deadspots, building like lifts)

     

    What about the ‘gig’ economy?

    I did have gig economy in the back of my mind whilst writing this, we did do some validation with Uber and Lyft for the onboarding of their drivers. These businesses which offer elastic on-demand drivers, food deliveries, child-minding, dog-walkers and odd-jobs are rapidly becoming real businesses and will need the ability to rapidly onboard the remote elastic staff to their Apps. The recent court cases with Uber imply that the relationship is company<–>contractor, so the need for “intranet” App access is likely less than enterprises.

    Gig companies also seem strongly bifurcated from traditional enterprise. I can’t imagine a major cable company or electricity utility out-sourcing ad-hoc to TaskRabbit or Airtasker for installs 🙂

    So it would be interesting to know which enterprises do use gig products as extranet employees. If you know any examples, please drop me a note (david at pointzi dot com).

    * The full report  – Deloitte 2018 TMT predictions can be found at https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/tmt-predictions.html

    ** This may be old news to some of our development partners – but the wheels of industry move slowly and there are many business processes yet to be re-engineered for remote workers with mobile devices.

    *** MDM – Mobile Device Management and EMM – Enterprise Mobility Management.

  • How Tile increased activation from 29% to 60%

    We love the folks at Ramotion**, they are a great design house and they have a post about how Tile get more users to actually setup their product.

    If you are not familiar with Tile, they are one of many bluetooth trackers that help you find your keys, your phone and anything else you want to tag. 

    According to Tile, the average person spends 60 HOURS EVERY YEAR looking for misplaced things. They say: “Our little Bluetooth tracker, paired with our intuitive app, makes it easy to find everything that matters.”

    How Ramotion helped Tile

    When you think about it, 29% is very low for user’s who have purchased (or been given) a Tile, they must have been motivated to have it. 

    So the Ramotion folk’s goal was to make an interface that made this process as intuitive as possible, so, in the App, they made a short clip demonstrating activation on iPhone and Android.

    This video at the right shows how they achieved it by allowing the user to follow the setup process.

    Getting an uplift of another 31% is a huge win, because once the user has one Tile, its likely they will want to get more!

    Doing this in Contextual without code

    We followed the idea and made a quick similar example with Contextual, mocking up something with an existing video we got from Giphy for a soft drink. 

    We tried to mimick the simplicity of their design in our demo.

    You get the idea – it took us about 15 minutes and no need to release an update to the App!

    https://vimeo.com/316027551

    ** We love Ramotion so much we incorporated their carousels into Contextual. See here for more info.

  • Slack’s Onboarding Carousel is short-sharp and on-message

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    Slack is one of the fastest growing companies in history taking only 2 years to get to $1B valuation. Their 2017 round was based on a $200M ARR and resulted in a $5B valuation – so based on real-enterprise value, not just hype. Here is a chart of their stellar growth.

    onboarding carousel

    Te really great thing about slack is that you can get started and feel the impact of chat very quickly, just like the experience you had when you started with DropBox. You can be started and chatting with Slack while Skype is still loading 😉

    So in the spirit of speed Slack give new App users a fun-designed Onboarding Carousel that reiterates the key reasons for using the product and then gets out of the way. Here is how it looks.

    onboarding carousel - example slack 1
    onboarding carousel - example slack 2
    carousel - example slack 3

    Style

    The design is playful, remisniscent of their product icon colours and the solid colours don’t distract from the key messages.

    This might just be a great case study for B2B Apps that don’t want to style to trump substance. For B2C Apps, there is an assumption that some eye-candy needs to be present in the carousel but in B2B its important that the functionality is the hero.

    Buttons and Swiping

    On each page of the carousel, the exit for the user is consistent:

    • sign in to a team 
    • OR create a team

    Having different buttons on different pages would be confusing so this design allows the user to escape the onboarding carousel with only the two call-to-actions that matter.

    The “CREATE A TEAM” call-to-action is unique to Slack but pivotal to the main use-case that MIGHT happen. I’d suspect that many Product Managers would think that mobile users would never create a team, so this step could be easily over-looked.

    Messaging and Text

    As implied by our post’s title, the text is perfect product positioning based on how a user’s JTBD (Jobs to be Done) mindset would be – they want to (1) talk to groups and (2) talk one-on-one.

    They don’t fluff about with other things like uploading images, snippets or linking docs. They will allow the user to discover that later.

    In fact in a post called “How Slack blends productivity and delight”​ the author discusses that “Principle 1: Put people, not features, first.” informs their design decisions. This Principle clearly impacts the wording they use. 

    I love the clarity and simplicity of this communication.

    Making Slack’s onboarding carousel with Contextual

    In this quick 3minute video, John shows how to create a carousel just like Slack with needing to get you developers involved. The benefits are:

    • free your developers to do more important app features and fixes
    • no need for an Appstore release
    • change the content at will.
    • measure the results and engagement.

    https://vimeo.com/269130715

    What about tips?

    Slack also use tips and tours once you are inside the App and we cover this is a separate blog post. Their rollout of threaded conversations was interesting in using phased tips.

    Are you looking to get more users to love your mobile and web apps? You can onboard users just like the bigs guys but without a big budget! Click on the buttons below to get your 14 day free trial or contact us for a demo! 


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  • Reminding users of a screen’s purpose

    You know that whilst carousels are cute, that most users just swipe through them ignoring the message. So its interesting to see how Twitch provide an inApp popup to remind the user in a more contextual way.

    If you are NOT a gamer and if you don’t know Twitch, then you are really missing out on the future of entertainment. Its definitely worth downloading and trying to figure out what the hell is going on!

    Take a look at these neat first-time popups.



    These are cool, they:

    • show in the right place right time
    • stand out with a cool design
    • easily get out of the way once you’ve glanced at the message.
    • dont block the context of the screen

    This seems much more useful and contextual than the following two screenshots that are shown in the start-time carousel.

    These carousel pages are cute but:

    1. they don’t really show the page what they really look like
    2. they stand in front of the register/login page which is a huge cognitive barrier the user has to get through. Signing in on mobile sucks and the user will have forgotten what the carousel said once they figure out user name, lookup or think back to the last time they used their unique (hehe) password.

    So its really hard to know why they showed these screens at all on the carousel, it just seems wasteful. The habit and expectation of carousels is very ingrained until Product Managers realize there is a cleaner, more contextual way to onboard users.

  • iPad, Tablets coming or going in workplace Apps?

    iPad and Tablet apps are going strong in Retail POS, Retail Shop Assistants, Field Service Applications, Healthcare and design niches.

    There are many great examples doing well, just to name a few:

    Retail https://tulip.com/
    https://myagi.com/
    Field/Workforce https://happy.co/ (Inspections)
    https://www.handshake.com/ (Sales Orders)
    https://safetyculture.com/ (Safety/Quality Audits)
    https://www.deputy.com/ (Rostering and Tasks)
    Health vitalpac (now systemc) (Clinical Patient Care)
    POS many, many including
    http://kounta.com/
    http://vend.com/

    One compelling reason for success is once you put an app on a customer device you get lockin. Its psychologically more compelling than a mere web SaaS App.

    SOE vs BYOD

    Tablet Apps are being deployed because of the benefits of:

    1. the aforementioned “lockin”
    2. Better UI and input models
    3. UI speed
    4. Offline capabilities
    5. Shared viewing experience with the customer

    Problem is….this has practical BYOD vs SOE challenges:

    1. This requires a hardware investment and a commitment to administration of company property (SOE).
    2. Employees would prefer to just carry one device…their own device (BYOD).
    3. Practically, for many other use-cases, if it won’t fit in your pocket, then it won’t be used.

    The result is: most of these Apps have to support both Portrait Phones and Landscape tablets.

    Fat Apps and Feature Onboarding

    Tablet Apps have a form-factor that allows them the “feature richness” of Desktop Web Apps.

    More features are possible on the form-factor but don’t really work on the phone – things get cramped.  Luckily responsive design methods, tools are widespread for developers – particularly for Native Apps but also for React Native.

    When an App is in Tablet Landscape mode, you can show more features and let the user know they are available. This is a good reason to to do “Progressive Onboarding” to introduce feature when a user is ready.

    Enterprise Apps

    One of the largest under-reported growth areas in Apps is the enterprise “intranet”. This ancient term was popular in the ’90s and early 2000s because companies were rolling out more solutions around their own business processes that were accessed via browser rather than proprietary Windows Apps or Terminal sessions.

    History now repeats and splits into two types:

    • Internal Apps (written by or for the company)
    • SaaS Apps (written by a vendor that solves a broad business application – e.g Salesforce, Jira, Workday etc)

    Both classes also split again into three types:

    • Web Only
    • Web and Mobile (like the examples at the top)
    • Mobile Only

    A whole class of development agencies have emerged that primarily monetize the “Mobile Only” model – as consumer Mobile Apps proved notoriously difficult to make money on and retain users, developers earned their place providing business solutions for enterprise Apps.

    Existing web development shops have mostly tried to deliver mobile-web and hybrid apps, that is getting a lot better as React Native gives a better Javascript coded experience than Cordovea/Phonegap.

    My expectation is that we will see a lot more Tablet enabled applications with React Native under the hood, Contextual is well-progressed to support that. I’m not sure what is happening with Xamarin, its still active but a lot of developers must be thinking that React Native is going to look better on their CV and companies will see more support options from the market. Visual Studio (Microsoft’s development environment/IDE) has some support for React Native and a community supplied bundle here.

    Product Managers should keep tabs on React Native support and do some small test projects to see where the gaps are. One of the gaps is broad SDK support for tools already being used in their native deployments.

    Phablet vs Tablet

    However, in 2017, developers and customers tell me they saw a drop as Phone screens (iPhone 8+, iPhone X, Nexus 6 ‘phablet’ etc) got larger and higher resolution.

    Consumers love tablets but they already have one at home where they use it for lean-back use-cases like Video and News.

    Tablet sales dropped 8.5% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to last year. Apple’s iPad dropped 13.5% in sales compared to 2016.

    Because of the SOE vs BYOD tension in the workplace, many employers don’t have a compelling need to hand out iPads in the workplace because the Phablets are doing a pretty-good-job for most intranet applications and tablet form-factor retreats to the use-cases showcased in the first paragraph.

    I’ve also heard Microsoft Surface increasing in popularity in the enterprise as many companies undergo the generational change from Windows desktops/laptops to the Surface hybrid experience.

    So I expect that:

    1. iPads and  tablets in the workplace will be niche applications and
    2. ReactNative will be a dominant emerging enterprise development platform. This becomes even more true if the Windows trend gets traction – and why wouldn’t it?

    The elephant in the room is that Apple is merging iOS and OS/X and the iPad Mini didn’t get refreshed in 2017. You’d have to expect that Apple wants to counter Microsoft Surface with something unified for all enterprise Applications. Something like an iPad Pro with detachable keyboard.