Alterplay

In spite of the fact that our main profile is iOS, we like to try ourselves in the related fields, especially when asked by our dear loyal customers.

This time we have a task of building a web control panel for mobile system, which is intended for collaborative work with corporative documents. Although we have wide experience in developing web systems, it is the first time we are dealing with control panel, which makes the task even more interesting.

Since we work with the iOS part of the system for a long time, we already have learned our target audience portrait; therefore we straight away proceeded to writing the user stories – small notes describing all possible variants of using a control panel. So, the list of user stories compiled, classified by subject and object, and confirmed with the client.

As the next step we had to choose, as to say, a form factor of the system – and it was decided on all hands, that it should be the HTML5 web application – which creates much better user experience comparing to classical control panels. Web-application implies operation in the browser without reloading the web page, which significantly increases responsiveness and operation speed of the entire system UI, at the same time minimizing total traffic on server.

The next stage is building interactive HTML wireframe prototype, and, before proceeding to this stage, we had carried out a research of the existing ideas, which we would like to share with you.

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This is a great presentation by Henrik Kniberg from Crisp describing Agile software development from the perspective of the Product Owner. It’s really awesome and definitely a worthwhile 15 minutes investment for anyone.

Share it with your team!

Looplr — a social network focusing on video content. Slogan “Shoot, Share & Watch” caused genuine interest to the project immediately.

The main feature is quite simple – to make a video on your device and instantly share them with the Looplr community. Despite this, plenty of extra features and a requirement to support iPhone and Android have turned the daily job to an interesting and difficult process of redesign with a full cycle – from the discussion of business targets to slicing graphics for developers.

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It’s well-known how important and useful application prototypes are. Many of them are penciled on paper sheets, many are created in the graphic editors, but if you create prototypes for your iPhone or iPad in the Axure, as we do, then our iOS Wireframe widgets library will be very helpful. Despite the fact that it is only the first version of the library, it does a lot of wonderful things:

• Full-screen interactive application prototypes for the iPhone and iPad, which are run from the Home Screen (springboard) of your device
• Beautiful custom icon of an application prototype
• Library of standard UI parts, most of which are interactive
• Modal and popover windows
• Different scrollable lists
• Interactive Google Map with pins
• All parts are easily scaled and configured
• A detail usage instructions

Instructions and download page.

In Alterplay we are happy to use this library in all our projects and we plan to develop and support it. Wish a successful prototyping! ;)

We are glad to present you our brand–new app for the iPhone — Jeans Currency Converter Know Rates. We’ve been working hard for a few months to make each pixel perfect. We’re trying to make each function as simple as possible.

So now we believe Know Rates is the best because:
✔ Absolutely simple to use
✔ Awesome design and sound effects
✔ Horizontal express mode
✔ 161 world currencies
✔ Skins for everyday

Download for FREE!

We continue to grow in design. A special section with our design works for mobile apps will be opened on the main website soon. In the meantime want to show the freshly popular video player design for the iPhone and theiPad - OPlayer 2.0 и OPlayer HD 2.0.

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Last year we made a design for the FastPDFKit team. We were playing with its component and everything was good except appearance. So we made it looks better for our self and offer the solution to MobFarm. Since that FastPDFKit has nice appearance: both iPhone and iPad.

Our design team is growing. Now we’re opened to design your the most interesting world changing apps.

A few months ago I suggested ShareKit community to create ShareKit 2.0. The only reason was ShareKit is highly demanded and the original author had no time to develop the project — last commit by Nov 22 2010. There are 289 forks and tens of ignored pull requests and many–many issues generated by community. All these had proved situation was deadlocked.

So I posted a suggestion and sent a few private messages to most active participants. Fortunately some good people found idea worthy. ShareKit/ShareKit was found as a community and just gathered core team defined Policies.

4 months later. Read more…

We’ve released a tiny app. It’s based on of multiple-choice questions designed to revise your knowledge and readiness to pass ACCA F3 Financial Accounting. You will get feedback on your answers, breakdown of your score and process of your revision.

The main target is to increase your chance of success on yours force coming exam. Tests are provided by our ACCA certified friend.

It’s an experiment app in two senses. Firstly we tried our force to design and develop very quickly and efficiently. I’d say it’s achieved by 80%. Secondly we want to get a proof of concept. So if the hypothesis confirmed, we will develop a set of applications in more interesting forms.

Good luck on your exams!