Consulting bites

Our software development and UX/UI design teams share insights from their real-world experience with customer projects - from modernizing complex legacy systems to scaling software development teams to writing clean code and applying design thinking principles.

Hands-on bite-size advice at your fingertips!

#ux/ui design

Keep your users close

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

Keep your users close

Being the Product Manager means you should know your product inside out. However, do not let that get to your head when it comes to knowing the product’s users. The users’ needs, environments and behaviors are not a constant, so try not to think, “The users will love this” or “The users will hate this.” Instead, use qualitative and quantitative methods to gather data showing what your users think and feel.

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#development

API development in a full-stack software project

Veli Pehlivanov
CTO

#development

API development in a full-stack software project

When both your front-end and back-end are developed simultaneously, make sure the API is at least two weeks ahead in development in a full-stack software project. Your back-end developers should provide stable API endpoints for the GUI when your front-end developers need to get some data from the server.

These early API endpoints don't have to return production data (mocked data works just fine), but their API signature should be stable so that the UI is not redone repeatedly as the API evolves.

Early collaboration between front-end and back-end engineers is critical when designing the API. Efficient full-stack development teams eliminate double work by ensuring the API meets the UI requirements early in the design phase.

Veli Pehlivanov
CTO

#ux/ui design

It’s always a good time to test and validate

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

It’s always a good time to test and validate

When designing a new screen, feature or product, usability testing is not only a stage of the process. It is an ongoing means to keep you on the right track and distinguish what works well for your customer and what does not. Take the time to test with users and validate assumptions at each step to produce the best possible solution for the customers.

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

Communicate with your designer to keep the project on track

Gergana Milusheva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

Communicate with your designer to keep the project on track

One of the most important aspects of designing for a new project is the direct communication between the designer and the client. Once the overall direction is established, it’s useful to divide the project into separate tasks.

Gergana Milusheva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

Invest in a design system as early as possible

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

Invest in a design system as early as possible

Users adapt more quickly to a product if its layout, components, and behavior are familiar. Material, Human Interface, Carbon, and Polaris are design systems widely used in software.

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#development

Containerization for application modernization

Bulent Karaahmed
VP of Engineering

#development

Containerization for application modernization

When modernizing legacy applications with containerization, avoid applications with many dependencies, components, or tiers. Instead, begin with a 2-3 tier application first until you are comfortable with the containerization process before moving to more complex applications.  

Bulent Karaahmed
VP of Engineering

#development

Clean code is future-proof

Borislav Kulov
Enginering Lead

#development

Clean code is future-proof

Always strive to write clean code. Properly structure your code into modules, interfaces, classes, services, etc. Use meaningful names for your types. Use code comments only for complex algorithms. Clean code is easier to read and maintain in the long run. And finally - writing clean code leads to faster and better code reviews, fewer errors in the code and faster bug resolution.

Borislav Kulov
Enginering Lead

#development

Microservices in a containerized app

Bulent Karaahmed
VP of Engineering

#development

Microservices in a containerized app

Don't underestimate the need for active monitoring, logging & continuous reainess checks of microservices in a containerized application. They are a must for production, and you should estimate their implementation in advance.

Bulent Karaahmed
VP of Engineering

#development

Effective teams build efficient systems

Veli Pehlivanov
CTO

#development

Effective teams build efficient systems

The efficiency of the system you build is a function of your team’s communication effectiveness – a restatement of Conway’s law – identifies the effective communication of your team as the most important prerequisite for a successful software project. Invest early into building the right team, removing communication barriers, and creating a cadence of regular, transparent communication (agile development practices help). Identify and document critical system requirements with the right set of product owners, business analysts, or subject matter expert roles in your team. Unclear or poorly understood system requirements can fail any software project, regardless of how brilliant each contributor is.

Veli Pehlivanov
CTO

#ux/ui design

Use the design phase to iterate faster and at a lower cost

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

#ux/ui design

Use the design phase to iterate faster and at a lower cost

Did you know that the greatest value that UX design brings is that it allows you to ideate and iterate on your ideas without spending time and resources on development? Every deliverable that the UX designer produces aims to help you decide what works best for your product and its users before you take the next step and start back- and front-end development. You may go through the phases in the design process multiple times to get to the right solution, but in the end, you will be sure that you have a bullet-proof solution before your dev team starts coding.

Yana Vasileva
Senior UX Designer

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