Maaike Dokter, Author at XABLU

Onboarding Remote Colleagues – Guiding the New Colleague

Maaike Dokter — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 14:23:48 +0000

Congratulations, you have hired a new colleague! Chances are that their first day will be spend from their own home. For many companies, and new colleagues, this will be a completely new and challenging experience. In our previous blogpost, we discussed how difficult it can be to really get to know the team, but it needs to be a top priority since it defines the company culture. Today, we will highlight the importance of guidance.

A new employee is always eager to start working, but it can be a challenge to provide a proper introduction of the company, its values and goals, when you do not meet in person. Also, a physical company environment like an office can also help understand what the company stands for. This means it takes a little bit more time to really understand the core of the company. And that is okay.

But there are also proactive steps you can take to bring your company’s goals and values across: while a well-stated document can provide clarity and is easy to consult in later week, assigning a buddy can communicate ways of working on a more personal note.

An Awesome Buddy is Everything

As a new member in a team, you have a lot of questions. However, it can feel awkward to approach different people through a digital platform to ask those questions. What can help in this situation is to assign a buddy, someone who has been asked to reserve time to answer all the questions of the new team member and who can guide them through the ways of working. The buddy can also have virtual lunch with them to get to know them more on a personal level.

While the company should provide a statement with the goals and vision of the company, a buddy can talk about the company from their own perspective, providing much more insights and body to the words expressed on paper.

A buddy can be chosen from different perspectives: you can choose a buddy based on work-tasks or based on personal interests. For example, a direct colleague working on similar tasks can be assigned, since they can really show the ins and outs of the work that needs to be done and they can provide the proper guidance for any work-related issues. However, you can also choose to assign a buddy based on personal interests, with whom they can really express any personal concerns and with whom they feel comfortable having open conversations about the company, or personal matters. If possible, you can also assign two buddies: one as an expert for anything work-related, and another buddy who is there for general discussions.

As colleagues are everything and it is important to get to know them, a buddy system can enhance this even more whilst also providing more personal guidance to the new colleague. This can help them understand the company’s goals and vision, as well as have guidance for work-related tasks and personal matters that might arise. It’s also a great way for current colleagues to really get to know their new team mate!

<- Read our previous blogpost about Onboarding Remote Colleagues: Getting to Know the Team!
Read our next blogpost about Onboarding Remote Colleagues: Learning From the Best ->

The post Onboarding Remote Colleagues – Guiding the New Colleague appeared first on XABLU.

Onboarding Remote Colleagues – Getting to Know the Team

Maaike Dokter — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 06:37:49 +0000

Starting a new job, or hiring a new employee, is always exciting: both parties are motivated to make a great first impression and start the new collaboration. A first day on the job usually implies going to an office building and meeting your new team and colleagues. However, this phenomenon is slightly different in these times where COVID-19 has us all working from home, and this is of course always different for companies who operate from a remote-first mindset.

Onboarding is a crucial part of starting a work experience, but also one of the most challenging things to do right. So, how do you onboard a new colleague onto a team when working remotely? There are many different proactive things you can do here. We will highlight some of them in the following blogposts, like assigning a buddy and using new technology to introduce a codebase. Today, we will focus on (video) introductions with the team.

Getting to Know the Team

Colleagues are everything: they form a large part of the culture of the company and influence your work experience. However, as you might have noticed while working remotely, meeting people online is different from meeting them in person. Calling them specifically without having a direct question or problem can sometimes even feel awkward. Nonetheless, ensuring the new colleague meets their direct coworkers on a personal level is extremely crucial for a good onboarding process. This lowers the barrier for the new colleague to get in touch with teammates later to ask for help, guidance or to collaborate, which directly influences productivity, effectiveness and happiness.

In the current state of the art, there are already plenty of tools that can help your team get closer, for example by encouraging virtual meetings to drink a cup of coffee. Within Xablu, we use Slack on a daily basis and we have integrated a plugin called Donut. Every week, our colleagues get matched up and challenged to drink a cup of coffee together, eat lunch together or just call each other to catch up. Even after the onboarding period has shifted into everyday work, connecting with colleagues on a personal level is still something that requires attention.

While meeting individuals is crucial, it can aso be beneficial to organise a team meeting for a virtual afternoon drink or catch-up session: this allows the new colleague to see the team dynamics, but it also supports the feeling of being part of this team spirit,

Last but not least, encourage each other to turn on video for these calls. For work calls, audio can suffice to make calls more efficient. However, during audio calls there is a larger change of overlapping each other when talking due to delays or the absence of natural body language. When having a personal conversation, video will add a different dimension, atmosphere, and focus that will enhance the feeling of meeting in person.

There are other proactive things you can do as a company as well, like guiding your colleagues through their work and using tools to share ways of working and projects. Which best practices does your company follow to onboard new colleagues? And how have they been adapted to be suitable for remote working?

Whenever we start a new project, we focus on the onboarding process at our client as well. Another great reason to hire us for your next project!

Read our next blogpost about Onboarding Remote Colleagues – Guiding the New Colleague ->
Read our blogpost about Onboarding Remote Colleagues – Learning From the Best ->

The post Onboarding Remote Colleagues – Getting to Know the Team appeared first on XABLU.

Remote for Teams – A Proactive Mindset

Maaike Dokter — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 16:29:18 +0000

To help companies in the transition to working remotely, we want to share tips and tricks we have gained through our own experience. In our last blogpost, we gave a tip to managers about trust, which you can read back here.

In this blogpost, we want to provide a tip for anyone who is working remotely. It can be quite an adjustment to exchange a dedicated desk at the office for your dining table in the living room. Besides a change of scenery, successful remote work requires a change in mindset as well: more specifically, a proactive mindset is essential while working remotely.

The Benefits of Having a Proactive Mindset

A proactive mindset means you have to put extra effort into trying to understand what is happening within the team. For example, you can ask what your colleagues are working on and really put effort into understanding the ins and outs by asking questions about the topic. Also, ask about the status of an ongoing task you are expecting to receive: while an update on an ongoing task is easily given in an office setting, a digital update can be easily forgotten. A quick question can avoid frustration and get things done.

Additionally, active communication can help discover when colleagues are stuck on a task, which then provides the opportunity to help each other out and improve both collaboration and efficiency.

Moreover, if you are not sure you know something (well enough), ask your colleagues! One way to do this is to ask colleagues to have a quick call to align your thoughts on a certain topic. In our experience, suggesting these calls are highly appreciated by colleagues, can help avoid miscommunication and can help move a task along. These do not necessarily require a lot of time: a five-minute talk can already be sufficient!

Being proactive also requires additional communication from your side: provide more digital updates on what you are working on, even if no one specifically asked. This might seem unnatural at first, but proactive communication leads to more awareness within the team. It can also encourage other colleagues to share their updates as well.

Proactively asking colleagues to align or receive specific information requires practice. Doing this is easily forgotten: it requires awareness and dedication to be more proactive. Challenge yourself to be more proactive and witness how it can improve your remote work situation!

< Also read our previous article about remote working: a tip for managers!

The post Remote for Teams – A Proactive Mindset appeared first on XABLU.

Remote for Teams – a Tip for Managers

Maaike Dokter — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 08:06:00 +0000

Strong measures have been taken to fight the spread of the COVID-19 virus. These measures have a lot of impact on companies and the economy in general. Where possible, companies are asked to let their employees work remotely from home to ensure social contact is avoided as much as possible. We want to help.

At Xablu, we have years of experience when it comes to remote work. While remote working has always been a blessing to our company, we understand many companies do not have experience with remote work and are struggling with this transition.

In a time where we are asked to all work remote from home, collaborating as a team becomes even more important. In every work situation, successful teamwork is important, but remote working can shed a light on aspects in which the team dynamics need to be improved. However, making this a top priority now can mean longer lasting effects on the team, also when office hours are reinstated in the future. Working from home without colleagues directly in your environment does not mean working alone: now, more than ever, communication and collaboration need to be a top priority.

In the upcoming days, we will share some tips and tricks we have learned while working remotely for many years.

A First Tip for Managers

The first tip we would like to share is open to interpretation on the practical side, but the underlying thought is crucial to make the transition to remote work as welcoming as possible: trust. It can be tempting for managers to start micro-managing colleagues when working from home, but this can dampen the mood and have a negative impact on the work being done or the mindset of colleagues. We understand managers prefer being able to see what their colleagues are working on like they can at the office, but starting to “monitor” your colleagues can create a sense of distrust (e.g. always have your camera on, not allowing to mute in calls, let others know when you go to the bathroom, etc.). Working remotely requires a sense of trust between colleagues that everyone is doing their work as well as they can.

Check in on colleagues every once in a while, but also let them work on their projects and allow for unannounced toilet and coffee breaks. Remote work requires changes, including ones in the mindset. Showing you trust your colleagues is crucial to making remote work a success.

Do not let required remote working discourage you: working from home has always been part of Xablu’s DNA and we see many benefits it has to offer.

Read our next post for remote teams: a proactive mindset ->

The post Remote for Teams – a Tip for Managers appeared first on XABLU.

How Location Services Impact our Future

Maaike Dokter — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 19:22:43 +0000

In honor of the MyGalileoApp Challenge Finals in Prague last week, Xablu was invited to give a talk to the audience. Galileo, the focus of the challenge, is the European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) aimed to provide an independent high-precision positioning system. Within the challenge, teams needed to create applications that would highlight the added value Galileo offers. Xablu shed light on the impact location services can have in the near future.

Location services are a major part of our everyday lives: we cannot imagine a world anymore where we have to rely on paper maps instead of mobile navigation. We all use location services every single day: from planning public transport, to navigation in driving, as well as receiving weather updates based on where we are or even advertisements we see online. Location services are not only practical, they can really improve our quality of life.

One of the sectors that could really benefit is the healthcare sector. In the current situation, ambulances can arrive more quickly at the emergency scene due to real-time navigation and more quickly to the closest hospital with their patients. Patients can also easily find the specific healthcare institution they need in their area. Not to forget, personal healthcare through fitness or counting steps can now be achieved just using a mobile phone with real time location services.

However, the healthcare industry is in need of more. Real-time location services can make a huge impact in the healthcare industry and there are already many opportunities that should be integrated everywhere.

Imagine an ambulance is called to an emergency situation and all the traffic lights are responding to always let the ambulance have a clear path to get to the emergency scene. This would decrease dangerous traffic situations, not only for the ambulance but for all other traffic as well. The ambulance arrives at the scene and easily updates the hospital they are coming and the status and situation of the patient. This would allow hospitals to receive an up-to-date estimated time of arrival and they can prepare for the specific patient: locating the right equipment in the hospital building, preparing the allocated emergency room, locating the right physician for the case who is nearby and ensuring they are present when the patient arrives.

This is not just a practical example, this situation can actually help save lives.

The increasing accuracy of both outdoor, but also indoor navigation, opens up a world of opportunities. The rise and growth of Galileo will make an absolute difference.

Last week, we attended the finals of the MyGalileoApp Challenge in Prague, organised by the European GNSS Agency (GSA). During the challenge, Xablu provided mentorship to four out of ten finalists. All the teams pitched their applications, and it was inspiring to see the end-results. We want to congratulate all the contestants on their achievement thus far and we cannot wait to see how their Galileo-driven applications will improve our lives as we know it.

The post How Location Services Impact our Future appeared first on XABLU.

10 Guidelines to make your app user-friendly

Maaike Dokter — Thu, 20 Jun 2019 08:30:20 +0000

Mobile applications are everywhere and they can be used for many different purposes. However, creating a usable mobile application that also provides a good user experience is not as easy as it might seem. In the previous article, we talked about how it is important to actively involve your users during your development process, since it can solve usability issues early on in the process.

Besides applying participatory design to your project, you can also follow some generic rules of thumb for creating usable applications. Back in 1994, Jakob Nielsen presented 10 usability heuristics for user interface designs that are still highly relevant today. By implementing these heuristics, your application is more likely to be deemed usable and provide a good user experience.

Visibility of System Status

“The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.”

This heuristic could be implemented by providing feedback to the user when they have performed an action, showing loading times or the amount of time the user has left to response. Moreover, it is important to indicate when options are clickable (e.g. visual buttons) or if there are links present. By including this heuristic, the user can easily see how they can interact with the system and what happens when they interact with the system.

Match Between System and the Real World

“The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.”

It is important to specify the language of the application to the end-user: avoid jargon and unnecessary difficult vocabulary in your application. You can also apply this heuristics when creating menus: the most important tasks should be on top of the list and the exit or logout function should be at the bottom. Also, you can make use of things people encounter in real life: use icons that are frequently used, which people can relate to a specific function. For example, if your mobile application includes the ability to take a picture, you can add the camera icon: this icon is used regularly and people can directly link it to an action. Colours can also be put to use: make dangerous functions (e.g. reset your application) red, since people subconsciously link red to a warning or stop message.

User Control and Freedom

“Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.”

This heuristic is very straightforward, yet not always implemented. Here, it is favourable to be able to move back and forth between form-pages. For example, when buying an item online, the user would like to move back to the items he is
about to purchase or go to a previous page to double-check his entered address. Moreover, it is advised to always allow exits for users so they never get stuck in an action they did not want to perform.

As stated before, heuristics are general rule of thumbs. When specifying this heuristic to the healthcare domain and, specifically, to the target-group of elderly populations, this heuristic should be avoided: allowing for exits and support undo-buttons can generate much confusion with the end-users. If there are too many options available, they want to try them all. Therefore, you should design an application where the user cannot make mistakes or you include preventative measures such as warning messages. This is something you only find out by testing the product, which is why you should always involve your end-users throughout the development phase of your application.

Consistency and Standards

“Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.”

Consistency is extremely important for users: it allows them to quickly understand how an application works and remember it in the future. Consistency can be achieved in many different ways: a consistency in design and color usage, using icons that look and feel similar in design, and repeating labels and titles across screens for identical functions. Be creative in your design, but be consistent in your creativity.

Error Prevention

“Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.”

As stated, it is better to prevent than to cure. Therefore, to implement this heuristic, you could warn users when they are potentially going to make an error. Also, you could implement case-blind input fields when upper/lower case letters are irrelevant and provide feedback on what type of data needs to be entered (e.g. a date in a specific format or a limit of characters that can be entered). By helping users enter data and interact with the system, you are preventing them from making mistakes. This can positively influence the user experience.

Recognition Rather than Recall

“Minimise the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.”

The focus of this heuristic is that users should not have to remember information from one screen to another: important information should be shown to them on their current screen. Moreover, it could help to leave a breadcrumb trail of where they are in the application (e.g. which menu item have they selected). When creating menus, ensure the titles are short and concise and try to implement that the first word of the title is the most important one.

Moreover, important information should not only be conveyed through color since not everyone can see this. When implementing links, ensure they are also underlined or bold faced to show it is a different element than plain text. Also, when using color, make sure the contrast with the background is high enough. You can check this with contrast colour tools: if the contrast is not high enough, not everyone will be able to read the information. Furthermore, allowing breathing space around the text will make it easier to read and follow by the user.

Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

“Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.”

To incorporate this heuristic, you could implement a search functionality so users can quickly find what they are looking for. This search function could also offer advanced options to help advanced users quickly find what they are looking for. Also, you could differentiate between types of users, such as an expert mode and a beginner mode. Another way to achieve this heuristic is by allowing the user to add or pin actions or items so they can easily access it. Adaptation to the user will affect the user experience in a very positive way.

Aesthetic and Minimalistic Design

“Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.”

Aesthetic and minimalistic design tries to limit “over-design.” Therefore, you should avoid including icons that are excessively detailed and images or animations that do not add any value. A lot of applications also struggle with providing too much information, making screens look crowded to the user: avoid this by only providing the information necessary for that specific screen and minimise the amount of text.

Help Users Recognise, Diagnose and Recover from Errors

“Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.”

Unfortunately, not all errors can be avoided in applications. Therefore, it is important to include error messages that can help users recover from their mistakes. Here, errors should be indicated and help should be offered to the user. For example, if they have entered an invalid mail address, an error message should indicate which field had incorrect data (recognise error), that mail addresses need to contain an “@“ sign (e.g. please enter a mail address with the following structure: janedoe@example.com, diagnose error) and allow the user to correct their mistakes (recover from error). By providing more details on where the error was made and how they can correct it, users can more easily interact with systems.

It is also advised not to show any error code messages, since this will only confuse the user. However, in some cases, error code messages might be important to identify or diagnose the error. Check with the actual end-users which information they need to recover from their mistakes.

Help and Documentation

“Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.”

Including a help function or page within your application could be useful: it could provide users with instructions on how certain functionalities work. Moreover, additional information could be provided on sections of the application. The goal is that applications are intuitive and easy to use, but it never hurts to have some extra tools integrated that could help the user when interacting with the system. The help information should be very easy to find and easy to search through. If possible, the help information should be accessed while working on a task and the user should be able to switch between both screens without losing any information.

These heuristics are rules of thumb, meaning they are not strict guidelines. Different user groups might react differently to user interface designs. Therefore, testing interfaces with users early on during the development stage is crucial. However, these heuristics can also be tested within your own development team. The heuristics provide a good starting point for creating interfaces to the general public. Per project, you have to determine which heuristics are especially relevant to your product and user-group. Using this process, in combination with participatory design, will allow you to quickly build usable interface designs.

Want to read more about this topic? Here is some more reading material:

Curious how Xablu can help your organization ?

The post 10 Guidelines to make your app user-friendly appeared first on XABLU.

Insights: Xablu joins MyGalileoApp Mentor team

Maaike Dokter — Tue, 07 May 2019 08:51:08 +0000

Last week, we had the pleasure of presenting Xablu’s tips & tricks to the contestants of the MyGalileoApp Competition 2019 organized by the European GNSS Agency (GSA). The competition calls for creative mobile application ideas that could benefit from the precise positioning offered by Galileo. Now, the 30 selected teams will embark on the next stage of the competition where we, from Xablu, will act as mentors.

In 2016, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), called Galileo, went live. It was created by the European Union through the GSA. Galileo can provide high-precision information on our location, which is crucial for daily life activities. Location is the driving force behind many domains such as logistics and transport, which are indispensable in countless sectors such as agriculture, automated mobility, and healthcare.

The MyGalileoApp Competition received 148 innovative application ideas. Of these applications, 30 teams have been selected to partake in the second phase of the competition. During this phase, the teams will be supported by mentors and Xablu is honored to provide some of these mentors for the contestants.

Xablu knows, like no other, how important it is to solidify a concept before starting to build an application. Only by ensuring the solution matches the problem, the usability matches the user and the application fits the context, the application has a higher chance of being adopted and delivering the impact it is meant to have. The GSA works with the same mission while linking space to user needs: “While constantly working closely with a broad range of stakeholders, we ensure that the EU satellite navigation systems are fit for purpose and continue to meet the needs of those who use them today and tomorrow.

Xablu offers the contestants a tailored mentorship on Participatory Design

By helping them work together with their users, their chances of building a successful application increases immensely. Together, we can determine their stakeholders, create a plan of action for testing their application and evaluate the usability. It might seem that this work will take away time from the actual coding of the application but executing this process will save the contestants a lot of coding work and, thus, time since many issues are solved prior to development.

Moreover, Xablu has the technical expertise to help contestants realize their applications. Xablu builds applications through Xamarin, which allows for creating one shared-code base. This way, applications can be built for Android, iOS, and Windows with native app features and a native app feeling, while reusing a large percentage of your code-base. This allows for very efficient cross-platform development.

We want to wish all of the contestants good luck with the development of their applications and we hope we can personally help them achieve great impact using Galileo.

Curious how Xablu can help your organization ?

The post Insights: Xablu joins MyGalileoApp Mentor team appeared first on XABLU.

Participatory Design: Creating applications with professionals

Maaike Dokter — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 09:08:49 +0000

Technology can have a major impact on the healthcare domain. Nowadays, we can track and monitor behavior to help understand health issues, use technology to acquire more precise data or work with devices to support medical professionals to perform accurate procedures. The possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, not many technologies have been fully adopted within the healthcare domain. However, there are some steps you can take to heighten the chance of success.

Many technologies for the healthcare domain can now be controlled through mobile applications. In some cases, the mobile application is the e-health technology. However, creating an efficient application that actually resolves a problem or engages the user is easier said than done. In the end, if the user does not find the application easy to use or if they do not see the benefits of using it, chances are that they will not make optimal use of the e-health technology. In some cases, they fully disregard technology.

When reading the last paragraph, one should already ask themselves the next question: who is the user in this case? Who are we actually creating the product for? This might seem like a logical question to ask, but, in many cases, the actual end-user is forgotten during the process. Your application could look highly professional and be highly sophisticated from a technical perspective, but the user is the one who decides if they will use it. In most healthcare cases, the user is the medical professional and, perhaps, the patient.

In order to understand how your user interacts with technology and how it will fit within their world, you must include them within your application development. Equally important, you should involve your actual users before the development phase even starts. In the end, the e-health technology should solve a problem or support the professional within their work. So, the question is, what is the actual problem we are trying to solve?

To identify the actual problem and to create an actual solution, collaboration is necessary

The healthcare professional encounters the problem every single day and no one understands the issue better than them. However, they might not know which technical possibilities are available and what can actually be done to solve the problem. When all the stakeholders of the project sit together, that is when real solutions are created. This is called participatory design. Stakeholders are all parties involved in the project and can include the end-users, developers, researchers, etc. Everyone brings in their own expertise, which is necessary to create a fully functioning, user-friendly product.

Some technical solutions could solve the problem, but might not work in the environment of the healthcare professional. Other solutions might seem better, but developers could find flaws in the way it will operate in the end. Resolving these issues prior to developing the actual application will not only heighten the chances of success, but it will also save a lot of development costs since issues are detected in an earlier stage.

During the development phase, it is equally important to keep stakeholders involved. It can be hard to imagine what it will be like to use the technology in the actual workspace: allowing professionals to work with prototypes will provide many insights into practical issues. If patients are end-users of the product, their environment and capabilities also need to be taken into account. Ensuring the application is usable and provides a good user experience will make the implementation of the technology a lot easier.

Working together is extremely important and it could lead to creating better and more successful applications. There is not one stakeholder who designs the product, but many stakeholders that craft and change the product together.

Curious how Xablu can help your organization ?

The post Participatory Design: Creating applications with professionals appeared first on XABLU.