Valentina Bermanec

What is the most impressive conference you have ever been to? As one of the 71 000 attendees, we must say that Web Summit is an impressive conference breaking all records. 

WebSummit - a conference that breaks all the records! - Prototyped

Our team attended the Web Summit [https://websummit.com/] conference in the
sunny city of Lisbon, from the 1st til the 4th of November. What started as an
Opening night and Night summit was just a warm up for the next three days.

We were amazed by the networking opportunities and the chance to discover many
incredible startups and ventures. It was also a chance to find a new solution we
could implement in our company and improve our business performance.

During our time there, we listen to numerous inspiring speakers, having a chance
to learn from the best in the industry. So, here is an overview of the few most
memorable lectures we have attended.

Marketing in 2023.
Sir Martin Sorrell, Founder and Executive Chairman of S4 Capital
[https://www.s4capital.com/], and Julia Goldin, Global Chief Product & Marketing
officer at the LEGO group [https://www.lego.com/en-us], held a panel about
Marketing trends in 2023. Julia shared insights about Lego customers explaining
the need and expectations for high value in their products. Sir Martin reflected
on the current global situation, as he predicted changes in the world order
leading to a fragmented world. As for advertising trends, companies will
continue to invest more of their resources into digital marketing and expand on
new digital platforms.

Sir Martin SorrellMaking sense of the future of work
Dan Shapero, COO at LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/], had a very insightful
talk about making sense of the future of work. What have we learned while
working during the pandemic and how does it affect our future? The biggest
outcome is remote work and flexibility, which happened to be a point of turnover
for so many companies and not just tech. After the pandemic, remote jobs became
our reality, and he presumes it will stay like it. Also, his greatest advice is
to implement remote work and flexibility to provide employees with a work-life
balance.

Strengthen your brand by embracing your community
Gali Arnon, CMO at Fiverr [https://www.fiverr.com/], advised us on how to
strengthen the brand by embracing our community. For a brand to succeed, it must
understand that all the power belongs to the consumers. She talked about the
transformational changes in marketing over the last few years. The point that
stood out the most are how measurement kills creativity when brands focus only
on the KPIs, and not consumers. The conclusion of this talk is simple, yet very
important - community is the new driving force, and every brand needs a social
agenda.

Gali Arnon5 key areas of company culture while hyperscaling
Sam Shank, CEO of HotelTonight [https://www.hoteltonight.com/], and Rodolphe
Ardant, Co-founder & CEO of Spendesk [https://www.spendesk.com/en-eu/], were
participants in the panel discussion, and Britta Muzyk-Tikovsky, CEO of 
Capscovil [https://www.capscovil.com/en], led the panel discussion. Sam told
that in HotelTonight the rules about company culture were made when there were 7
of them. Also, he said that the most important part is speaking with the team
and transparency (they are doing weekly meetings, so everyone knows what is
going on with business). Rodolphe said that skill and respectfulness are both
crucial in recruitment. He said that key points for company culture are freedom,
learning together, and every individual is important.

Fundraising in a remote world
Joe Thomas, Co-founder and CEO of Loom [https://www.loom.com/], talked with
Andrew Reed, Partner at Sequoia Capital [https://www.sequoiacap.com/], about
fundraising in a remote world. They talked about how the pandemic and remote
work created a whole new playbook for startups to raise capital. Joe said that
he mostly did an asynchronous video for fundraisers so the fundraisers could
watch it when it is the best time for them or rewatch it many times. Also, he
said that you should not re-record, because it makes it more human. His best
advice is to make a good walkthrough of your product and explain everything that
you can.

Joe Thomas & Andrew ReedIn the fight between AI and human creativity, why not
back both?
Alex Collmer, Founder & CEO of Vidmob [https://www.vidmob.com/], talked about AI
and human creativity. Alex said that AI is optimizing the decision-making
process for marketers and creators, and it is not here to replace creators but
to help them enhance their work. AI is giving us incredible data which can then
be used to make something great. He ended the lecture with a closing sentence:
“Data science and AI are creativity”.

Alex ColmerFuture trends: building the next unicorn in the current market
Roxanne Varza, Director at Station F [https://stationf.co/], Jager McConnell,
CEO at Crunchbase [https://www.crunchbase.com/], and Janosch Delcker, Chief
Technology Correspondent at Deutsche Welle, talked about the current state of
the market, and the up and coming field in the industry that could have the
biggest upward trajectory in the next couple of years. They talked about what it
takes to build a unicorn, how to utilize the market in the best way, and what
are some of the most frequent dangers every company comes about on its path to
stardom.

A modern application is as serverless as possible
Matheus Guimaraes, Senior Developer at Advocate UK! at Amazon Web Services
[https://aws.amazon.com/], talked about how to quickly build an MVP using AWS
Amplify Studio [https://aws.amazon.com/amplify/studio/]. He also talked about
the advantages of AWS and how they work on optimizing the capacity and scaling
needed for each application they host so that the end-user has no troubles in
everyday use under various circumstances.

Matheus GuimaraesGiving F1 a tech edge
Toto Wolff, CEO & Team Principal at Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1
[https://www.mercedesamgf1.com/en/] Team, Oliver Steil, CEO at TeamViewer
[https://www.teamviewer.com/en/], and Rosanna Tennant, Commentator at F1 TV,
discussed the strategic partnership between Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team and
TeamViewer. This partnership gives them an upper hand in the competition at the
pinnacle of motorsport. Furthermore, they discussed long-term sustainability for
the sport and AR prospect for engineers in factories and on the field.

Toto Wolf, Oliver Steil & Rosanna TennantFood & Night Summit
It wouldn't be an overview, with us reflecting on the food and parties. Every
day was a new opportunity to try tasty food and beverages at the Food Summit.
While at night, we had a chance to explore new parts of Lisbon and have fun
while meeting new people.

Are you ready for Web Summit 2023?
It was truly an unforgettable experience we can not stop talking about. Web
Summit did break all the records this year, and the only question remaining is -
are you ready for Web Summit 2023?

PROTOTYP team

Thanks to the coauthors of this post: Hrvoje Dumančić, Matej Dušić & Marko
Stjepanek.

General

WebSummit - a conference that breaks all the records!

This non-typical IT event is back in a new, more engaging format. So what is The Geek Gathering, and how did we come up with the idea?

The Geek Gathering is back! - Prototyped

The Geek Gathering [https://thegeekgathering.org/] is for all the builders,
risk-takers and tech enthusiasts willing to bring it to the next level. For the
two days, our lovely hometown Osijek hosted more than 300 attendees from all
around Croatia and Europe. This event had 4 locations, and 3 formats - Geeks on
the big screen, masterclasses and workshops. The attendees had a chance to
listen to more than 30 speakers, from different areas of IT, such as AI, VR,
design, software development, cyber security and much more.

This event is special to us since we weren't just attendees, we were also the
organizers. We are not gonna say it was easy, but we will say that months of
organization and preparation were so much worth it.

We're bringing you an overview of talks and lectures attended by our team
members. Keep reading and find out more details.

WHISKEY MASTERCLASS
For the welcoming of the guests, the first item on the schedule was Whiskey
Masterclass to warm us up for the other lectures. Miroslav Kljajić, an
experienced bartender and cocktail master, introduced us to the world of
whiskey. We tried Monkey Shoulder, Glenfiddich 12, and Glenfiddich 15, and all
we had to do was decide which whiskey fits which description.

The Geek Gathering - Miroslav KljajićFIVE KEY LESSONS THAT COULD HAVE SAVED ME
TWENTY YEARS
Mislav Malenica, an AI engineer with 16 years of experience and CEO of 
Mindsmiths [https://www.mindsmiths.com/], had a fascinating lecture. He shared
an inspiring story about his road to success in Silicon Valley and Europe,
concluding that everything good in life doesn’t come easily. As such an
experienced engineer, he humbly shared his knowledge and gave us great lessons
we can apply in life.

The Geek Gathering - Mislav MalenicaKICK-START – CONCERT – MUNGURU JAZZ BAND
To conclude the first day of The Geek Gathering event, our Željko Jake Prša, the
drum player, had a concert with his Munguru jazz band in Trica cafe bar.

The Geek Gathering - MUNGURU JAZZ BANDMAXIMIZE THE FLEXIBILITY OF YOUR FIGMA
COMPONENTS
The design system architect, Shuaiqi Sun [https://www.mrbiscuit.design/], or as
he calls himself, Mr. Biscuit, showed us how to use our Figma components at the
next level. He discussed the negatives of detaching our components, as well as,
ways to maintain their customizability. We were more than impressed with the
Figma examples he showed us with his live practice and the explanation of the
whole process behind it.

The Geek Gathering - Shuaiqi SunUX AUDIT – YOU CAN ALWAYS DO BETTER
Katarina Barišić, a UX researcher at Netgen [https://netgen.io/], showed us the
process behind a good UX audit. During her masterclass, she walked us through
some steps necessary to conduct a UX audit and explained how Netgen is doing it.
During the lecture, we discussed some of the pain points we encounter while
conducting UX audits. Additionally, she shared some helpful resources for
improving UX.

The Geek Gathering - Katarina BarišićTHE MVP IS DEAD, WHAT NOW?
Tomislav Car, CEO of Productive [https://productive.io/] company that helps
agencies run their business in a better way, had a lecture where he explained
how MVP in the past was the holy grail of software development and how today
quality of software has skyrocketed. How can we make feature-rich, high-quality
products with only 50 people? At Productive, their philosophy is to have the
best customer support and listen to user feedback, which makes their users
happy.

The Geek Gathering - Tomislav CarTHE ART OF CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE
Bojan Alikavazović, SOC Tier 3 Analyst at Diverto [https://www.diverto.hr/en/],
had an entertaining workshop for everyone interested in cyber security. The
first part of the workshop was a theory he had learned about SAT techniques and
how to collect and process data from an attack which are crucial steps in
finding the attacker. In the second part of the workshop, attendees worked in
groups where they had to solve a problem. For that purpose, all attendees became
intelligence analysts for a moment, and they needed to find the country of an
attacker by time, date, and events of attacks.

The Geek Gathering - THE ART OF CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCEDIY Smart Home
Stanislav Mihić, Senior Software Engineer from minus5 [https://minus5.hr/], and
enthusiast for smart homes shared his advice on making our home smart. Stanislav
talked about his experience and what is the current setup at his home. He also
talked about different hardware, software, and best practices to bring them
together. Tip of the day for beginners, simpler is better!

The Geek Gathering - DIY Smart HomeWho are you? OIDC Authentication - The Good,
The Bad and the Ugly
Wekoslaf Stefanovski, head of Development at Sourcico [https://sourcico.com/],
has been using JavaScript since the previous millennium and has a long and
fruitful love/hate relationship with it. His talk was about using a third-party
provider for verification of the identity of users. In his lecture, which can be
a stand-up show, he showed us the good and bad sides of authentication and why
and how to use Amazon Cognito.

The Geek Gathering - Wekoslaf StefanovskiCULTURE IN A NON-CULTURAL AGE OR
NON-CULTURE IN A CULTURAL AGE?
As a partner at Symbol [https://symbol.hr/], Marko Jovanovac shared the insights
he gained over 15 years of collaborating with the publishers and how he got into
the book cover design industry after graduation. In his talk, he discussed the
good, the bad, and the funny moments he experienced while working with people
from the domain of culture.

The Geek Gathering - Marko JovanovacDESIGN A DAY, DESIGN A MONTH, DESIGN A YEAR.
REPEAT.
Ivan Levak [https://www.ivanlevak.com/], designer and owner of Dubovica Beach
Bar, talked about how he balances two jobs and life. In his lecture, he
discussed how to position ourselves when the opportunity arises to do more than
we should, the pros and cons of doing so, and how to achieve our maximum
potential even when we fail.

The Geek Gathering - Ivan LevakBUILD YOUR FIRST AI-FIRST APP!
Livio Benčik, head of AI at Mindsmiths [https://www.mindsmiths.com/], and his
colleagues held a workshop where we built an AI-First app. First, they showed us
an example app of an autonomous agent that could give diagnoses to its patients
based on inputs we gave it through time. From there, we could see how the
AI-first approach could be beneficial, especially in the medical field. We then
created a Telegram chatbot using OpenAI and their Mindsmiths Platform, a
platform for creating, evolving and running autonomous agents. It was a unique
experience, especially for someone who didn’t have some prior AI knowledge.

The Geek Gathering - Livio BenčikVIRTUAL REALITY - THE NEXT FRONTIER
Ivan Rajković, CEO of SpectreXR [https://spectrexr.io/], and Matija Fumić,
software engineer at SpectreXR, held an engaging session about virtual reality.
They presented and demonstrated how they came up with the idea to create a
low-code plugin for the development of realistic physics-based hand interaction
inside the Unity 3D game engine. They talk about hand-tracking technology and
examples of where it may be useful. In the end, it was time for some fun while
we got a chance to try their work live on stage with VR headsets!

The Geek Gathering - VIRTUAL REALITY - THE NEXT FRONTIEREARLY STAGE TECH
INVESTMENTS IN CROATIA - STATE OF PLAY 2022/2023
Božidar Pavlović, Vedran Blagus, and Tomislav Car held a great panel moderated
by Srđan Kovačević where they talked about the state of early-stage tech
investments in Croatia. The discussion was amusing, and each speaker gave a
unique explanation of how and why would they invest and the thought process
behind it.

The Geek Gathering - EARLY STAGE TECH INVESTMENTS IN CROATIA - STATE OF PLAY
2022/2023Have you ever been to a conference that doesn't have an afterparty? 
Yeah, we didn't either. The main stars of the afterparty were an Electric Corn
bend and DJ back2back, who kept the atmosphere steaming hot.

Until next year!
We must say how proud we are to be a part of The Geek Gathering. And to all the
attendees, speakers, volunteers and staff, we want to say THANK YOU!

Hope to see you next year! 


Thanks to the coauthors of this post: Darko Bogović, Marko Boras, Matej Mijić,
Bruno Predrijevac & Marko Stjepanek.

The Geek Gathering is back!

Digital Labin Conference is a two-day conference, filled with design and development workshops and lectures. Both inspiring and memorable, especially to step up with the latest trends and techniques.

Digital Labin - a conference you must visit  - Prototyped

Digital Labin Conference [https://digital-labin.com/] is a two-day conference,
filled with design and development workshops and lectures. Both inspiring and
memorable, especially to step up with the latest trends and techniques.

Our team has prepared an overview, so let's start with the workshop day!

Workshops day
Choose the right design pattern - design workshop by Igor Plac & Iva Planinić
Igor and Iva, designers at Bornfight [https://www.bornfight.com/], started with
the theoretical part about the pros and cons of various design patterns and
practices. After that, we jumped on the practical segment of the workshop. In
the first exercise, each group got one e-commerce website and had to describe
the best and worst design patterns used in the checkout flow.

Choose the right design pattern - design workshop by Igor Plac & Iva Planinić
Moving on to the second exercise, we got a product detail page and had to fill
out a table with the most crucial information for an e-commerce employee. Once
made, a set of filters that correspond to the information in the table and are
universal for all products were added.

At the end of the fun and productive day, there was one exercise left to do.
Each group got a dozen sticky notes with the names of various products. We had
to think about categories the products should go into and sort them accordingly.
This exercise was helpful to work on our communication skills with other team
members and improve our categorization abilities.

Web performance back to front - dev workshop by Harry Roberts
When Harry Roberts, a website optimization guru and Founder of the CSS Wizardy
[https://csswizardry.com/], holds a workshop you must be there. In the first
part of the workshop, he explained the importance of Google metrics and Core Web
Vitals and how they affect Google search results.

Web performance back to front - dev workshop by Harry RobertsIn the second part
of the workshop, we took a more in-depth look at the Google Chrome developer
tools, going through a bunch of helpful things that can be tweaked to show us
how the websites can run better and smoother.

The last part of the workshop was focused on analyzing the requests being sent,
and how are they handled. We got into great depth in this part, showing how all
the components of the websites are being requested and how they interact with
each other. Harry even gave us some tips that he came about through his years in
the field which will help us with our present and future websites.

Fullstack GraphQL using React - dev workshop by Gerard Sans
We also attended a workshop by Google Developer Expert and former AWS Amplify
employee Gerard Sans. The first part of the workshop was theoretical, where
Gerard explained the beautiful theory behind GraphQL compared to REST. The
biggest advantages of GraphQL are tooling, de-coupled storage, collaboration,
safety, and speed.

Fullstack GraphQL using React - dev workshop by Gerard SansIn the second part of
the workshop, Gerard continued explaining that GraphQL Schema has three main
entry points - query, mutations, subscription, and features of every entry
point. He has shown great tools like GraphQL Voyager where users can paste
queries and visualize relations.

In the last part of the workshop, he explained directives, custom directives,
and where we can use them. Also, we got three examples to solve, which made the
workshop more interesting. Gerard did a great job and showed us how to create a
Fullstack GraphQL app starting from the server and building the way up to the
client.

Speakers day
Moving on to the second day of the conference, we started with some light
conversation, a cup of coffee or two, and course, croissants. Then came the
opening ceremony and speech by Domagoj Ostović, CEO of Lloyds Digital
[https://lloyds-digital.com/] and Founder of Digital Labin Conference. 

Domagoj Ostović, CEO of Lloyds Digital and Founder of Digital Labin ConferenceWe
had a chance to listen to some of the biggest experts, divided into design & UX,
and dev & data track. And here are some of the most memorable ones.

Design & UX track
The first speaker was Pelle Martin, CEO, Founder and Creative Director of 
Spring/Summer [https://springsummer.dk/]. Pelle showed us some intriguing
projects, and we got inspired. Irene Pereyra, Co-founder of design studio Anton
& Irene [https://antonandirene.com/], talked about how to know when to break
with convention and how she doesn't want to live in a world where each website
looks and works the same.

After a coffee break and some free time to mingle, the second part of the design
& UX track began. Berjesty Kozanoglu, Owner of UX FACULTY and ex-Shopify UX
Leader, gave some quality suggestions for a successful UX career. 

Vanja Bertalan, CEO at HumanVanja Bertalan, CEO at Human [https://www.humaninteraction.com/], showed us how
technology is moving at the fastest pace ever and how those changes impact us
individually, as an industry, and as a society. Elena Crnković, Product Design
Director at Bornfight, gave us insight on how design can affect business
objectives and how to grow the design maturity level in an organization.

Dev & data track
Kitze, Founder of Sizzy [https://sizzy.co/], opened a dev&data track with an
interesting lecture. He explained how developers sometimes over-engineer
projects and focus on stuff that should be resolved in later phases, which
affects the project lifecycle.

The second developer-focused presentation was by Vlaho Poluta, a Flutter team
lead at Infinum [https://infinum.com/]. This was more of an introductory lecture
to Flutter for new developers compared it other languages for mobile
development.

Vlaho Poluta, a Flutter team lead at InfinumToma Puljak, the Software developer
at Codeanywhere, explained the problem with cloud-based development environments
and demonstrated how to speed up the onboarding process of new developers on
projects and ensure that projects work on every machine.

Until next year
A huge shoutout goes to the Lloyds digital team for organizing this conference.
We had a lot of fun, met new colleagues and discovered new techniques and tools.
See you next year!

PROTOTYP teamCoauthors of this post: Petra Pendić, Hrvoje Dumančić & Marko Boras

Digital Labin - a conference you must visit

We've attended the KulendDayz conference and held a workshop and lecture at the Dev track. Find out more about it in our conference overview. 

We were at KulenDayz - a slow-down IT conference! - Prototyped

This year's conference was special for us since our developer Josip Ravas held a
workshop, and developer Marko Stjepanek held a lecture. Continue reading to find
out more about it.

GitHub actions in practice - workshop by Josip Ravas
Starting with the first day of KulenDayz, our developer Josip Ravas held a
workshop “GitHub Actions in practice”. This workshop was for everyone interested
in continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) that helps you to
automate the build, tests, and deployment pipelines. Josip did a great job
reaching out to the audience and gave tips on how to use GitHub Actions in their
repositories.

Josip Ravas - GitHub actions in practice - photo by Marina HunjadiMost crucial
operators in RxJS (used in Angular) - by Marko Stjepanek
On the second day of KulenDayz, our developer Marko Stjepanek held a lecture on
“Most crucial operators in RxJS (used in Angular”). While explaining each
operator there was theory explanation and live coding where he simply explained
how and where to use it. The lecture was straightforward, simple, and
understandable for everyone who uses JavaScript. By the end of the lecture,
everyone had enough knowledge to jump into the RxJS ship and start doing amazing
things.

Marko Stjepanek - Most crucial operators in RxJS (used in Angular), photo by
Marko TuđanKulenDayz is a great conference for the IT community where they can
hear about new tools, share experiences and broaden their knowledge.  If you
want to find an overview of workshops and lectures that stood out to us from the
Design, Dev and PM track, continue reading.

Design insights
Saturday’s Design track was the place to be for design enthusiasts. The sessions
covered various topics from the field of UX and UI design, where aspiring
designers and design veterans shared their experiences in dealing with
work-related challenges.

In the first session, Zoran Vorkapić from Inchoo talked about the UX challenges
in Automotive Website design and their approach. The solution was to simplify
navigation and make the shopping process faster.

Nikolina Keleš from Bornfight presented about optimizing communication between
team members and designers. She shared her experiences of working with
developers, and the main takeaway from her session was to always have an open
mind and try to understand the other side.

Nikolina Keleš from Bornfight, photo by Marko TuđanFreelance designer Marko Ilić
talked about his everyday struggles with optimizing the design process and
communicating with his clients. His main advice was to establish the right
expectations before the project, so everyone knows what’s possible in the given
timeline. 

Mario Šimić from Bornfight talked about ways to make large websites interesting.
His solution to that problem was to create a robust design system, with
customizable modules that can be used interchangeably for the corresponding
sections of the pages.

In the final session for the day, Tomislav Kaučić shared a story about how
claymorphism became a trend and how to make your claymorphic UI in Figma and
with the good ol’ CSS. 

A bit more from the DEV track
Tomislav Bronzin from CITUS gave us outstanding insight about AI when he
mentioned that a grandmaster in chess can predict 100 moves, where AlphaZero can
predict 10 000 moves, and where State-of-the-Art Chess Engines can predict 10
000 000 moves which is fascinating.

Aleksandar Gavrilovic from Gamechuck explained the current situation in the game
development industry in Croatia and explained the differences between Indie vs.
AAA games. 

Let's not forget about the PM track
This year PM track had many great workshops and lectures, but two stood out to
us. On the first day of the conference, Nenad Trajkovski held a workshop about
presentation skills. We knew from the start that it will be a very insightful
one. He shared his experience and examples of how a good presentation looks and
how to become great at giving presentations.

Roman Nits from EPAM, photo by Marina HunjadiAnother great lecture was Project Discovery Phase: roadmap, hints & tricks held 
by Roman Nits from EPAM. Roman explained all crucial phases of product discovery
and shared tips on how to successfully launch a product.

Why should you visit the KulendDayz conference?
The best thing about KulenDayz is the variety of talks and direct contact with
people from the industry. Events like these are an excellent opportunity for the
IT community to grow its network.

Our team at the KulenDayz, photo by Marina HunjadiOnce the lectures were over it
was time to slow down, unwind and hang out. Oh, and let's not forget about great
food, rakija, and afterparty!

Until next year!

Coauthors of this post: Marko Boras & Marko Kolić

We were at KulenDayz - a slow-down IT conference!

This is how we became members of an elite community where the top 7% of software engineering vendors can be found. 

PROTOTYP joins the top 7% at Pangea - Prototyped

Osijek, Croatia, 7th of January 2021 - PROTOTYP is proud to announce that we
have joined Pangea [http://pangea.ai/]. We are now members of an elite community
where the top 7% of software engineering vendors can be found - we strongly
believe our hard work and business results are responsible for this
accomplishment.

The road to an elite vendor community
From the moment PROTOTYP was founded,  we strived for excellence, both in design
and software development, no exceptions. 

Our dedication and commitment allowed us to grow from a small company of two to
a company of 25 people with a versatile client list; from small businesses to
enterprise, and from work on small MVPs to working on large enterprise software.

With the growth of the company and our partner network, we decided to add an
additional partner who will help us continue our growth and Pangea was a logical
choice. The thorough verification process gave us quality insights about our
company’s position on the market, our strengths, blindspots and qualities.

The key findings
After the verification process was finished, we unlocked some interesting
insights. Our team health score averages at 9.3/10, where the highest score was
Personal growth with 9.7 while Feedback and recognition, along with the culture,
advocacy and management report were scored at 9.4.

For us as the company, this is an amazing achievement and confirmation that
we’re on the right track with the internal culture and that employees are
thrilled to be part of PROTOTYP.

On the other end of the spectrum, our Client Score averages at astonishing
9.5/10. We are incredibly proud that our clients are thrilled with the work,
both in design and development,  and support we provide them. 

Moving forward
Our mission was always to become a specialized digital product company; we focus
hard on the design aspect of the digital product while executing it with the
fast, scalable and strong tech foundation.

The findings and results from the verification process tell us we’re on the
right track and that we’re building a company we envisioned years ago. There are
still areas we must and need to improve, but we believe that being a part of
elite Pangea vendors will ensure and encourage us to stay on the right path and
be even better; both as an organization to our employees and as a digital
product company to our clients.

Pangea

PROTOTYP joins the top 7% at Pangea

In this step by step article, you will find out what is the Discovery process and how to apply it in your business practice. 

Discovery - this is how we do it - Prototyped



What is Discovery?
The Discovery process is a common business practice for IT companies and digital
agencies. Depending on the situation, if a client approaches you with the full
project specifications and ideas, then the Discovery shouldn’t take up a lot of
your time. But usually, a client has an idea of the product and your job is to
do a thorough Discovery workshop to make great foundations for the product.

As we at PROTOTYP [https://prototyp.digital/] have a unique approach to every
client and project, it is important to us that we deliver only the best digital
products. I will explain what tools and techniques we use in our Discovery
process and how it can help you too. We prefer to build new products from
scratch that will be fully functioning and conversion-driven.

Step 1: Find the pain points
To start with, you have to analyze the existing product and find its pain
points. Remember to observe it like a user and write down everything problematic
or confusing to you. Finding them is crucial because you will have to come up
with a solution that is user friendly and conversion-driven. After that, you
will have some first impressions of the potential problems and be able to think
of a new and improved solution.

Step 2: Analysis, analysis and some more analysis
Now it’s time for the real data and you guessed it - a lot of analysis! There
are plenty of tools that can help you, and here are the ones that we prefer to
use to check the website performance:

 * Website Grader
 * GTmetrix
 * Lighthouse

They are easy to use and will provide you with a lot of data and explanations,
as well as suggestions on what to improve on the website. Some of the most
important metrics you should be looking at are Page Loading Time, Total Page
Size, Page Speed Score, and SEO. All of these are crucial for user experience
and normal website functioning.



via GIPHY [https://giphy.com/gifs/cat-q6RoNkLlFNjaw]



The next step is to ask your client to permit you access into their Google
Analytics and Hotjar account (if they have it set). Google Analytics provides
many data, but the most important reports you should look at are:

 * Audience - Users, New Users, Sessions, Avg.Session Duration and Bounce rate
 * Acquisition - All traffic, Google Ads (if they use it), Search console and
   Social
 * Behavior - Behavior flow and Site content
 * Conversions - Goals (most useful if your client has a webshop site)

Google Analytics will provide you the information about who are the users, what
they look for, and are they succeeding in it. Data such as page views and site
content can show you what content and pages are most visited, and which aren’t.
Besides, if you notice the low avg. page time and high bounce rate, it’s a sign
that visitors don’t stick around and further explore the website.

To get the most use out of Google Analytics, you can create segments and get
specific information. For example; you can create a segment based on the
customer target group such as their age, location, language, behavior, and used
devices to look up the correlation between these data and client business goals.



via GIPHY [https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-BmmfETghGOPrW]



To confirm the collected data from Google Analytics, you should look at Hotjar
data. Hotjar is a very useful tool because it shows you heat maps, snapshot
recordings, and funnels. The heat map will show you where visitors click and
scroll on the page and what parts of the site they hang on the most, which will
help you understand if the website is user friendly and intuitive to use. In
other words, you will have proof of what works and what doesn’t work on the
website. Also, take your time and look at as many as possible snapshot
recordings because they will tell you what’s going on. Each snapshot recording
is showing what visitor does while being on the website and for how long it
stays. Also, you will get information about the type of device, operation
system, demographics, and geolocation information.

Step 3: It’s report time!
Now it’s time to make an analysis report and include all of the data with an
explanation. It would be good to make a detailed report with all findings first,
and then shorten it into a brief for the client. Be aware, to write the
explanation and conclusion that will be understandable for the client and other
stakeholders. Also, make sure to keep it simple and straight forward, point out
the weak parts and explain why are they causing problems and how to fix it by
creating a new product.

Step 4: Let’s get visual!
By now you have all the useful information to build up a new product that will
be user friendly and fully functional while achieving business goals. Like in
any other creative solution, prepare yourself for many backs and forth in the
process. Now that you know all the weaknesses and what visitors look for, it’s
time to make a visual sitemap - a hierarchical representation of website
structure. By creating a sitemap, your client will be able to visualize how will
the website look with all categories and subpages. You can be detailed and color
scheme it, write the categories name and enhance the CTA parts.

Here is an example of a sitemap. But be free to do it in your way to represent
the digital product as you want.

Source:
https://landing.moqups.com/img/content/diagrams/site-maps/ecommerce-shop-sitemap-template.png
You can create your sitemap using tools like Google Drawings and Miro. Keep in
mind that it needs to be understandable for the client. And since it is only a
scheme, it would be good to make an extra document where you will write down all
components and describe them.

In addition to this, you will need to create a user persona and showcase their
journey. Creating a user persona is fun and simple since you have all the data
from the analysis you've done previously. Create 4 to 5 user persona using
collected data and imagine what would be the purpose of their visit to the
website. Some of them can make a conversion such as - reaching out, making a
purchase or subscribing to the newsletter, while others can just leave without
made conversion or return later. 

Source: 
https://qubstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/How-to-create-Persona-09.pngYou
can make it simple or complicated as you like, the only important thing is to
show their demographics, location, behavior&interests, and goals. Where goals
apply to the reasons for visiting the website and further actions while on it.

Now that you have your user personas, it’s time to create a user journey map.
Why is it important to create one? A user journey map consists of user actions,
motives, and experiences but also of organizational activities and roles that
are responsible for these activities.

Source: https://miro.medium.com/max/7016/1*94SAmCKiVhojt3s9m5iOfw.jpegSome
stages are specific for the type of website and its business goals. You can
alternate it the way it works for your digital product, and create it by using
tools like Excel, Word, or Miro.

Step 5: The results
After finishing all the steps, it’s time to give the client a brief with main
findings and present a sitemap of the future digital product as well as user
persona an user journey map. Make sure to explain how will this new product
generate traffic and conversion to help them achieve their business goals. Once
the client approves the concept of the product, the discovery phase is done. The
concept of the product will be very useful for the next phase - the UX design
phase. With this, you have set the foundations for the product and eliminated
the extra alternations and misunderstanding.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember to be both analytical and creative in the process of building up
digital products. I hope this post was useful to you and that you have learned
something new. If you have any questions or just want to share your thoughts -
feel free to do it in the comments below. 😃


If you're looking for a company that will build up your digital product and help
you achieve your business goals - reach us at hello@prototyp.digital.

Design

Discovery - this is how we do it

In this conference overview, you can find out what we learned at Digitalab.in conference and why it should be on your conference wish list. 

Digitalab.in - conference with a soul - Prototyped

Can you think of the most relaxed conference where food is better than the
speakers?


Well, in those words organizers described Digitalab.in [https://digitalab.in/] 
conference and it became a synonym for it. It is a two-day conference for the
next-gen interface designers and developers. It is being held in the heart of
beautiful Istra (Croatia), in a lovely town Labin, and Lloyds Design
[https://lloyds-design.com/] agency stands behind its organization. Conference
is split into two tracks, workshops and keynote presentations, where workshops
are intended for the frontend developers and designers primarily, and keynotes
are suitable for anyone from the IT, marketing and creative industry.

Workshop - From strategy to UI: Details that make the experience
Starting with the workshops, our Lead Designer Igor Plac held an interactive
workshop with Elena Crnković from Bornfight [https://medium.com/@bornfight].
Theme of their workshop was From strategy to UI: Details that make the
experience and it was divided into theoretical and practical parts.

Photo by Marin Cuk Vurnek EVENTographyHere’s what Igor has to say about his
experience:

“My part was co-holding a workshop with Elena with the theme “From strategy to
UI: Details that make the experience”. That is pretty much a fancy way of saying
we would show all of the necessary steps for creating a digital product (app in
our case), from researching an idea to getting mockups ready for developers.

The workshop was aimed for designers (also those that feel that way) and
everyone else interested in creating great product experiences by exploring the
users’ point of view. We kicked things off in the morning with Elena’s part —
exploring ways of researching goals, users’ needs, and light wireframes. This
gave attendees a base for continuing to the second part: putting on some
“makeup” on the app they were given task to create.

Photo by Marin Cuk Vurnek EVENTographyAfter great lunch, I held my part, and we
went through themes like typography, color, and UI elements. They applied all of
those to the assignment they were working on, and as the workshop was
approaching the end, the app started taking shape.

By the time we closed, everyone had an idea of the complete workflow and at
least one screen to show. Hopefully, people had some fun and learned something
they can use in their day-to-day work. After two amazing days of learning,
meeting new people, and seeing old friends, all I can say is — ‘till next year.”

Top skills you need in the 21st century
Moving on to the second day, there was a lot of great keynotes presenting new
techniques, solutions, and necessary work skills. Merlin Rebrović, an UX
Designer from Google [https://medium.com/google-design], explained why
communication, creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking are some of the
top skills you need in the 21st century. Applying them, one can adapt to any
work change that comes along.

Photo by Marin Cuk Vurnek EVENTographyThomas Ragger and Thomas Lichtblau from WILD.as [https://wild.as/] talked about
their path from being freelancers to running a digital company, while Mario
Šestak from Bornfight explained why is simple product a usable product. For a
product to be simple and usable, it is necessary to think about users when
building an interface and trying to simplify it. Harry Roberts from CSS Wizardry
[https://csswizardry.com/] talked about resource hints and how they can help
developers to build their web pages faster.

Responding to change
Kene Udeze from Booking.com [https://booking.design/] spoke about the importance
of the collaboration between designers and other team members like copywriters
and product managers to build superior products. Magdalena Magličić from Five
[https://blog.five.agency/] explained what can designers and developers learn
from using cognitive science in their everyday work, while Sanja Tubak from 
Infobip [https://medium.com/@Infobip] talked about how to fight biases in
product design. One great keynote about project management was from Antonio
Perić-Mažar from Locastic [https://medium.com/locastic], he was talking about
what it takes to be agile, in other words, that individuals and interactions are
over processes an tools.

In the break between these great keynotes, we were relaxing and catching up with
friends and colleagues. By the time of the lunch, we were convinced why they say
that food is better than the speakers, oh and let us not forget about all the
coffee and beer (and gin). 🤭

We can say that we had a great time meeting new people, catching up with our
friends and sharing knowledge. And that’s why we can say that Digitalab.in is
the most relaxed conference ever, yet educational. We’ll see you next year! 😎

Photo by Marin Cuk Vurnek EVENTography

AuthorValentina Bermanec

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