The solution really came to fruition after researching custom pedal boards from a new company Temple Audio Designs. ![]() The issues were the same Mounting the device, connecting and powering all the devices, and portability (for both guitar pedals and mobile devices, you need something that’s lightweight, well-organized and allows you to easily remove and add fixtures as needed.) He had recently built a board for a tour a month earlier, and as he thought back to his experience building that-and thought about our UX device board dilemma-he couldn’t help but make the connection between the two unrelated, yet oddly similar, problems. He has about 8 guitar pedals that are all daisy chained for power and connection while mounted to a board that’s compact, organized and ready to go every night. By day, Thomas heads up THE Imarc UX team, but by night, he plays guitar with his band. While our UX engineers were working to solve the problem with the device lab board, our Director of Experience was working on a different problem. With help of a few musicians here at Imarc-and incredibly creative thinking-we stumbled upon an ingenious solution. It needed to address all of the shortcomings of the original DeviceLab and then some. ![]() So, we sought out a better replacement for the DeviceLab to combine it with the GhostLab software. Messy, undersized, overcomplicated Exhibit A: However, the stand didn’t come with out limitations. Perfect.Īlong with the Ghostlab software, we bundled their DeviceLab stand to hold up our devices. So long as the devices are all on the same wifi, Ghostlab will capture all browser events such as scroll, click and redirects on one device and will emit those events to every browser that is on the same ip address. Devs can add a project directory or URL and then continue to connect multiple browsers and devices to it via internal IP address. Vanamco’s GhostLab was a great addition to our workflow. For example, it’s key that important call-to-actions are within the physical and comfortable limits for all thumb lengths, but how we would ever know this unless we experience this first hand? Adding GhostLab Software and Device Lab v1 to the Workflow Developing without a device will often make a dev neglect the real physical interactions we have with mobile devices on a day-to-day basis. However, it still left a lot to be desired when it came to capturing the true user experience on mobile devices. Out of all the tools at our disposal, built-in emulators yielded the best results. ![]() Using an emulator may get mobile-specific features to work, however we won’t know a webpage is truly rendering the way it should unless we get a physical device in our hands. It does not simulate the OS or even the one specific browser that may be available on that OS. Technically speaking however, emulators only simulate user agents in the request header sent to the server. , ) or built into a browser-help test mobile-specific features. Although resizing the browser will give you a wide range to test breakpoints, it will fail to simulate mobile-specific features.Įmulators-whether a web based service (i.g. The problem with resizing the browser to test a web app’s responsiveness is that a developer won’t get the full context of the environment. Originally, our developers used simple browser resizing and device emulation, as it was the most convenient option. Another workflow challenge we faced was emulation. ![]() Needless to say, we needed a better solution. Mind you, this is all assuming the dev remembers that these devices are even available. not lazy) to go up and walk across the office to grab a device, it wasn’t even guaranteed that devices were of use Some devices weren’t charged or perhaps someone else was already using it. The cache itself wasn’t very impressive, as it was a mixture of dated devices of varying operating systems with few that were actually useful. Overcoming Workflow Challenges One of the main issues we found in our workflow was device accessibility.īefore our device lab, we kept a cache of various mobile devices in a lockbox in the back of the server room. Enter, Imarc's very own, custom device lab.īut first, a little backstory about what prompted the need for a new and improved testing center. Through identifying some common pain points in our workflows-and a common love for music-our team came up with an innovative (dare we say ingenious?) solution. To streamline this process, our UX department needed better tools to test responsive web applications. Imarc recently took on a mobile-first initiative.
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