It is no secret that people everywhere pull all-nighters, work graveyard shifts, and have weekend duties in India. It follows, then, that stress levels and job burnouts are as common as the common cold.

Many companies with stringent cultures try out clichéd programmes to help keep the attrition rates under control. At Influx, our work is a blend of technology and creative services. Work is dynamic, schedules are chaotic, and deadlines bulldoze us every now and again.

 First off…

Influxians are not “employees”; we are Associates. You might ask what the big deal about this is. An employee is just paid to do a job; an associate is invited to connect with the company at a more meaningful level. Our association with Influx is what counts, and yes, that is a big deal.

 We have a knack of breaking free from the daily grind.

We work with clients in different time zones. Yet, you will see

A recent Google study shared that an average user has about 36 apps installed on his device and uses just nine of them on a daily basis. Statistically, only 4% of the apps will be used over a year.

Here are 5 UI/UX/Design tips that we at Influx think are key to making an app usable for the end-user.

 1. One Screen, One Task

Reduce the effort users have to put in to get what they want

Every screen you design for the app should support a single action of real value to the person using it. Design each screen for one thing and one thing only, with no more than one call-to-action. This makes it easier to learn, easier to use, and easier to add to or build on when necessary.

Take Uber, for instance. Uber knows that the goal of the person who uses the app is to book a cab. The Uber app does not overwhelm the user with too much of information; it automatically detects the user’s location

How does a product become a brand?

How does a brand enter your subconscious mind?

What influences a user’s decision?

These are questions that every marketer comes across while branding, questions to which he finds a varied array of answers. Now, what branding is and how it is done may be known to many, but the implementation gets tangled along the way.

“They said I could be anything I wanted…”

It’s as simple as that, You make your brand out to be anything you want it to be seen as. Want to project thought leadership? Do it. Want your work culture to reflect in your brand? Show it off. Want your brand to stand out in an industry? Talk about it.

 What exactly is Branding?

Branding is a process of building a unique name or image with a consistent theme in the followers’ mind, right? For this to be effective, it is important to have a proper mechanism to put your brand out there

Daniel Anandaraj Garnipudi

Today, the buzzwords for most organisations revolves around the “Digital Experience”. These words, along with terms like Digital Transformation, Strategy, Media, SEO, SEM, etc., are all commonplace in small and large companies alike.

Every organisation needs a digital presence for sure, but you have to bear in mind that it is not a one-off spend or one-off exercise. It is a culture. What it takes is a cultural change, a dimensional shift in the way that we think, plan, act, and do.

I recently joined Influx Worldwide—an organisation always in flux - literally! Why? Because we change, we adapt, and we keep ourselves abreast of the latest technologies, so we can ensure that our clients, and their clients, get the best experience (digital and beyond) that we can offer. Nothing stagnates here.

 However, I digress.

I mentioned a few sentences earlier about

Dinesh AC

We talked about PWAs a few posts ago. Now, here’s some deeper gyaan to help you decide whether or not you should go in for a PWA.

 PWA vs Native Apps

There are a bunch of misconceptions about PWAs:

• they only work in Chrome
• they can’t be as smooth as native apps
• there’s no full-screen mode

And so on.

Progressive Web Apps are an established technology that big players like Twitter and AliBaba have adopted with great success.

Traditionally-native features that PWAs can also use are:

• push notifications
• working offline
• adding an icon to the home screen
• being installed into Android (i.e. in the apps drawer and in Settings)
• receiving intents
• launching in {full-screen](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2014/11/Support-for-installable-web-apps-with-webapp-manifest-in-chrome-38-for-Android?hl=en)
• clipboard access
• persistent auto-login using the Credentials Manager API

Ratheesh Nair

A few years back I was working with a product-based company that made mobile apps using different platforms like, say, EMP. That’s the Ericsson Mobile platform and is proprietary for all Sony phones. I would test those applications to check if the functionality works or not. Beyond that I didn’t bother with the usability factor.

 And then, the smartphone arrived

The smartphone evolved from small-screen phones manufactured by different brands. They came with limited options to access the internet, audio and video features, and different Mobile Operating Systems . This made developing an application for the mobile phone more complex, leaving little time to market the product itself.

 First, what is a smartphone?

Turns out, the actual definition, no matter the source, is quite vague. Merriam-Webster concisely calls a smartphone “a cell phone that includes additional

Vaidehi Mehta

Over an eclectic career spanning some thirty years, I’ve had several people ask me about what is considered appropriate dressing for work. From my role as an agony aunt, teacher, and manager, and some serious arguments about “appropriate” with people older and younger than I, I’ve put together the answers to eight questions that cover almost anything you may want to know about how to dress for the office.

Like everything else that has evolved over the years, in India too, rules about office-wear are so much more relaxed now than they were twenty, even ten, years ago. Then, full-sleeves-and-tie for the guys, and starched-pleated-and-pinned sarees for women were de rigueur even at middle management levels. Though these were not the most comfortable options, we accepted them. These “rules” did not impact our lives in any significant way.

No longer. People and offices have

Deepa Sai

What persuades people to eagerly pre-book for some movies and boo the rest? How have people become fanatics of the Marvel universe, Fast and Furious, and The Mummy series?

A movie can not be launched by releasing a trailer and then go MIA. Gone are the days of cheap Tumblr websites; people’s movie experiences have led movie marketers to go social. Movie marketers today are leveraging digital marketing trends to create a “buzz’ for their movies. Cross promotions, #FOMO, and viral and influencer marketing are some high-powered strategies that are driving movies to the box-office even before they are released.

Every movie that is made has a Facebook page. Marketers release movie posters, trailers, audio launch photos, press releases and wait for the audience to do the rest of their own accord. But these pages hardly get any attention or action from the fans.

2017 is

Shruti Mishra

*A year begins and everyone and his uncle has an opinion on where the digital world is headed. Definitely an interesting topic; lots of research, much chewing of data, and hours spent pondering what on earth it all means.

That’s the essence of what our youngest intern has done—taken a look at the future of social media in the digital world.*

 Read on.

Before diving into what the future holds for social media, let us look at some snippets of how it has evolved over the years:

Inception of various social networks

When did you create your first social media account? Thinking back, are you surprised to know it was over a decade ago?

 Social media is not just about interaction anymore

Back in noughties, social media networks were launched for one reason - for people to interact with each other. What seemingly started off as a mode of interaction through messaging, video