BYOD? What is it and how could Future Help Designs assist?

Posted 75 days ago by FHDadmin

Are You Ready For BYOD?

If you are an IT Manager, you have noticed that the practice of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)has become commonplace in almost every workplace. Although it may be useful and convenient for employees, and even for your company in general, you need to think through the implications that BYOD will have on your company’s security.

Because of the dynamics of employees accessing company data anytime, from anywhere,

now that the Web, wireless access, and mobile devices have become ubiquitous, the modern

company and its IT Department need to be especially aware of how far afield their company property is traveling and how to secure it.

Your goals are to increase productivity through BYOD practices, while reducing risk and cost.

Toward that end, here are some questions to ask:

1. Who owns, manages and secures each device?

2. How can encryption, antivirus protection, passwords, geo-fencing and other measures be implemented and enforced effectively?

3. What are the risks that employees’ BYOD practices introduce to your company?

4. What is being accessed and how do you use cloud storage, and in-house and 3rd party apps safely? According to conclusions from a survey of 1,500 IT decision makers by Dell Quest Software, “Those slow to support BYOD or constrained by a device-centric approach may deal with greater challenges, including the risk of being left behind from a competitive standpoint.” Its clear that BYOD is the new way of the workplace. Smart companies are staying on top of and ahead of this trend.

As you consider your corporate IT’s infrastructure and response to BYOD you may be considering building Apps as software to help manage sensitive corporate documents. Future Help Designs has the capabilities to be your third-party vendor to assist your in-house team develop intuitive mobile applications for your workforce. Contact us: ThePeople@FutureHelpDesigns.com

These 4 bullets were crafted in partnership with Mobile Comply, Christina and Future Help Designs, Glen Konopaskie

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MOBILE HOT TOPICS – March Edition

Posted 82 days ago by FHDadmin

On a recent trip out to Seattle, WA for a school psychologist conference I had a wonderful experience of mobile trend watching. Beautiful Downtown Seattle was host to the NASP conference for school psychologists. I witnessed and conversed with many attendees and heard their thoughts around the mobile trends in the education and behavior space. Also while there I was able to enjoy several of Seattle’s coffee shops and in particular one shop leveraging mobile in incredible ways. And lastly on my flight home reading the Sky Magazine they spoke of the ability to leverage mobile technology to modify behavior to promote better health styles. In summary these are the three mobile trends I’m documenting this month:

Mobile in the world of education
Mobile in the world of the small business
Mobile as your behavior modifier

Posted in Apps, Business, iPad, iPhone, Medical & Wellness, Mobile Industry | No Comments

5 Questions to consider as you create your Enterprise Mobility Plan

Posted 88 days ago by FHDadmin

Do you have an Enterprise Mobility Strategy? Or do you just have an app?

Developing a mobile app without taking a step back to strategize means you may end up with a “half-apped” mobility plan. Managing Enterprise Mobility means more than just keeping track of who is using which types of devices. Many companies utilize best practices for cutting costs, extending mobile access to data to more employees, and decreasing the incidence of lost or stolen mobile devices.

Here are 5 questions to consider as you create your Enterprise Mobility Plan:

1. How can Mobility improve your organization? By creating greater efficiencies and faster communication, more streamlined workflow, ”workshifting, ” enhanced collaboration amongst teams, and better usage of company data and resources location-independent, mobility can add to the bottom line in more than a few ways. 71% of companies have changed at least one business process and 20% of companies have changed four or more business processes to accommodate mobility into their organization. Before you design a strategy do your homework on mobile in your place, execute a minimal viable plan to test the new processes and procedures and consider evaluating a results focused work ethic and environment built around your mobile strategy.

2. Do you have a BYOD (bring-your-own-device) policy in place? It may lower costs to allow your employees to use their own personal devices at work, but what about the broader implications? 60% of companies reported that most employees use personal computing devices at work. The usage of BYOD opens up more areas of security breaches for a company that your IT department should be aware of and manage appropriately. Another item to consider is a clear definition of work on mobile devices outside of corporate hours. Currently the argument is around emails after hours, but this will soon spread as mobile devices trend from devices of consumption to creation.

3. Can you leverage your existing technologies into Mobile? Consider how you can integrate your investments in your website, ecommerce store or online marketing with your new mobile strategies. Mobile e-commerce web traffic is experiencing exponential growth. By integrating your existing technologies and extending them into mobile, you may be able to increase revenues, without large additional investments.

4. Which are the best mobile devices to begin with? How to decide which platforms your company needs to be on entails assessing the choices in alignment with your business practices. Consider content creation vs. consumption, BYOD (bring-your-own-device), field usage, collaboration tools, and usage patterns within your organization. Android, iOS, and Blackberry all have different uses, market targets and market shares for personal and corporate usage.

5. Do you outsource or keep it in-house? There are several approaches, which include building a homegrown solution, outsourcing to an agency or provider, a combination of in-house and outsourcing, or buying or licensing software. Your team should examine the time it will take, the integration with your current infrastructure, the upfront costs, the resources you have internally, the speed of change to your industry due to mobile and the requirement for expertise, and the return on investment.

These 5 bullets are crafted in partnership with Mobile Comply, Christina and Future Help Designs, Glen Konopaskie

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Non-profits using Mobile apps to enhance awareness and fund raising

Posted 94 days ago by FHDadmin

Mobile Apps in the non-profit fund raising sector

Background

Walk for Warmth is an annual walk-a-thon event hosted by OLHSA, A Community Action Agency. They are community neighbors and supporters along side Future Help Designs in Downtown Pontiac, and their premier event sponsor, Genisys Credit Union. The walk happens across the nation to help raise awareness for this important cause, and OLHSA coordinates the effort in the counties of Livingston and Oakland County, MI.

This annual goal is to raise $180,000. In 2011 the Walk for Warmth raised $183,000, their most successful walk ever. This included 1,500 walkers.

OLHSA’s mission is to enable the low-income, elderly and persons with disabilities living in Oakland and Livingston Counties to become more self-sufficient.

To discover more about OLHSA visit www.OLHSA.org

The Challenge

The ability to rally around causes such as Walk for Warmth and assist through donations and participation has always been a challenge. The world of donation sheets is long gone, digital web-sites now take over to help collect donations, and social media takes on the role of promotion through neighbors own personal promotions. How does a non-profit agency rooted in the community continue to develop sustainable growth and stay relevant? This year OLHSA reached out to Future Help Designs to help implement stage 1 of their mobile roadmap.

The Solution

The Mobile Roadmap

Planning growth goals and milestones in technology has proven to deliver the best results. It’s the careful delivery of identifying the “wants” of a customer with the “needs” that can deliver. For a mobile roadmap discussion visit “Going Mobile: From Idea to Development“.

Walk for Warmth iPhone App

A mobile app license from Future Help Designs was used to save development costs to deliver an app within a short time frame. Looking at existing content available from OLHSA’s website helped to define design decisions and populate the app with static content.

Individual interaction with the mobile app in the first stage was decided as customizing which walk the user would be attending with a countdown timer, allowing the user to post to their social media from within the app, and sign-up to walk.

Static content that could be re-purposed included the following: An about page to communicate the purpose of the walk, walk maps and directions that could interact with the smartphones existing apps, and pages linking to walk sponsors.

Platform Decision

The decision on platform has to come from who the user is in the end. In the case of OLHSA their users were community members who held many forms of employment and were socially connected and invested in their communities and helping others. The platform decision was to make the app available for both the Apple and Android platforms, and the form factor of smartphone vs tablet.

Within the communities of Livingston and Oakland county the population was highly likely to own either an iPhone or Android device. The functionality of the app would most benefit those on smartphones which require a mere 30 seconds of engagement vs a tablet which can maintain a users interest for 3 minutes.

Content Management System

A challenge that creates a customer need in the case of donor fund raising is the fact that many donors sign up at the last moments. A solution needed to be provided that would allow for quick updates, without having to update the app code.

In an experimental case Future Help Designs guided OLHSA to leverage the ease of use of Podio to assist. It resulted as a great communication tool so team members on client and developer side could see changes. Additionally Podio held well as a content management system to update content on the fly to the downloaded user base.

The Results

This year’s mobile roadmap strategy and implementation provided for Walk for Warmth apps available on iTunes and Google Play. The content management system was also implemented to provide timely app updates for new sponsors as well as communicating funds raised.

Next steps include preparing for next years walk and marketing the app’s availability and functionality.

OLHSA is well on it’s way to being an early adopter into what is already an expected state – “Is there an app for that?” OLHSA’s answer is yes.

Download the iPhone App here

Download the Android App here

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Future Help Designs, Pontiac’s Mobile App Company, plays it’s role in the city’s comeback

Posted 96 days ago by FHDadmin

Future Help Designs, Pontiac’s Mobile App Company, owned by Glen Konopaskie and Christian Marcillo, demonstrates the ability of tech small businesses to play their role in urban entrepreneurship and socially responsible business.

In the February 18′th edition of the Detroit News, Future Help Designs and it’s neighboring businesses were credited as playing a role along side partnerships with city elected officials and emergency financial manager. Tech companies like Future Help Designs and our small business neighbors all share the philosophy of live, work, play which helps not only revitalize our city but also is a core value in our businesses.

Future Help Designs listed as a core business in Pontiac’s comeback

Future Help Designs leadership plays an active role within the community. When not developing mobile apps co-owners Glen & Christian are in the community volunteering. Most notably is Glen Konopaskie’s involvement with the Pontiac Downtown Business Association as President. Creating structure and engagement has been an asset to the momentum being built. Christian also plays a role in coordinating technology tools as a volunteer to help with the promotional activities to help drive traffic to the Pontiac Downtown events.

Other volunteer leadership roles within the tech industry itself places Glen as Vice-Chair for the Mobile Technology Association of Michigan. MTAM is currently leading the nation as the mobile trade associations only state wide movement nationally. The organization is benchmarking how mobile, one of the fastest growing industries globally, can play in the economic development of states.

Future Help Designs plays its role in making apps, as well as driving economic development within it’s community, both at local, state, and national levels. Check back often for more news.

To read the article in it’s entirity please visit the Detroit News. http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2013302180332

Posted in Business, Mobile Industry, Press | No Comments

Differentiating Learning Experiences using iPad

Posted 102 days ago by FHDadmin

Future Help Designs with Paul Chrustowski and Christian Marcillo present on the use of iPads as tools for differentiated learning experiences.

The presentation was given at the National Association of School Psychologist conference (NASP) in Seattle, WA on February 12, 2014.

iPads enter the classroom more and more as the tool of choice to deliver educational content. The win for students is the ability to have self-paced learning without having to be too concerned about being slower or faster than peers. The learning environment is somewhat isolated. Teachers who are successful in utilizing this differentiated learning experience are using multiple apps within one class curriculum. Students sometimes can pick their own apps to facilitate their learning experience.

With this technology only being around a few years there are many levels of innovation. As part of that innovation cycle Future Help Designs offers FHDnet as a possible answer to assist educators in managing the differentiated learning experiences of our students while providing some level of classroom management. To download a free copy of FHDnet visit FHDnet on iTunes

Additionally learn new techniques around capturing behavioral assessments on your iPhone using iBAA. The templates that you can customize assist school districts capture data amongst observers such as school psychs, behavioral analysts, teachers, and even educational admins and stay consistent with the types of observations recorded. To give it a try visit iBAA on iTunes

For a copy of the presentation, please visit again shortly and we will post the link.
For those registered at #NASP login here: http://www.nasponline.org/conventions/2013/program/handouts.aspx
Follow us on Twitter @FHDapps and we’ll notify you when the presentation is posted.

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Mobile Hot Topics – January edition

Posted 135 days ago by FHDadmin

Welcome to the Mobile Hot Topics from Future Help Designs

Future Help Designs welcomes you to the future that will be 2013. January is the season of newness, be it resolutions, new fresh ideas, and even new gifts. Did you know that this past Christmas Day saw 17.4M tablet activations - that’s a LOT of new gifts. You might have given one to papa, if so check out this video JUST to make sure he’s using it for it’s intended purpose.

You may have New Years Resolutions, and if that’s the case check out KeepInMind, our behavior modification app. You’ve got 30 days to get to your new good habit.

This may be the year you, your department, company, or friend decides to make an app. Check out our “Going Mobile” article to help lay out the path.

MOBILE INDUSTRY

Christmas had many opening up gifts of technology from under the tree. We can’t tell you just how many tech gifts were given, however we do know that there were 17.4 Million tablet activations on Christmas Day!

MOBILE HEALTH

Preventive Health Care is a hot topic in mHealth. Behavioral changes are at the core of preventive medicine such as remembering to exercise during your lunch, or eat that one apple a day. Behavioralists call this behavior modification. We like to say it’s KeepInMind. Push notifications on your iPhone that help not only remind you, but also ask for your input is at the core of KeepInMind. You might find it helpful to plan your New Years resolutions with KeepInMind. Program in your 30 days of reminders to affect your behavioral change.

Mobile Health in 2013: from the gym to the doctor’s office. The trend in mHealth has typically been more towards apps like KeepInMind which promote good health. Others are fitness tracking apps. This year the opportunity to have more clinical adoption of mHealth will be there. They will include such things as fitness gadgets such as some the FDA will be approving for remote monitoring in clinical trials.

Social Media’s Huge Role in the Future of Health Care was talked about at the 2012 mHealth Summit. Conversations included how providers are able to offer lower costs and better services because of mHealth and the role of social media.

MOBILE EDUCATION

Differentiated Learning experiences for the classroom on the iPad

Future Help Designs is seeing growth of iPads in learning environments. It was just a few years ago that iPads hit special education classrooms, then early adaptors found technology grants to bring them in class by class. Last year we saw the growth of parochial schools adopting iPads in the entire school, and this year more and more schools will be adopting them. FHDnet is in beta programs now to assist with the differentiated learning experiences of students on iPads while in the classroom.

Apple is Winning Over the Education Market. Dan Ritter summarized Apple’s CFO Peter Oppenheimers comment on iPad sals of 17 million in second quarter 2012 while saying “interest in the new iPad was high, sales of the reduced price iPad 2 in the K-12 markets were particularly strong, and even though we achieved all-time record Mac sales to U.S. education institutions during the quarter, we sold more than twice as many iPads as Macs to U.S. education institutions.”

MOBILE DEVELOPMENT

Are you ready to take your business mobile? It all starts with a single idea. Compile some specific information that you can take to a developer like Future Help Designs.

Follow these steps to help you get on the road to launching an app for your business? Going Mobile: From Idea to Development

You might like a look into the past of mobile. Apple’s earliest design concepts came out of the woodwork. Tablets physically had a hand held phone attached to it. The early day concepts of Hartmut Esslinger are displayed here.

Look for more next month’s updates from Future Help Designs.

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Posted in Apps, Business, iPad, iPhone, Medical & Wellness, Mobile Industry | No Comments

Future Help Designs can help you get mobile

Posted 137 days ago by FHDadmin

Are you curious about developing an app for you, your company, or a friend? Future Help Designs can help.

Each month we’ll share topics about the mobile development process as well as the mobile industry.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Look for the following topics:

Going Mobile
Launching your app idea
Mobile in Healthcare
Mobile in Education
Mobile in Government
The future of mobile such as machine to machine
…. and many, many more topics

Posted in Apps, Business, Mobile Industry | No Comments

Going Mobile: From Idea to Development

Posted 141 days ago by FHDadmin

Are you ready to take your business mobile? Not just a mobile website, but an actual, full-blown application? The idea of a mobile app fits some business profiles better than others, but if you think you’re ready to do it, it all starts with a single idea. It’s a long process to launch your own app, but if you have your idea and you think you’re ready for the next step, compile some specific information that you can take to a developer. Follow these steps to help you get on the road to launching an app for your business:

Idea

What’s your idea? Does it focus around a business plan? Who are your users? What specific features will the mobile app offer? Will you need to include things like GPS, a camera, or any other tools? Are there other apps or websites that function like this one will? What will it look like?

These are all questions you should ask yourself before talking to a developer. The more established the idea you have, the better the developer will know what to do with it when you meet.

Communicating the Idea

Gather your ideas and notes

Sometimes you might think you’re explaining yourself as clearly as you can, and others just can’t understand you at all. For this reason, it’s a good idea to find some examples of other apps that you like. Whether you like the look of it, or the way it functions, make note of these and show them to the developer. Even if you aren’t an artist, make a few sketches of how you’d like your app to look. If you’re doing this for your business, do you already have a website you’d like to implement into the app? Keep all of this in mind when you’re telling the developer what you want.

Roadmap

Going from A to B and everything in between

OK, people may not use maps much anymore without a GPS, but they’re still a great way to show you how to get from Point A to Point B, and you’ll want something similar once your app starts development. You’ll need to know which platform you want to develop: are you looking at a mobile website, or a full application? For a phone or a tablet computer? And what operating system? Each option has its own perks and drawbacks, and that’s for you to evaluate. It is important to consider which operating system you’ll develop for, though, as the iPhone and Android markets far outnumber the Blackberry and Windows markets.

Talk with your developer about your budget, a time frame, the quality of the app, features you may want to add later on, a potential for growth and ways to measure usage, and target launch dates.

If you have an idea kicking around in your head, flesh it out and talk to a developer. You never know what it might become.

Posted in Apps, Business, iPad, iPhone, Mobile Industry | No Comments

Assessing Instructional Levels in the Classroom, through Mobile Apps

Posted 224 days ago by FHDadmin

In these days of learning where classroom sizes grow and funding decreases it becomes more and more important to ensure outcomes for education are met. Part of that is assessing the instructional level of classrooms not only from how the teacher is teaching, but also how students are behaving and learning in the classroom.

In the world of behavioral sciences, school psychologists and behavioral analysts are charged with assisting and assessing what the instructional level is and how best to assist students in learning.

Future Help Designs, a mobile software development company in Downtown Pontiac, MI has created two apps to assess classroom environments and student behavior as well as modify student behavior right from their iPhone.

As part of the training of behavioral analysts and school psychologists, Future Help Designs is instructing workshops to demonstrate how the very mobile school psychs and analysts can perform their assessments without having to report back to their home base desktop.

Presentations at the West Virginia School Psychologist Association, Michigan Association of School Psychologists, and the National Association of School Psychologists all feature two apps made by Future Help Designs, iBAA and KeepInMind. Additionally there is a new mobile app used to assist with the differentiated learning experience of students on iPads called FHDnet that is demonstrated during the lectures.

SCENARIO 1: STUDENT OBSERVATION FROM THE BACK OF THE CLASS

Imagine the following scenario. Your student sits in classroom and is reported to have some troubles paying attention in class. Previously a school psychologist would enter the class and do their observation while making notes. Whenever this would occur, the students would be wise to the fact they are being observed and modify their behavior – or be on their best behavior. Now a psychologist or analyst can observe from the back of the class and just be on their iPhone, a normal occurrence to students these days. Without being aware they are being observed.

Furthermore the instruction can continue undistrubed, and once the observation is complete a report can be shared with peers, parents, or teachers both statistically and graphically to help understand student behavior.

SCENARIO 2: IMPROVED CLASSROOM POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

Now imagine the second scenario. Your a teacher trying to improve the instructional level of your curriculum. With the help of an analyst you can gain an understanding of how often you deliver positive reinforcement vs. negative reinforcement. Using KeepInMind you’d be able to receive a reminder to give the positive reinforcement at a random interval, as well as comment from that reminder to review later.

To find out more about how iBAA and KeepInMind may help improve instructional levels in the classroom, download a summary document of the presentation from at the following link: WEST VIRGINIA STATE CONFERENCE PRESO

Christian Marcillo is CEO and Director of Creative Designs at Future Help Designs. iBAA and KeepInMind was created through the guidance of subject matter expert, Dr. Paul Chrustowski.

iBAA YouTube Video Tour

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