I can't quite figure out what is the best approach to tutorials on mobile games. Should the tutorial progress and its features (or some of it) be stored locally on the device or should it all come from the server?
(if someone has a guest account and a facebook account he may face the tutorial twice should it all be stored on the server, mind you)
Thanks in advance
I have a mixture of the two but it gets in the way when I revisit it
The tutorial progression status is the part of the user progress. If you have any information about the user progress store tutorial status there.
The bigger problem though is user identification. Is this user someone who have played the game before or a newcomer? Is this registered user who we think it is or is it a different person? There is no other (feasible) way to confidently answer these questions, you can either make a guess based off the user behavior, or simply ask the user if he have played through the tutorial before. Or more correct if he wants to play it.
Related
Ok, so about a year ago I wrote a web app that helps organize appointments for my dads company. He now "couldn't do business without it". I have decided that I want to build a SAAS subscription model out of it and open it up to the public.
It's currently built on codeigniter and php which I do not think is a good fit for a SAAS version. I am planning on rebuiling it from scratch in laravel 4 and using stripe as a payment gateway.
My concern is how best to handle the database / application structure for more than one client. Currently, it just serves the one business and is very un-abstract and is specific to my dads companies needs. I need it to be able to handle different data depending on what the business who uses it does.
I have looked into multi-tenancy but i'm not sure this is right for this. I am thinking that a 'gmail' style approach would be better. One app / domain that after login the user will see their customised dashboard and only their data.
Before I get stuck in with the coding I need to work out how best to handle multiple 'accounts' on the one database. I do not want to create a table for each user, nor a database for each user.
I guess my question is can anybody point me in the right direction for how best to handle a monthly payment subscription in Laravel? It's not so much the code that I'm stuggling with, rather what exactly I would need to build to handle charging the customer each month and denying them access if billing failed etc.
Thanks
You are in for a lot of reading and a ton of work!
First of all, let's completely ignore the billing aspect of this for now — at the end of the day that portion of the application is really fairly trivial. Take a page out of 37signals Rework (page 93 and 94) and launch your product with a 30 day free trial before you even begin implementing it (you should know how to implement it by then).
Second, why do you think that "gmail" doesn't use multi-tenancy, URI structure tells nothing about the underlying database structure. I'm fairly confident they aren't cloning a database schema for every one of their customers. Therefore you've probably answered your own question — you want to implement multi-tenancy.
You're going to want to abstract your database (and application architecture), and honestly there is no better resource to help you on your way to doing that than Taylor Otwell's (creator of Laravel) book Laravel: From Apprentice To Artisan. His book is not for beginners, and by the time you're done reading it you should probably be able to answer this question for yourself.
You are not going to be creating a table or a database for each user, you aren't even going to be creating one for each organization. Instead you'll be creating abstract database structure in code, which will pull your users data out of the database.
Think about checking for permission to access an organization as another layer of user authentication. On every request you'll be checking to see if that user can access a particular organization. You'll likely also check to ensure that organization is still active (did it expire because they didn't pay?) this will again happen on every request and likely with a filter within laravel.
This really leads to the next very important factor of developing a SaaS application.
I don't know about you, but I'm paranoid, and I couldn't sleep well at night if I wasn't sure that user number 4506 couldn't see the data of an organization that he doesn't belong to. The only really good way to ensure this is through unit testing, which I'd highly suggest learning if you haven't already.
The best way to do this within Laravel 4 is to read Jeffrey Way's book Laravel Testing Decoded. This book is extremely advanced, but still easy to understand if you have a good grasp of the fundamentals.
Last but not least, the number one thing is get involved in the community — the easiest way I'd suggest doing that is idling on the #laravel IRC channel (freenode). Ask some questions, maybe answer some questions, everyone in the channel is very nice and responsive.
You are definitely in for an adventure, don't be afraid to ask questions and make mistakes. Good luck.
As a rough overview, I would have a clients table, and a subscriptions table. Any other data that needs storing such as contacts, or appointments, can be associated using foreign keys to the client table.
In laravel, you can use the ORM to get the currently logged in client, and then through a relationship, fetch appointments and contacts belonging to them.
There are some useful tools for laravel at cartalyst.com, including sentry and sentry-social for user auth, and integrating user accounts with facebook/google/twitter, etc.
Stripe will allow you to configure recurring payments, and will notify you via web hooks each time there is a payment attempt. you can log these in the payments table, and associate them with a user/client. you can use this to keep track of who has paid, and how recently.
Also, bear in mind that you may not want to cancel the account immediately on failed payment.
Stripe will reattempt, and it may be that your best response is after it is two or three days late, or you get an invalid card notification,to get in touch with the client and prompt them to update their payment details.
It may also be an opportunity to check when they last logged in.
If it was over a month ago you can credit them with a free month, and remind them of how much your app can do for them.
By doing this, you may be able to get people to continue using (and paying) for something they had forgotten they had subscribed to.
I'm writing a fairly complicated application for Glass and I'm worried about users coming in, signing up, and using the resources for my AppEngine account even though they don't have Glass and will get no benefit from it. Is there currently any way in the Mirror API to actually determine if a user has Glass?
I think a way to verify they have Glass would be an excellent idea. This has been requested on the issues list.
In the mean time, you might want to implement "double opt-in". It is considered best practice to send a "welcome" card - you might want to extend that welcome card to tell them to acknowledge the card. This can be a fairly simple operation, and it isn't burdensome to either them or you. If they don't within some reasonable time frame (or after some reminders... or whatever), then you can probably disable your Glass activities to them.
Actually... the more I think about it, the more I like this idea even once our API quota limits are lifted...
I searched but couldn't find a proper answer for this...may be I didn't look deep enough. Anyways, little insight from you guys will only make things easier. So hear me out.
this is for my final year research project. I just need concepts and if any links I can read more.
So this application is a distributed one for a hotel which has 3 branches (including the main hotel) in location A, B, C.
I & (my colleagues) have developed the database, business logic, and 3 separate GUIs for the billing, bar and the kitchen. All are working perfectly and we used .NET remoting for this. this is the whole system and GUIs connected to the business through LAN.
This system, should be deployed in each location (A,B,C) and from the main hotel (A), I should be able to view the details of other locations (B,C). and all 3 systems should be connected through the internet.
problem is, how do I do that?
I just wanna view the information of other places and may be take printouts. that is not relevant for the question i guess.
The database is not distributed, each location has its own database. If I were to use a web service, how can I do it more cost-effectively? where do I have to deploy the service?
as a side note, I have developed a simple chat system (remoting) and tried to connect it through internet with a friend but it didn't work. If anyone knows why?
please be kind enough to provide any other relevant information on this topic. and please ask questions.
Why not just build a web application with a secure login? That way you build one system, deploy one system, maintain one system. All your data would be in one place, making reporting a lot less onerous, the whole thing would be faster and if you ever need to add a fourth, fifth or twenty seventh additional location, then you'd need to do very little to make it happen.
I see no reason why you have to go about it as you are.
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what i have until now:
session on server side
unique id (md5) of computer created by Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_USER_AGENT") & REMOTE_HOST and saved on the database
but what else can i do in this case? users continue to share their login details :(
This is a problem in almost any line of work: from software, where someone can simply copy the program, to simple ticketing, and having an individual walk past the ticketing desk. (I worked in a ticket selling position, and we did have individuals walk in without paying.) This is largely a social problem, not a computing one, and it's been my experience that trying to fix social problems (people) with computers is largely futile. Here is a culmination of what I've heard on this topic, and the two categories the advice tends to fall into:
Try to control the problem.
Try to somehow identify and control the unscrupulous users of the system. This can be DRM for software, or a security guard in the example of the ticketing desk. This is essentially what you're trying now.
A problem I see with your current method is it doesn't support multiple browsers. I routinely browse from multiple browsers, and from multiple websites. If this is your method for identifying theft of your service, are you sure you're not seeing false positives?
If you do try to control the problem, the best thing I've heard is to make sure you don't affect the users legitimately using the system. Causing pain to a legitimate user by either making him install DRM software on his machine, or by requiring him to take off his shoes to get on a plane, only causes him trouble and degrades the apparent quality of your service in his eyes. Try to find ways to identify troublesome users without affecting the normal crowd: selecting blacklisting (banning) of IP addresses might be effective in the case of a web service. (Wikipedia controls spammers and malicious editors this way, and some people have controlled spam email this way.)
Now, the other line of reasoning:
Ignore the problem.
This stems from the "don't get in the user's way" ideals. Make your service as good as it can be for the user, and offer him a high quality service that he won't mind parting with his cash. In other words, make it worth his money. This depends on enough people being honest that you're still profitable, of course. Some argue that those who steal a service often wouldn't have paid for it anyways.
In reality, some mix of the two is probably the most effective measure.
Number two doesn't work. I login from at least five different devices. You definitely do not want to couple yourself to the hard- and software upgrade cycle of your customers
Get an cell phone number of user and send SMS with one-time password each time he tries to login. Email wouldn't work because it is too easy to share.
But you can see a great decrease in your user count: this thing is REALLY annoying.
The way I prevent users from sharing account information is by prevent multiple logins from one location. So if the user logs in, it will log out all other sessions.
This is relatively easy to do. Associate to each user in the database a field like session_key that is randomly generated on login. Store that session_key in the database AND in a cookie in the users browser, and check that the session keys match. If not, log the user out. Whenever someone else logs in, it generates a new session key, thus inactivating all previous sessions and logs out the user. You can also try keeping track of other information as well, such as the users IP address, etc associated with the session. It's not 100% foolproof, but it prevents most users from sharing accounts.
Log the IP addresses, times and usernames in a database table. Check the database for users that are active from more than one IP on the site, and ban those users.
Or, stop users from logging into an account if there is a session already on the server for that user.
There is no way to prevent this. You can only make it more difficult - But you should consider the downside: Legitimate users get caught in the crossfire. If I were you, I'd simply tackle the source of the problem - The reason you don't want people to share logins - And fix that instead. Make an incentive not to do it. Remove advantages for doing it.
The only way to stop the users from sharing something is to make that something non-shareable (at least not with some serious hacking). But this involves hardware which can be not appropriate for your project. I am talking about hardware cryptotokens, which hold private keys and don't let one copy them. If you give your user such token with the private key inside, the user can pass the token itself to other person, but he can't copy it.
That's simple. Use the 10 to 15 favourite questions and their answers during registration processes. Ask randomly one of them during each login.
now i think it is a combination of several factors if not all that can work
lower the subscription costs
prevent multiple sessions at the same time
use two factor auth
if app disable screen shots...make too much content on single pages to make it tiresome for someone to scroll down taking screen shots..disable screen recording if possible.....offcose by not giving any permissions
i think considering fingerprint scanning and face recognition hand in hand with device ids can work
lastly consider loading your website in a webview based app for android users
The form that currently loads during when our beta WinForm application starts up is one that shows a vast array of buttons... "Inventory", "Customers", "Reports", etc. Nothing too exciting.
I usually begin UI by looking at similar software products to see how they get done, but as this is a corporate application, I really can't go downloading other corporate applications.
I'd love to give this form a bit of polish but I'm not really sure where to start. Any suggestions?
EDIT: I am trying to come up with multiple options to present to users, however, I'm drawing blanks as well. I can find a ton of design ideas for the web, but there really doesn't seem to be much for Windows form design.
I have found that given no option, users will have a hard time to say what they want. Once given an option, it's usually easier for them to find things to change. I would suggest making some paper sketches of potential user interfaces for you application. Then sit down with a few users and discuss around them. I would imagine that you would get more concrete ideas from the users that way.
Update
Just a couple of thoughts that may (or may not) help you get forward:
Don't get too hung up on the application being "corporate". Many coprorate applications that I have seen look so boring that I feel sorry for the users that need to see them for a good share of their day.
Look at your own favourite UI's and ask yourself why you like them.
While not getting stuck in the "corporate template", also do not get too creative; the users collected experience comes from other applications and it may be good if they can guess how things work without training.
Don't forget to take in inspiration from web sites that you find appealing and easy to use.
Try to find a logical "flow"; visualize things having the same conceptual functionality in a consistent way; this also helps the user do successful "guesswork".
You might look to other applications that your users are familiar with. Outlook is ubiquitous in my company, and we were able to map our application to its interface relatively easily, so we used that application as a model when developing our UI.
Note that I'm not suggesting Outlook specifically to you, just that you look for UIs that would make your users' learning curve shallower.
The problem here is that you need some good user analysis and I'm guessing you've only done functional analysis.
Because your problem is so abstract, it's hard to give one good example of what you need to do. I'd go to usability.gov and check out the usability methods link, especially card sorting and contextual interviews.
Basically you want to do two things:
1- Discover where your users think how information is grouped on the page: This will help flesh out your functional requirements too. Once you've got information all grouped up, you've basically got your navigation metaphor set up. Also, you can continually do card sorting exercises right down to page and function levels - e.g. you do one card sorting session to understand user needs, then you take one group of cards and ask users to break that down into ranks of importance. Doing so will help you understand what needs to be in dominate areas of the screen and what can be hidden.
2- Understand what tools they already use: what they do and don't like about them. You need to get a list of tools/applications that they use externally and internally. Internally is probably the most important because there is a fair chance that most people in your business will share an experience of using it. External tools however might help give you context into how your users think.
Also, don't be afraid to get pencil and paper and sketch up ideas with users. People generally understand that sketches are a quick and useful way to help with early design work and you can get an immense amount of information out of them with just simple sketches. Yes, even do this if you suck at sketching - chances are it won't matter. In fact, crappy sketches could even work in your favour because then nobody is going to argue if buttons should be blue, red or whatever.
Frankly, a form with a “vast array of buttons” needs more than a little polish. A form dedicated solely to navigation generally means you’re giving your users unnecessary work. Provide a pulldown or sidebar menu on each form for navigating to any form.
The work area of your starting form should provide users with something to actually accomplish their tasks. Among the options are:
A “dashboard” main form, showing summarized information about the users’ work (e.g., list of accounts to review and status of each, number of orders at each stage of processing, To Do schedule). Ideally, users should be able to perform their most common tasks directly in the opening form (e.g., mark each account as “approved” or not). If further information is necessary to complete a task, links navigate to detailed forms filled with the proper query results. At the very least users should be able to assess the status of their work without going any further. Note that different groups of users may need different things on their respective dashboards.
Default form or forms. Users of a corporate application typically have specific assignments, often involving only one to three of all your forms. Users who work with Inventory, for example, may almost never need to look at Customer records, and vice versa. Users also often work on a specific subset of records. Each sales rep, for example may be assigned a small portion of the total number of customers in the database. Divide your users into groups based on the forms and records they usually use. For each user group, start the app by automatically opening the user group’s form(s) populated with the query results of their records. Users should be able to complete most of their work without any further navigation or querying.
If all else fails, open the app to whatever forms and content were last open when the user quit the app. Many corporate users will continue to work tomorrow on the same or similar stuff they’re working on today.
Analyze the tasks of your users to determine which of the above options to use. It is generally not productive to describe each option to the users and ask which they like better.
BTW, “Reports” is probably not a particularly good navigation option. It’s better if you consistently identify things primarily by what they show, rather than how they show it. Users may not know that the information they want to see is in a “report” rather than a form, but they’ll know what content they want to see. Reports on inventory are accessed under Inventory; reports about sales are accessed under Sales.
Have you tried asking your end users what they would like? After all they are the ones that are going to be using the system.
I use components from the company DevExpress. They have some really cool controls (such as the Office 2007 ribbon), form skinning utilities (with a vast amount of different skins), and a load more...
If you want to check it out they have 60 free components - if its corporate though you might have to check the licence but you can get it at... DevExpress 60 Free
I suggest starting with the design principles suggested by Microsoft: Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines
Some places to get ideas for interaction designs:
Books
About Face 3 - The Essentials of Interaction Design
Don't Make Me Think (this is focused on web design, but many of the principles carry over to Windows design)
Web Sites
Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines
In addition, many applications have free trial versions that you can download to determine how they handle user interaction. Also, don't discount items on your desktop right now.
Do you have any statistics or insights concerning what the most commonly-used or important functions might be? If so, you could use that to pare down your "vast array of buttons" and highlight only those that are most important.
That's sort of a trivial example, but the underlying point is that your understanding of your audience should inform your design, at least from a functional perspective. You might have past usage statistics, or user stories, or documented workflows, or whatever - even if you're drawing a blank right now, remember that you have to know something about your users, otherwise you wouldn't be able to write software for them.
Building on what they already know can make it easy on your users. Do they live in Outlook? Then you might want to mimic that (as Michael Petrotta suggested). Do they typically do the same thing (within a given role) every time they use the app? Then look for a simple, streamlined interface. Are they power users? Then they'll likely want to be able to tweak and customize the interface. Maybe you even have different menu forms for different user roles.
At this stage, I wouldn't worry about getting it right; just relax and put something out there. It almost doesn't matter what you design, because if you have engaged users and you give them the option, they're going to want to change something (everything?) anyway. ;-)