Think fast

8 Admin UI Design Tips

Designing admin UIs is a part of the app development process that’s quite easy to overlook. In fact, in many cases, it’s a bit of an afterthought. This is a big mistake. Providing sleek, efficient user experiences for your app’s admin functions is just as important as it is with any other functionality. Today, we’re drilling into some concrete strategies that you can use to craft effective, professional app screens for your admin users.

Ronan McQuillan

Sep 29, 2023

Prototype vs MVP | What’s the Difference?

The early stages of application development are critical. A huge part of this is gathering early user feedback. Today we’re comparing two approaches as we explore the differences between building a prototype vs an MVP. See, even the most basic application development projects can be expensive, drawn-out processes. From initial ideation, it could be months or even years before the final product is live and in the hands of users.

Ronan McQuillan

Sep 19, 2023

What is a Process Application?

Process applications are kind of the unsung heroes of digital transformation. These tools are the backbone of countless efficient, streamlined internal business processes. Despite this, they’re rarely at the top of anyone’s list of priorities. The reality for on-the-ground IT teams is that bigger development projects and maintenance needs for existing solutions often take priority. So, even though they have such a huge role to play in optimizing internal workflows, projects to create new process applications often go unrealized.

Ronan McQuillan

Sep 19, 2023

SDKs vs APIs | What’s the Difference?

Understanding the respective roles, requirements, and use cases for APIs and SDKs is one of the most important facets of modern software development. See, nowadays a huge proportion of software isn’t actually built from scratch. Instead, reusable tools, assets, and resources play a greater role than ever in the way that businesses build tools. This serves the dual purposes of saving developers time - as well as ensuring interoperability and adherence to particular development approaches.

Ronan McQuillan

Aug 18, 2023

What are API Management Tools? + 7 Top Picks

Choosing the right API management tools is one of the most fundamental and far-reaching decisions for any IT team. In fact, APIs are totally central to all kinds of application development, process management, workflow automation, integration, support, and IT ops tasks. Most companies leverage a huge range of third-party APIs - as well as their own internal resources. Therefore, how we manage our API usage is going to have a significant impact on both the quality of our team’s output and the resource incursion related to achieving this.

Ronan McQuillan

Aug 18, 2023

What is an API Call?

API calls are one of the basic tools we can use for all kinds of development, integration, data sharing, and digital transformation projects. Whether we’re building solutions from scratch or simply hooking up a couple of SaaS tools - we’re probably going to need to make API calls. Today, we’re going to guide you through everything you need to know. We’ll start with what API calls are, what they’re used for, and how they work.

Ronan McQuillan

Jul 28, 2023

WebSockets vs WebHooks

Understanding how and when to use WebSockets vs WebHooks is a crucial element of modern application development. If we don’t know how to choose the right tool for the task at hand, we risk creating ineffective or needlessly over-engineered solutions. Today, we’re covering everything you need to know. We’ll start by examining the basic principles of both data transfer tools and their underlying technologies. Then, we’ll check out how and when each is used, as well as the tradeoffs involved in choosing between them.

Ronan McQuillan

Jul 7, 2023

System Integration vs Software Development

When we’re adding new technical capabilities, the first challenge is figuring out what our most cost-effective option is. More often than not, this means weighing up system integration vs software development. Specifically, we need to make a decision based on what we’re trying to achieve, the technical resources we have available, and what our current tool stack is capable of. Custom builds aren’t cheap - so it makes sense to get the most out of our existing tools.

Ronan McQuillan

Jun 16, 2023