On 17 May 2017, Google announced their first-class support for Kotlin, which means that Kotlin became an official language for Android app development. Since then, JetBrains proved that Kotlin can also be successfully used for writing iOS apps – the official app of KotlinConf 2017 was built entirely in Kotlin and supported iOS, Android, as well as most browsers via its web app.

After my very last recruitment call, the time slowed down. Even though it's been just a few days before I received the decision, I couldn't stop constantly refreshing my email box. And, oh my god, I eventually saw the awaited message. Joining Netguru was my big goal, so I don't need to describe how proud and happy I was when I saw the offer. The curiosity level went high immediately when I started to think about the upcoming adventure - how does it feel to become a new project manager at Netguru? And here I am to tell you what my first week looked like.

Millions of active paying subscribers, 12+ months of average customer lifespan, and an NPS reaching +59.3. These numbers prove that Babbel, the world's most successful (top-grossing) language learning app, won the users’ hearts with its simplicity and effectiveness. And with the Online Language Learning Market projected to reach $20.21 billion by 2026, the company is on the right path to lead the international market. I spoke with Susanne Wechsler, Director B2B at Babbel, about their secret to success and bold plans for the future.

Designing an app nowadays is a tricky process. The app marketplace is not only reaching its saturation point, but you will also face fierce competition when launching the app, let alone the increased limitations and rules for app design. That’s why building a user interface is a key element for making your app stand out. In this piece, we’ll discuss how user interfaces have evolved over the last few years, what the frequent mistakes in app design are and how to avoid them, and what alternatives to touch screens you can leverage in your digital product.

Businesses reached the point where they’re aware of the importance of user experience. If you want to have a successful app, you need to focus your activities on meeting your user’s needs, as well as enable them to achieve their goals and address their pain points. Here are a few ways that will help you achieve a better user experience which your users will appreciate in the long run.

The first time we saw that we could use React, our go-to front-end library, for building native applications, we were thrilled. The promise of learning React’s paradigm and writing applications for the most common platforms was so exciting that we decided to give React Native a shot.

Still on the fence about choosing React Native as the framework for your next mobile app? We’ve got you covered. We selected and answered the most common questions that pop up when people consider using React Native in a project. We hope this short guide will make things much clearer.

Mobile applications are a source of information, knowledge, and entertainment. We always have them with us and we can use them at any time to obtain relevant information. That is why enterprises can speed up their flow of information and fuel business growth with them.

If you're a mobile app developer, Java is probably your go-to language for building Android apps. But there are new languages popping up all over the place that might challenge Java's dominance in the Android world. One of them is Kotlin, a relatively new programming language, which has been already announced by Google as a “first-class” language supported on Android.

There are times when we face big problems and hard decisions in our businesses. In fact, starting and running a company is a constant struggle to win new clients, increase awareness, respond to customer needs and successfully launch products to the market. These challenges often raise questions on how it should be done properly. Having tested numerous solutions we’ve adopted  Product Design Sprint, a tool initially developed within Google, which will give you answers to these strategic questions. Our clients confirm its effectiveness and enumerate its many benefits. We picked some universal advantages of PDS to give you an idea how your business can profit from adopting this framework.

How much does it cost to build a mobile app? Asking this question is a lot like looking at the price of a car: it depends on what you want to accomplish. First, you need to specify what car you want. What brands do you trust? How many seats do you need, and how much room in the trunk? Should the gearbox be manual or automatic? What about fuel type? Gasoline, electricity or a hybrid?

If you are an entrepreneur or you want to build a digital product, you’re probably looking to expand your knowledge about security practices in application development.

If you are running a business and would like to expand an existing product or create a new one, you are probably asking yourself “How can I develop my product to make it a success?”. The idea is one thing, but user reception can be another. So, if you want to avoid pointless work and wasting resources, your product has to be perfectly prepared. You might have also thought about hiring a company that is focused on UX design - experts in connecting businesses and their users.

Ever since Apple introduced Siri a few years ago to rival Android’s voice assistant, speech-to-text has been a staple tool in Apple’s and Google’s mobile ecosystems. After the initial introduction, Apple opened up the API to developers, allowing them to write apps that make heavy use of speech-to-text transcription. As part of a project for one of our clients, we implemented a speech-to-text transcription feature that takes advantage of the Apple transcription API. To our client’s delight, we were able to successfully integrate transcription into the app. The only shortcoming was the lack of any punctuation marks in the transcriptions produced by Apple’s SFSpeechRecognizer.

"It depends".  That's an answer I hate and love at the same time. In this case, it fits very well. The approach to developing your skills depends on: The skill you wish to build, the level of expertise you want to achieve, your current level of experience as a Project Manager, the dynamics of your projects/organization, the amount of time you have, the budget you have. For this article, I'm focusing on the differentiation by the level of expertise: Junior Project Manager, (Regular) Project Manager, and Senior Project Manager.

A month ago, we took part in Burning Minds. It’s an internal conference, organized once a year along with our team retreat. Knowledge sharing is really important in our culture, as one of our values says that we should grow ourselves and people around us. 

Imagine: you create illustrations to be a part of a company's branding. You define a style, give it a direction, and create more and more illustrations necessary for the whole project. But what do you do when you're not a lonely island? What if there are other illustrators on board? Add to that the team of 60 designers and the entire marketing department who will sometimes also need to use your illustrative skills. Our solution: the Illustration Guidelines and Smart Library.

Startups planning a product development process need to consider many factors when it comes to picking the right programming language. Often working on a tight budget, startups must carefully consider: the speed of development, the popularity of language, the cost of developers, libraries, integrations, security, scalability, and stability. It is for these reasons that your best bet will be to go for a robust and established technology such as Python. 

Mateusz Jankowski is a Senior UI Designer & Team Leader at Netguru, one with vast experience gathered over years of working in advertising and design. His job isn’t limited to producing amazing visuals. As a leader for his team, he’s also responsible for good communication (within the team and with the client), alignment with the client’s vision and goals for the project, and delivering added value to match Netguru’s standards for customer excellence. These are not easy tasks. Luckily, Mateusz has a lot of experience under his belt, and has spent his career mastering the skills he currently uses every day. Here’s the story of how he started out as a designer, went through various challenges over the years, and ended up at Netguru.

Smart organizations like Atlassian, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Shopify invest in design systems to provide their products with a consistent look, streamline the design and development process, and boost their teams’ productivity.