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Millennials are far more accepting of change than previous generations. After all, they have grown up amidst a period of rapid social and economic change that shows no indication of slowing down. They are comfortable with technology and use it as a window on the world, and an engine for making decisions, from what products to buy to what politicians to vote for.

For them, there is no separation between the actual and virtual world, both are part of the same new zeitgeist. They are also the most open generation in history,  willing to share facts about themselves on social media that would be considered private only a generation before.

But it isn't just social connection. Millennials are comfortable with online purchasing of everything from a pair of shoes to insurance and stock options.

Millennials are careful spenders. They use their technological savvy to find deals and are less inclined to impulse buy. This makes them harder to market  to. Their brand loyalty is also far less based on logos, tradition or advertising. They want to participate with the companies they buy from in ways similar to their participation in social media. They want to communicate and be responded to. For millennials, customer service doesn't stop with the purchase, that's only the beginning. They are also socially and environmentally conscious and will tend to patronise those businesses that have a conscience. Millennials have dived into the digital society and can swim better than pretty much anyone else.

They also look upon themselves differently. Being continuously connected means that their social awareness is based less on rugged individualism and more on individual cooperation and coordination.They have a strong sense of ethics and will use technology to act collectively.

They are less authoritarian than previous generations because they can quickly fact check any authority and their concept of democracy is far more egalitarian. They can also work together in unprecedented ways to build a better, more equitable civilization.

Whatever their ultimate influence on the future, it’s going to be interesting.

Usability testers must put themselves in the user’s shoes and this can be difficult under the best of circumstances. Such as the difference between a tech savvy teenager and a distinctly unsavvy eighty-year-old, both of whom must make use of the same website or application. The difficulty increases when physical disabilities must also be included in UX testing.

While special tools and accessibility guidelines can help, they do not replace communication with physically challenged users. Also, ensuring usability for all possible users should begin early in the software development cycle and continue all the way through. This avoids the need to tack accessibility on at the end as an afterthought when time and money are scarce.

Accessibility requirements will differ from project to project, based on who the intended users are, as well as being influenced by government regulations and stakeholder requirements. Government regulations can be a problem in themselves, as they often take the form of legislation against discrimination rather than precise requirements. It may be necessary to consult lawyers or experts who have a thorough knowledge of what is and is not acceptable in the area where your software or website is being developed.

The best solution is to exceed expectations and deliver a product that is more accessible than required. Exceeding compliance not only improves the reputation of the software or website developers involved but also lowers cost in the long run if governments or stakeholders raise the bar on accessibility standards. Compensating for common disabilities should be part of the initial documentation.

While not every application or web page can be evaluated in complete detail, it is still important for software and web developers to take every measure possible to make their products as accessible to as many people as possible. There are good economic reasons as well as humanitarian ones to make accessibility an important part of every project.

How to sell has been rather left out. Part of this is due to the uncomfortable fact that human beings are rather a mystery to each other and so people generally look for one size fits all patterns they can use over and over again. Fortunately, digital technology has now furnished the tools that, when used with a little wisdom, can raise sales out of being the paint by numbers process it often is.

Technology gives sales an edge when it comes to globalization, the need for constant innovation, and when dealing with disruption. That is, if technology is used correctly. It's important to note that technology should be provided as a means of coordinating strategic direction and to enable sales personnel to operate as a team.

That a salesperson has a laptop or an iPhone isn't all that important, if such devices are used simply as way of staying in touch with the office. It's even worse if they exist not as tools, but only as accessories.

Modern technology has made communication incredibly easy and so it is important that such technology be coordinated as a way to deliver and harvest information that is then delivered to a centralized location where it can be evaluated and acted upon in a coherent manner.

Also technology should be used to outflow as well as inflow information. The modern salesperson has the ability to stay in touch with customers in a non-intrusive way by delivering important content, answering questions and addressing customer difficulties without being physically present in the same location as the customer. While it's true that this could be done by telephone fifty years ago, modern digital technology speeds this process enormously, especially when rapid crisis resolution is important. The client can be kept up to speed and isn't left in a mystery as to what is happening and doesn’t have to wait on hold. Anyone who has had to wait on hold knows how frustrating sitting in mystery can be. Digital technology reduces the frustration factor by enabling fast communication at numerous touch points.

IT enables sales departments to respond to changing circumstances in a timely manner, and service customers more rapidly and effectively than ever before. Digital technology raises the quality of customer service and quality customer service is the key to making sales in the modern marketing landscape.

There was a time when markets were relatively isolated. However, the increase in communication has made the media an open marketplace for everyone and the Internet is now the go to platform for business communication. It has replaced the telex, lowered the use of the telephone and is in the process of eliminating the courier. And, perhaps more importantly, it has placed businesses on relatively equal footing and made even small businesses global in scope.

Digital technology has now blended into every corner our lives. It not only creates new ways of selling, it remakes everyday products all the time and constantly modifies the way businesses are run. The old way of balancing business models just doesn’t work anymore.

The traditional way society dealt with business models was to find some compromise between business and government and then incorporate that compromise into “the way we do things” as policy. The old fashioned monopolistic phone company was perhaps the best example of this sort of thinking. The hard wired phone system of the past was just too expensive and maintenance intensive for a number of different companies to compete within a limited area. The profit margins were too small. Yet, telephones were necessary and desired. And so, the only alternative was for government to grant a monopoly to one company within a given geographical region. This worked fine around the world, but it did cause problems.  In America, for example, the Reagan Administration decided to deregulate the industry, without determining how the high cost infrastructure would be maintained. Costs and charges then shot up as service and infrastructure went down. It’s not that deregulation was bad, it was simply too early to deregulate. The technology wasn’t there to take up the slack. Fortunately, digital technology did arrive and an entirely different and non-monopolistic phone system eventually developed. However, that new system could only develop by disrupting the old.

These days, digital is fast becoming the most important part of infrastructure. In fact, digital technology actually determines how other elements of infrastructure, like transportation or energy production, will function. Digital has become so integrated that its density within a country is an important consideration when it comes to new investment. Companies who want to improve their reach with digital technology should favor investing in countries that give digital density a high importance.

Government, for its part, should not look at digital technology and the new markets it opens up as something in need of compromise, like the old analog phone company. Instead, they should embrace digital technology as a way of improving society and general productivity. Governments need to become digital friendly. Those countries that lay the basic foundation of digital infrastructure and allow business to build on that foundation are engaged in the process of making markets. These new markets naturally occur as digital technology changes the way things are done and attracts cutting edge companies who incorporate IT into their operations.

Digital technology making new markets is the best guarantee of future prosperity.

It’s roughly 5 hours a day 5 days a week to start with flexible working hours but you’ll need to bring outstanding customer relationship skills and a good understanding of software testing and or digital delivery. This opportunity would be ideal for a parent who has left the corporate workforce in a customer role who finds it difficult to commute each day and needs to do drop offs and pick ups with the kids.

You’ll have to come into the office now and then so this role is preferably for someone who lives in Melbourne, but please leave the pyjamas and bunny slippers at home, even if they are cute.

In this role, you will have a maniacal focus on (plus some):

Engaging and managing the tester community
Client relationship management and reporting
Managing and leading testing cycles and teams

Here’s a chance to rise with an expanding digital startup. Shoot us an email at team@bugwolf.com and tell us something interesting about yourself (don’t be shy, we appreciate creativity and good humour) And if you have a friend who might be interested, please share this post. We’d love you for it.

The type of future we have depends a great deal on how information is used. It can be used to increase freedom and prosperity or as a control mechanism. It could go either way.

For example; security will continue to be an important aspect of digital technology. But, we must take care regarding who defines security. The powerful tend to define security as that which protects their power base. Sometimes, power bases shouldn’t be protected.

This doesn’t mean that government is intrinsically bad. National administration should encourage business enterprise and ease the use of digital technology by removing antiquated regulations. IT depends on the ability of government to remove those roadblocks that cannot be removed by the private citizen. Government also has a role in establishing digital infrastructure that increases productivity. The interstate highway system in the United States is an excellent hard-tech example of how government can increase productivity by establishing infrastructure. And the same can be done for digital technology.

Digital technology is also changing the playing field. At this moment. IT is chipping away at the mega-corporation.  For example; outsourcing was originally started as a way for large corporations to save money, and the practice continues to expand as a business model, but not in the way it was originally intended. If the trend continues, then the future points to smaller, more specialized companies coming together to work on a project by project basis. Digital technology may cause the practice of outsourcing to become a very disruptive model that actually undermines "big business."

The Internet is the great equalizer and the unfettered distribution of information means that organizations, whether public or private, are finding it increasingly difficult to isolate people within restrictive information bubbles. While this bodes well for democracy, it does mean that the average individual will need to take more responsibility in the future. It's becoming less and less possible to simply follow groupthink. The Internet's ability to easily provide contradictory information means that it is the destroyer of ideologies.

Digital technology is not going away and its continued use and acceptance are changing society at an exponential rate. It has reached a point where we cannot predict what society will look like a century from now. Nevertheless, what society will become is up to us.

This caused a number of insurance carriers to either refuse to insure Range Rovers against theft or to set security standards, such as not parking on the street, that vehicle owners found hard to comply with. Security issues with keyless entry and ignition are not new. All carmakers are struggling to safeguard supply chains that are serviced by an ever increasing number of suppliers, not all of whom maintain adequate security.

The door latch issue concerns Range Rover regular and sport model utility vehicles. The problem is that the door can be closed and yet stay unlatched without giving the driver any suggestion of a problem. Jaguar Range Rover is not the first car company to have this problem. Ford Motor Company also had a similar crisis that prompted the recall of more than one and a half million cars since 2014.

These recalls are an indication that car manufacturers still have difficulty integrating soft digital technology with the traditional hard analog technology of auto manufacture. Obviously, there is still a long way to go.

One of the best ways to  get into the mind of the user is to gain a good understanding of the environment in which the user operates. Don't just look at the system, look at the environment holistically. What sort of stresses and distractions could the user be subject to? What are the demands on his or her time? How can the application meet those demands in a way that the user finds applicable and worthwhile? These questions should be asked during the design phase and should be followed up by in-depth interviews with users even before user testing becomes available.

Creating realistic test case scenarios is another reason why understanding the environment is important. Field conditions can be quite different from what is expected. There is a tendency to stick with management's idea of what life in the field is like. After all, they should know.  Unfortunately, they often don't know.

There can be a considerable gap between management's idea of day-to-day operations and reality. Management tends to keep its eye on the big picture and details sometimes get lost. So, you should start with the people who will be using the application on a regular basis and work your way up the chain of command. This will enable you to modify requirements so that they meet everyone's approval.

Another important reason to interview the users in the field is to determine what unusual circumstances they've had to cope with and how they have worked around the legacy system to accommodate these problems. This will give you a good idea of those elements which should be incorporated into the design of the new application.

Remember that software development is a team activity.  Everyone, from the design group to the end user is a part of that team.  You may be supplying software to a particular business, but it is the people in that business who will use the application, and report its quality to their superiors. This will determine the reputation of your company.  And so testing for user experience is not only an important part of software development, it is also a way to maintain good customer relations and a profitable future.

First and foremost, the application must be easy to use on a rather small screen. It should present information in a clean, uncluttered and easy to understand way. The home screen should present only the information that the customer needs to know and a way for the customer to get around.  It could, for example, present popular items or special sales along with a search and navigation function.

It’s important to remember that screen size limits what can be displayed. Items that may be clustered on a single page of an ecommerce website might need separate pages or at least be sorted by category with only the list of categories appearing on the home page.

Consistency is another important factor. If a menu appears on the left side of the screen, then it should remain on the left side throughout. It’s also important to keep text to a minimum. Long winded descriptions or sales pitches that might be okay on a website, are just downright annoying on a smartphone. It may be difficult to describe a product in only a few words, but it’s a challenge that should be met.

Checkout must also be simplified. Customers should be allowed to register through social networks or checkout as guests. Use autocomplete wherever feasible and keep the number of steps required to make a purchase to a minimum. And use a progress bar to keep customers informed of how far along in the process they are.

Keep the Add to Cart button prominently displayed and use as few images as possible. There are two reasons to use images only when absolutely necessary. The first is that small screens don’t supply much detail and the second, and perhaps more important, is that people using mobile apps expect them to load quickly. Hi-res images slow load time. If images of products must be displayed then use a zoom function and list as few products as possible per page.

A consistent, easy to use application that keeps customer information secure while making the shopping experience as pleasant as possible will help build confidence while improving customer relations and enhancing customer loyalty.

The simple definition of development is the team that creates the software, while operations is the team which integrates that software into the real world environment. For example, development includes coding, and operations includes user testing.

Developers and testers have very different viewpoints when it comes to the software. To put it simply, developers are trying to build the software and testers are trying to break the software. This doesn't mean that testers want to undo the work of developers. Rather, it means that testers want to subject software to as rigorous a reality check as possible, in order to make sure that the application doesn't break after it is placed in the customer's hands.

Then there are the end users who set the requirements and are the reason for the application in the first place. It’s the job of development to write the application the users want and it’s the responsibility of operations to ensure that the application meets that criteria and functions properly in the real world.

The purpose of devops is to bring these two activities together to make the two sides of the same coin. In reality they’ve always been the same coin. It’s just that the various activities of development and operations get siloed by other factors. Some of these factors are money, time constraints and the tendency to push testing on the development team simply because it’s easier.  After all, why create a UAT team when you’ve already got the team that designed and developed the application already assembled?

This is where agile thinking comes in.  Testing is spread throughout the development cycle with testing teams working with developers and test modules as they are written. Devops changes software development from linear to a series of concentric circles with the final few circles being user testing. Devops joins testing and development to create a group of interactive teams, each working to support the other and bring the application to release quickly and efficiently.