SpiceFactory blog
Technology as an Enabler in the Age of Social Distancing
In these unprecedented times of Covid19, the entire world has come to a near standstill. The pandemic is having a drastic effect on our social and economic order, disrupting our personal and business lives in ways we couldn’t have previously imagined.
Is there a right approach to digital product design?
Digital product design takes into consideration the needs of end users as well as the requirements of stakeholders on the business side...
Myths and Truths about Innovating Legacy Systems
When we say that we inherited a ‘legacy system’ what does that mean exactly? This usually means we’re in a situation where...
Technology trends for 2020
Software engineering has always been a fast changing industry, with the pace of change only accelerating.
SpiceFactory’s Approach to Hiring
Finding the right people for your company is one of the most pressing concerns for all founders. A good team is the...
Product Engineering is what you've been looking for
A company that practices product engineering instead of traditional software development will have a pragmatic focus on business priorities and ROI when delivering the product.
Remote Work Revolution and the Future of (Smart) Cities
A city’s ‘smarts’ is not just about adding smart devices, sensors and systems to collect more data.
Building Native-like Experiences on the Web with PWAs
This article will look into the details of building and optimizing a progressive web applications (PWA) for native-like look and feel.
How to Properly Validate UX Design
As designers we are all very eager to jump into the process of designing, refining, and getting the final confirmation from the...
Building Trust in Digital Banking Through UX
When it comes to online banking services, none of us is a stranger to bad experiences. But why are these services typically...
Embracing The State of Emptiness
By designing the empty state you avoid confusion, frustration and the perception that your application might not be working properly.
Conversational Banking: Going Beyond the AI Hype
Continuous advances in AI technologies allow us to build chatbot solutions for banks that can seamlessly connect people to their products and services.
How to Overcome Challenges of Event Technology Adoption
Despite all the hype around event technologies, event organizers still don’t have the status of ‘essential tools’ for most event organizers and are still in the nice-to-have category.
How to Avoid the “Boolean Trap” When Designing React Components
We learnt this years ago, but it seems we need to re-learn it in React where the same problem takes a different form. I call it “the Boolean trap.”
Why We Chose React Native for Mobile Development
Should we build native apps to deliver the best possible user experience or turn to a faster and more efficient way of building apps that can run on more platforms and devices?
Developing a Digital Product Strategy
If we wanted to define product strategy in the simplest terms possible, we could say that it's all about 'envisionsing your product's future.'
Software Engineering Trends for 2019
Let's see what they are, how they impact the world of business, and how you can adapt to get the most benefit from these trends.
Spicy Comic #9 - Handyman
Occasionally, fixing a bug can lead to series of unhandled cats.
How to Manage User Expectations in Chatbots
You know what you built your chatbot to do, but that doesn't mean it will be obvious to your customers.
Memoir of the 2018 SpiceFactory Workation in Catalonia
This is a short “memoir” and photo blog of the places we visited and the experiences we shared.
Voice - Our New Interface for Everything?
By looking at all the coverage of the Voice User Interfaces (VUIs), we could easily think that some sort of a massive...
Why Mobile Apps Will Not Matter Anymore
When it comes to building mobile apps, there are many options available today. However, the focus should not be on how to build a mobile app, but why.
Millennial Banking Customers are Ready for Chatbots
Banks have a reputation of being very traditional institutions. While older generations equated the word 'traditional' with dependability and trust, millennials equate it with tardiness and bumbledom.
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Designing for the 360 Experience
This post reflects on our experience in developing technology to empower immersive 360 experiences on different devices and form factors.
Are You Listening? How to Build Better Digital Products with VoC Data
In the age of experience, companies need to listen to their customers if they want to remain relevant in the market. In fact, Gartner says that 89% of companies expect to be competing mainly on customer experience by now.
AI’s Paradox: Smart Chatbots Make Banking Feel Human Again
Although this seems ironic, AI could actually help banks create a more human-like customer experience. Chatbots are bringing two-way interactions back to digital banking giving people the impression that the bank understands their needs and expectations.
Machine Learning in Practice at SpiceFactory
Artificial intelligence techniques such as machine learning can be applied to identify patterns in the data to the point that computers can start to predict behavior by finding connections in data.
From Chatbots to Face ID: Event Tech Innovations for 2018
Following are some of the event technology trends that organizers should consider implementing in 2018 and beyond to ensure that attendees derive maximum value from their event experiences.
Using Docker in Your Continuous Deployment Pipeline
Interest in Docker has been growing year after year, and this is no surprise. Docker is a great tool to orchestrate development environment for software projects.
From Robotics and AI to 3D Printing: A Q&A on New Technologies with our CEO
Technologies that, just 20 years ago, existed only in the realm of sci-fi are now everywhere around us - in our offices, at our homes, on the streets.
A Gentle Dive Into NLP, Sentiment Analysis, and Chatbots
With all the hype surrounding chatbots, it’s safe to say that everybody knows what they are by now. Put simply, a chatbot is a program that communicates with users via text or audio.
Improving Communication between Design and Development Teams
Communication between developers and designers isn’t always easy, especially if they work in separate teams and the infamous silo effect occurs. How...
Empathy Driven Design
Empathy in design is a really important topic for me. It’s something that I like to write about and talk about (most...
AI-Powered Chatbots Coming to an Event Near You
Event technology is an umbrella term that encompasses a variety of different technologies - think event management platforms, ticketing solutions, digital signage...
6 Technology Trends Shaping the Future of Event Management
Event management today is fundamentally different than it was ten years ago. The complexities of the process remain the same, but they...
SpiceFactory Workation ⛱
SpiceFactory annual workation is something that our entire team looks forward to. But…it’s just one part of a bigger puzzle. It’s a...
Spicy Comic #8 - Scala code.. you know that feeling..
We love Scala, but sometimes… You know that feeling that you open the code someone else did as a masterpiece a year...
Apple Joins the Conversational UI Movement with Business Chat
With people spending so much time on their messaging apps each day, it didn’t take too long for businesses to follow and...
How Blockchain is Catalyzing Change Across Industries
There is so much hype surrounding blockchain technology that you may legitimately think there’s no real weight behind this “buzzword of the...
SpiceFactory Partners with the Faculty of Electrical Engineering
We’re proud to announce that we’re now an official partner of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade (ETF). By partnering with...
Key UX Considerations When Designing for IoT
Experience design in the connected world of IoT is a whole new ball game for designers to tackle. The fundamental difference compared...
All You Need to Know About Designing Human-Like Chatbot Conversations
User interface design has always been a crucial part of the digital product development process. UIs represent the connection between people and...
Building User Value into Digital Products
Success with digital products doesn’t just happen, and especially not overnight. Great products are very well researched – they focus on solving...
Conversational Commerce: Passing Trend or Something More?
A new craze for conversational interfaces has taken off around the globe. It seems like all of a sudden, every business wants...
Enterprise Digital Transformation: What is Next?
Over the past several years, digital technology has disrupted many industries and triggered a new wave of startups that are challenging traditional...
Spicy Comic #6
Imagine this scenario: You are out shopping all day and you’ve been browsing stores in different locations. It took you a while...
Building the Business Case for Chatbots
Since messaging platforms like Slack, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger opened to third-party chatbots, we’ve seen a massive number of bots popping up...
Bots from Hype to Reality: A Path to Delivering Value
Bots are everywhere! Just ask Google and it’ll immediately return 100 plus million results.
The 10 Types of People You Meet at Conferences
We’ve visited a lot of conferences recently! Here’s our llustrated guide to the 10 types of people you meet at conferences.
How to Design and Build Bots that People Will Love!
Building bots is not as easy as it looks. Here are some tips on how to design chatbots that people will love.
Spicy Comic #3 – Git Bisect
We all hate searching for the cause of a nasty regression. Git history to the rescue!
What We Learned About MeteorJS While Building UsabilitySqaure
Let’s have a look at how we used MeteorJS for our new, totally free usability testing platform.
Slapbot for Slack: Good Old Slap (/slap) Available Again!
This is how we use our slapbot to recreat joyful IRC moments in Slack. Instructions for spicing up your conversations available. :)
KonceptApp: Best National Cloud/Data Application!
CESA 2015 recognized our revered prototyping tool and encouraged us to keep up the good track.
AWS ELB and Secure WebSockets with Play Framework
AWS ELB does not support WebSocket over TLS by default, and here is how to set it up.
Keep Your SEO Ranking When Changing Your Site Structure or Moving to a New Domain
Changing the structure of your website can have a bad impact on the ranking you acquired so far.
Voxxed Conference Interview
We gave an interview for Voxxed Days Belgrade conference about how we build software and what values someone as a software engineer should seek.
Software is Not Just Some Code Run on a Computer
Our software development practices and why we’ve adopted reactive concepts.
Prototyping is About Validation
Software should be both useful and usable. Keep iterating until you hit the right spot.
Welcome to SpiceFactory!
If we had to pick one word which describes us, we’d pick two which two that do the opposite — status quo.