Category Archives: interviews

This interview is done with Raymond Chenon. So Raymond:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

I work for Zalando, an e-commerce based in Berlin. We start with a daily stand-up to know the status of each team mate. Code reviews and candidates interviews are part of the agenda.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

1 Have an idea that solves a real problem that other apps didn’t address correctly. It works best if you have this problem.
2 Draw a mockup for workflow before coding.
3 After developing, ask people to use your app. And iterate

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

I love the start of new project because you can explore new libraries, designs. There is no legacy to maintain.
I like the support from Google, the stackoverflow community and the local GDG meetups.

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

The talk is inspired by a group chat “guild-fuckup” at Zalando , it became the most popular topic by far within one hour ( more participants than other groups “android”, “scala”, “DevOps” , “database” …. ).
My talk will be about a series of “Best Practices” set after the fatal mistakes. The retrospectives analyse what can be improved. I remember one evening the Google Play update went wrong and the app was going to be published as Editors’ Choice .
The talk is understandable for non developer audience , but it is expected to have some Android knowledge.

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

This will be my second talk at a Droidcon. This will be my first visit to Greece and in the region. I am looking forward to meet the speakers and the participants. Both international and local speakers profile look awesome.
I’d like to thank the organizers who take this event seriously.
About Thessaloniki, I am looking forward to taste Bougatsa and Frappé coffee.

Find out more about Raymond & his session here.

This interview is done with Iordanis Giannakakis. So Iordanis:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

The day always starts with grabbing some coffee, catching up on our tasks and splitting remaining work. Sometimes we pair-program or even mob-program if we’re starting on a new feature. It’s incredible how much we still learn from each other, so we try to keep doing that frequently. Breaks during the day involve me losing at pool most times and when the day is over we usually head down to the local pub or to Android meetups.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

Given a good idea for a product, nothing can be a better indicator for a successful app than how much developers care about the product & its technology. That’s why sometimes we find apps that are not based on groundbreaking ideas but are amazing products and vice-versa.

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

Simply the fact that there is more content about Android generated per day than I can consume. Generally, on Android there are a number of approaches to common problems, different techniques and then some amazing community events like this where we can share ideas!

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

I would like to cover the genesis of the Shazam app for Android Wear. I would like to mostly focus on the technical challenges that we found, code quality and a bit on the thinking for its design. Even if there are quite a few talks on Android Wear, I will assume not a great deal of audience experience, so it should be be appropriate for all levels.

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

Even though I am from Thessaloniki, I’ve never been to any Android-related events here, so I would love to see what the local Android community is like (where are you guys hiding?). Also, it’s a great chance to meet the international speakers, say “hi” to others we’ve met in other events and be the “host” for a change

Find out more about Iordanis & his session here.

This interview is done with Mathias Seguy. So Mathias:

1. Tell us a little bit about you & your average Android development day or your work day

I’am Mathias Seguy, a french android passionate. In 2011, I wrote 3 ebooks on Android development, that you can find on my web site. Then, I decided to create my own company dedicated to Android. As I was teaching Math in university, I chose to focus on Android Training and then dived in the Android programmation. My main concern is how to build great applications, in particular, what a good android architecture is or has to be. I also focus on UX, it’s the most important; what user plays with.

So I spend my day reading documentation, trying libraries, making tutorials, posting news on my blog, updating my training supports or giving training. Sometimes, depending on missions, I also help companies to build their application. And this year I will begin to be a mentor for start ups (I am pivoting a few).

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

In those fields of concern, I think a good application has to realize some elements. The first main goal is to build a good architecture aiming:

1. to respect the resources of the device (battery, memory space)

2. to make evolution easiest (to be able to inject new api version simply, add feature, correct bugs,…)

3. to be context aware (battery status, network connection status, version number…)

The second goal to achieve when building an application is to make a great UX, and this is a hard thing for us (developers). So we need to be able to melt google guidelines and our own specific user cases, to make our application alive and adapted to our users. This is tricky and there is no receipt.

But at the end, only your success will tell if your application is good, great or ugly

3. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

So at DroidCon Greece, I want to make your application evolves in an UX way. I will talk about animations, trying to convince you that animations are easy, that you can add animations everywhere for your user and that you can do that with single lines of code. Whatever is your level in android development, this talk is for you, we will have a complete vision of what animations can be done and how. There is a github project where all the code will be available for copy/paste.

4. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

As usual, what I like in all the DroidCons I go, is listening to people about their own Android experiences, learn new tricks, new good practices. I really like DroidCons, it’s like when you were child, at school, at recess, when you are in the course with all your friends playing to your favorite game. It’s for me a magic moment and I always love that.

Find out more about Mathias & his session here.

E John Feig

How do you imagine the future of the wearables?

I’m excited about the future of wearables. Mostly, because we still have not found the killer app yet. Notifications are a great use case, but I’m not sure that it’s the killer app. The killer app for wearables is something that’s going to be similar to real-time navigation on smartphones. It is going to push wearables into a place where it makes sense to the average consumer. Right now, they’re great toys, and lots of fun to play with. Where they need to get to is something that delivers enough value to justify both the cost of the device, but also encourages people to keep wearing them. The best part is that whoever figures this out, and delivers the killer app, is quickly going to be running a billion dollar business.

Could you tell us how different is designing an app for wearables and what you consider as the biggest challenge?

First and foremost, you should try to have very, very quick interactions, as short and simple as possible. There’s a 5-second rule that shows up in Google’s documentation for Android Wear, and that is that if you force the user to interact with you on a watch for more than five seconds, they might as well have pulled out their phone. Limit the amount of information that you’re trying to deliver to the user. You’re either going to be action based or notification based. If you’re action based, it should be one action per command. If you have lots of things that you can do, use multiple actions. Contextually aware apps are going to do the best here, and you have access to the most context on a wearable.

Dan Lew

Giant companies like Google invest a lot in making the “perfect” UI and UX. Why are they so important?

Many developers emulate the UX of the most popular apps on Android, so it’s especially important for Google’s apps (which come pre-installed on most devices) to get it right. Google’s offerings act as both a flagship applications on Android but also demonstrate to other developers what good UI/UX is.

This interview is done with David Vavra. So David:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

I work at Avast on our popular security apps. I’m also pushing our open-source projects forward. In the spare time I try new APIs on my personal app Settle Up.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

Do user testing and iterate. Ask people about your idea even before you start coding. Create an app which solves real problem of real people. Use the app yourself, dogfooding is great for fixing small but important issues.

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

The large user base, openness, freedom, great community and support from Google.

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

I will be talking about Android TV. It’s an introductory talk for Android developers who are thinking about porting their app to the platform. It’s really easy!

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

Enjoying some Greek hospitality, meeting other Android devs offline and sharing knowledge.

Find out more about David & his session here.

This interview is done with Andreas Vourkos. So Andreas:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

At Pollfish we constantly work towards the ongoing advancement of our Android SDKs in order to follow the latest technologies and trends.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

A successful app is an app that fulfils its purpose. If we talk about monetization which is what we specialize at Pollfish, a successful app is an app that has successfully embedded monetization techniques in its monetization strategy and is able to drive revenue without compromising user experience nor affecting retention.

3. What is your favourite part about working as an Android developer?

The favourite part of working as an Android developer is the need of staying up-to-date with new features being released on the platform every day while dealing on parallel with fragmentation and backwards compatibility. Moreover, being able to develop and make impact on a platform that has become a major part of most people’s lives out there, is quite challenging.

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

At Droidcon we will present several tips and mistakes on how to form a successful monetisation strategy, as we have seen them by running Pollfish monetization network on thousands of mobile apps all over the world. This talk will be interesting for any mobile developer out there, beginner or expert, that is looking to make money out of mobile apps.

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

I am looking forward to meet fellow developers that share the same passion about the Android platform and exchange ideas and experiences.

Find out more about Andreas & his session here.

This interview is done with Damien Cavailles. So Damien:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

Hello ! So I work at Tripndrive. We do carpooling for travelers. My task is to build solution that will make the experience of our users a bliss, especially when they are on the field. And this is an awesome purpose since there is a wide range of solution and we try a lot of them in a test-and-learn way of doing.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

I like apps where the UX follow a very simple : “If it’s useless, it’s useless”. This mean that I don’t like when there is cool animation blocking the user interaction. Even for a few milliseconds. I want the UI to be always talkative and responsive to the user. This means a lot of hard works most of the time, for very few changes in the end, but I love when things are smooth in the end !

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

The community ! I do also iOS Development and others things. And Android is very different and great because of its community. There is a lot of different open-source solutions for a same problem, and a lot of people all around ready to help and supportive. This is great !

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

I will give several talks !

The first one is about Android Wear. But more on the product side of the subject. It’s about understanding the usage, the core principle and the purpose of Android Wear. Maybe even talking about what it could become. I will also give you the keys to begin developing on Android Wear, the good way. If you should see only one talk about Android Wear, it’s this one !

The second one is about Android Auto. This is a subject I’m very fond of because of my job ! The talk is an exhaustive expose about what we know of Android Auto, where does it comes from ? What is it really about ! There is cool demos inside, with great music, it’s gonna rock !

The third one is about Bluetooth Low Energy. BLE is an entrypoint to the IoT world. It’s powering a lot of solution like Android Wear, iBeacon and many wearable like Fitbit. Even some Fridge, coffee machine and other cooking tool are now connected with it. The problem is that developing on this technology is not intuitive. Because it’s made by people who are more electronical engineers than developers. So this talk is about explaining you how it works under the hood. After this, you will understand why the BLE stack is working like this and you will be all set to become an expert on the subject !

All those talks doesn’t require to have specific experience. They are designed to be very accessible to a lot of people. The Android Wear and Android Auto talks are even interesting for non-technical person. I’m sure we are going have a lot of fun !

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

First of all, I’m especially looking to meet a lot of people ! This often what happen at DroidCon’s and that’s why I love to attend them

We are going to have a great time altogether ! See you there.

Find out more about Damien & his sessions here.

This interview is done with Achim Fischer. So Achim:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

There really is nothing special. I start with some internet-surfing to check out the latest news. Then I look what my todo-list shows for the day. I start Android Studio and all the tools I need e.g. Tower (Git) and Paw (API-GUI) and I start coding. Oh wait, there’s one more thing 😉 Music! Nothing goes without music. Metal or some kind of Techno or Dark-Pop get me through the day.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

I would say: a) The idea. Don’t just copy another app. b) Marketing. There are trillions of apps out there. It’s hard to get some attention, even for good apps. c) Of course it should do it’s job, has an up to date UI and shouldn’t crash all the time

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

I like how easy it is to get an app on a device (development) and later on Google Play (production). In the past I had an iOS-App in the Apple store and to get it there was very complicated compared to the process on Android. Very cool is the availability of the Android source code (AOSP). It’s fun to be able to build your own Android image and put it on your device.

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

The talk is about Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and how to use it in an Android App. It starts with an overview (beginners) up to an implementation (experienced). It’s not too complicated and I will offer example apps on my GitHub account. I would say it’s for everyone.

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

That’s easy: I’m looking forward to meet new people. For me, events are mostly about people. That’s why I don’t understand those who say “I don’t need to attend an event. I can watch the videos on YouTube or the slides on Slideshare”. Sure, you can but an event like a droidcon is so much more than just the presentations!

Find out more about Achim & his session here.

This interview is done with Resul Caner Yildirim. So Caner:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

In general, I take care about interaction design and marketing process of mobile applications at InnovationBox. Because we are a boutique studio, we don’t have an intense working area. That’s why it’s not that hard to take care of two business at same time. When we get ready to create a new application, we usually start from idea stage, investigate the applications that works like ours, and create user profiles. After we finished that, we start to create application’s flow diagram and mock-up design. After we elaborate in mock-up, we start to prototyping stage. Following the tests and finishing the thematizing the personas, I leave up the application to design crew.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

For creating a successful application, I believe one has to possess and dominate every process step. There is no reason being not successful for an application if it creates with right idea, right user experience, right design and right marketing strategies

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

I could say mingling with mobile applications and mobile devices. Examining the applications that creating better designs, making brainstorming and actualize the idea that you envise is a really good thing.

4. What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

In Droidcon Greece, I will talk about IOT devices, user experience and Android. As you know, Google introduced its new operating system Brillo in I/O 15 event. Android ecosystem that develops day by day is going to support IoT devices in this situation. Accordingly, we will see how we are going to glimpse a user experience with entirely equipped with Google technologies. This presentation’s audience generally involves everybody which curious about technology. So we could fill up the entire hall!

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

I’m very curious about the participant profile, because it is going to be the first activity in Greece. It will be very impressive to see mobile ecosystem in Greece and people who gives life to this ecosystem all together!

Learn more about Caner & his session here.

This interview is done with Ajibulu Olorunfemi. So Olorunfemi:

1. Tell us a little bit about your average Android development day or your work day

Android development is a part of me. I hardly let a day go without writing a line of code. Weekends are great times for programming because of the reduced activities.

2. What would you say are the ingredients for a successful app?

A successful app must emerge from an innovative idea. While many apps are for fun, education, tourism, and politics the level of success is often associated by the number of downloads and the ratings. On the other hand, some apps are deployed or are useful for only a specific number or group of people. This in every way will limit the users but such apps can still work fine and serve their purposes well.

3. What is your favorite part about working as an Android developer?

I think every Android Developer started as being a front-end developer. As we all know that there are many parts of Android Development but i enjoy building an interactive and beautiful UI and UX.

4.  What your talk at Droidcon Greece will be about? What is the audience level?

I’ll be talking about Android Security. I.e Security of the Android Operating System and the reasons many Apps are being hacked by other apps on an Android Phone. The conference DroidCon is first holding at Greece! I am pretty sure hundreds of Participants will come from all over the world to take part.

5. What are you most looking forward to at Droidcon Greece?

As a speaker, I really look forward to deliver my best and make developers understand the need to take some measures to protect their Android Packages.

Find out more about Olorunfemi & his session here.