Qualicom Hosts Free Seminar on User Centred Design (UCD) Best Practices

Toronto, Ontario – 8 Oct 2008: The Toronto Board of Trade, First Canadian Place: Qualicom UCD expert Steve Chalastra—accompanied by interaction designers Janet Ho, and Kivi Shapiro—shared his UCD knowledge and experience with participants from industry leaders such as TELUS and Ontario Hydro at a free seminar hosted by Qualicom Innovations Inc. Chalastra’s seminar shed some light on UCD design which places users at the centre of the software design process—ensuring that the design of a product is right for the people who use it.

The talk began with an executive overview that highlighted the fact that UCD is one of the most important aspects of software design that is often overlooked by many vendors today. Participants contributed to the event by sharing their challenges in designing an application that is both useful and practical. One of the participants regaled the group of an exemplar design mishap where a software solution was rendered useless by its application in the far north. End users with touch screens found the icons in their application to be too small to effectively activate with a stylus while wearing heavy gloves. Chalastra concluded his seminar with an overview of some of the more technical aspects of UCD—outlining the intricacies of using Microsoft Visio or HTML to capture interactive design decisions for effective prototyping and communications with application solution stakeholders.

UCD costs are often mistakenly perceived as added effort and expense in a project. But making your applications more usable can be pivotal for business. Return on investment studies have repeatedly demonstrated that usability enhances customer satisfaction and productivity, improves customer loyalty, and results in tangible cost savings and greater profitability.

For more information about this topic, please visit www.qualicom.com or contact Qualicom Innovations at 416.492.3833.

For more information about this seminar, please download the seminar brochure (PDF).

Retail-IT powers Koodo mobile's sales outlets

Toronto, Ontario - 17 Mar 2008: Qualicom Innovations, a leading developer of POS systems, designed Koodo Mobile’s retail distribution channel for the new wireless brand’s in-mall sales outlets. In doing so, Qualicom proved they were up to the challenge of integrating new requirements with existing technology, developing a customized version of their Retail-IT product to reflect Koodo’s new brand and meeting an aggressive six-month implementation timeline.

Using their proven expertise in the field, Qualicom took existing back-end systems and while retaining common code, segregated data from Koodo’s business channel for corporate reporting purposes. They also modified the existing payment gateway to differentiate payments made to the new company from that of its parent, all the while keeping the client-facing application easy to manage and maintain, and safeguarding the data from network interruptions. To further enhance Koodo’s fresh new brand, “we also did a lot of work with their Koodo Shop web applications”, stated George Ho, Principal Consultant with Qualicom.

Qualicom’s experience as a POS solution and integration provider for cellular applications includes clients such as Helio and TELUS.

For more information about this topic, please visit www.qualicom.com or contact Qualicom Innovations at 416.492.3833.

Qualicom Launches Retail-IT to US Market at 2008 NRF Expo

New York, NY - 15 Jan 2008: Qualicom Innovations Inc. launched their award-winning product – Retail-IT – to the US market at the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) 97th annual convention and expo. The expo, which is one of the largest in the world, attracts US and international attendees, 92% of whom play a role in purchasing decisions.

Retail-IT is successfully being used by Helio, a mobile virtual network operator (MNVO) in the US. Qualicom’s advantage with their POS system is its proven ability to handle the often complicated US tax configurations which can vary from state to state and city to city – a fact influencing the decision to introduce the product at the NRF show.

As one of IBM’s Retail Business Partner Ecosystem developers, Qualicom presented Retail-IT on an IBM kiosk – the same hardware with which they intend to package Retail-IT. The exposure led to Qualicom entering into potential partnering opportunities with hardware manufacturers and payment processors.

For more information about Retail-IT please visit www.retail-it.com or contact Qualicom Innovations at 1-800-830-3922.