Expertise

Over the years, af83 developed comprehensive application engineering and experience design capabilities to create top-notch applications. Our capabilities are constantly updated by our investment in Research and Development, with a specific focus on scalable and open source technologies. We deliver the next generation of applications, with unprecedented levels of scalability and shorter development time.

Application Engineering

af83 Engineers create scalable applications with cutting edge Open Source technologies.
Experience Design

Experience Design is critical to modern applications. Our user experience designers create exciting, meaningful and differentiating user experiences.
Processes

af83 processes integrate the best industry practices in an optimized framework. Our processes make us predictable and flexible, reactive and realistic.
Disruptive Open Source Technologies

Our engineers focus on Disruptive Open Source Technologies to optimize costs, ensure fast implementation and unprecedented scalability.
High Performance

Applications have to adapt to the demands of your business. We ensure that your applications are scalable.
R&D

Our R&D anticipates and accelerates the technologies and practices of tomorrow.

Application Engineering

Our engineers design and build next generation applications using disruptive technologies :: Ruby On Rails; Asynchronous Programming; NoSQL; HTML5 / CSS3; Erlang; XMPP; UX Design

We operate following structured and flexible processes :: af83 observation deck: Anticipates disruptive practices & technologies; af83 amplifier: Improves and amplifies disruptive practices and technologies; af83 delivery framework: Conception, Build and Release of applications

Experience Design

Information Architecture is the process of creating the structural design for the information the product is meant to convey. Information Architecture techniques include the design of content types, organization systems, navigation systems, classification, labelling, metadata and search systems.

Interaction Design is the design of the immediate user experience. Interaction Design is concerned about how the product is perceived by the user through its interface, identity and behavior.

Identity Design is about the style, personality, feeling and ultimately the attraction of a product and how it communicates its value and integrates its core functionalities.

Usability describes the extent to which a product can be used to achieve specific goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.

Ergonomics is the science of designing products to fit the user. Ergonomic products offer optimal human well being and system performance.

Accessibility is the science of making a product, service or environment as accessible by as many people as possible (“easy to access”).

Our experience designers ensure your application provides a meaningful and differentiating experience.

Experience design is mission critical to modern applications. af83 leverages the most engaging experience design practices to make your applications meaningful and differentiating. Our skills cover the full spectrum of user experience activities, ranging from experience strategy to its design and implementation.

User Experience (UX) is the interactions, actions and perceptions of a person with a product. A good user experience is satisfying, meaningful, desirable and user-friendly. User Experience has become critical as product and services are more and more complex and customers more and more sophisticated.

Experience Design is typically broken into three steps:

Experience Research seeks to understand customers. Experience Research techniques include field research, user testing, human factor analysis, usability testing, surveys and competitive analysis.

Experience Strategy aims at defining how your product will be meaningful to your customers. Experience Strategy techniques involve practices such as the use of persona, competitive analysis, immersion in customers' context and idea generation.

Experience Design creates the experience by precisely designing users' interactions through wireframes, user interfaces, gestures and task flows.

Processes

Agile Software Development is a software development method where requirements and solutions are subject to change and evolution.

Rational Unified Process (RUP) is an iterative software development framework.

Scrum is our favorite agile development framework.

Gate Methodology is a method to manage a portfolio of opportunities and accelerate the time to market of the most promising offering.

Our processes are built around three structuring processes. These processes allow us to anticipate, create, contribute and leverage cutting edge practices and technologies

Our three processes:
: The af83 observation deck: Anticipate disruptive practices & technologies; The af83 amplifier: Accelerate disruptive practices and technologies; The af83 delivery framework: Integrates the Design, Build and Release phases of application delivery

Af83 Researchers explore and experiment emerging technologies and practices. Our innovation and technology-centric networks enable us to identify up and coming trends and technologies long before they become mainstream. This is our Observation Deck. We accelerate opportunities by contributing to improvements or missing layers. Next Up: Improve and Integrate.

Af83 Research & Development seeks to improve and help mature disruptive and innovative technologies and practices to accelerate the development time. Open Source practices are common sense to us: we have a prolific track record as contributors. Once fully mature, the results of our work is integrated in our offering and projects. Next Up: Leverage and Deliver.

af83 developed its own Delivery Framework over the years. We took the best of both iterative and agile approaches: RUP (Rational Unified Process) and SCRUM. We adapt our approach to the client and the type of the project. Our delivery process is based on 5 major phases which are Concept, Analysis & Architecture, Build, Verification & Validation and Transition.

Disruptive Open Source Technologies

Ruby on Rails: a dynamic object-oriented programming language based on Ruby, a dynamic, object-oriented programming language.

NoSQL are non-relational databases meant to provide extreme scale and flexibility at a much lower cost than traditional solutions. NoSQL has four major data models: Key-value stores, which provide giant hashtable to store data, Bigtable clones, storing data on a large, multi-dimensional sorted map, Document stores, designed for document-oriented applications, and Graphs, designed for graph-like data (networks).

Node.JS is an event-oriented input/output set of bindings, allowing developers to highly scalable applications.

HTML5 and CSS3 are the latest versions of HTML and CSS, bringing long anticipated features such as video, rich animations and new levels of refinements regarding text rendering.

Erlang is a concurrent programming language and runtime system designed to be distributed, fault-tolerant and real-time.

XMPP is the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. XMPP is designed for real time communication, instant messaging and presence.

We leverage cutting edge technologies to improve time to market, scalability and costs.

Technical choices are critical to the success of your applications. Technologies conditions time to market, performance features and the ability to evolve. Cutting edge technologies, when appropriate, allows for significant competitive advantage.

Disruptive Technologies are innovative products and services with the ability to re-structure their market, due to their cost or features, changing the perception of previous offering as unsuitable, obsolete or too expensive. Disrupting technologies are often low-cost alternatives moving upmarket.

Af83 constantly anticipates, improves and sometimes creates these technologies. Once mature enough we industrialize and integrate these technologies into our projects.

High Performance

Scalability is the ability of a system to gracefully sustain growing workloads and being extended to support additional functionalities.

Performance is the amount of work accomplished by a system compared to the time and resources used.

Extensibility refers to the ability of system to handle future extension of throughput or functionalities.

Asynchronous Programming is a way to develop application so that multiple processes are happening simultaneously in one thread. Applications based on this principle are able to multitask and reach higher levels of performance and scalability, without blocking entire processes or mutiplying execution stacks.

Interoperability is the ability of an application to perform without significant difference in terms of features or performances with different devices and systems.

Design Patterns: well-proven solutions and practices for common design challenges.

We develop applications to scale without requiring significant changes.

Our expertise on scalability encompasses the following aspects:: Design patterns,; Frameworks,; Application Servers,; Databases,; Cache Systems,; Load balancing,; Hosting.

R&D

af83 observation deck is our process to anticipate disruptive practices & technologies. This process is handled by our Research & Development arm.

af83 amplifier is our process to improve disruptive practices and technologies and accelerate their time to market. This process is handled by our Research & Development activities and is meant to constantly provide customers with the best opportunities.

Disruptive innovations are products and services with the ability to re-structure their market, due to their cost or features, making previous products unsuitable, obsolete or too expensive.

Our R&D makes sure that our clients stay synchronized with the best technological opportunities.

R&D allows us to anticipate, improve and sometimes create the technologies and practices of tomorrow. This unique investment is tied to our statute in France as an Emerging innovative Company (Jeune Entreprise Innovante or JEI).

Our R&D work concentrates on disruptive technologies and practices, with a specific focus on Open Source. Open Source methods are natural to us. We have become prolific contributors over the years. Once mature, we integrate the results of our work into our offering and projects, allowing us to focus on the next innovation.