Wish You Could Easily Customize the Mobile Device User Experience for Your Front-line Workers? You Now Have Lots of Options
Check out the Design Studio in your Zebra DNA software suite.
You probably spend a lot of time customizing the user experience (UX) for everyone in your organization who relies on a mobile device to get their job done. Though a single device model can be used universally in support of multiple roles and tasks, the software, user interface (UI) and other UX factors need to be highly personalized. Plus, your organization may have different UI/UX needs and preferences than others working from the same Zebra device and application baseline.
So, we’ve been developing a new Design Studio within Zebra DNA Cloud that will help make it easier for you to customize the UX for everything from Enterprise Keyboard and Enterprise Home Screen to Enterprise Browser and DataWedge.
What makes Design Studio so special is that it moves the designer tools you previously used – the ones that lived on each Zebra device – into the cloud and centralizes them all in a single design environment. It’s the one-stop shop for all design application profiles tied to the Zebra enterprise applications you may want to customize for devices running an Android 11 or newer* operating system (OS).
Now, in the spirit of full transparency, we are still actively working to get many of the applications over to Design Studio. So, when you log in today, you’ll only see Design Studio for Enterprise Keyboard (EKB), which is the cloud equivalent of the former Enterprise Keyboard Designer (EKD) desktop application. However, the cloud-based designer tools for Enterprise Home Screen, Enterprise Browser, and DataWedge will be available in Design Studio soon, so keep your eyes out for those. (I’ll also update this blog post with more details about each tool as it becomes available in the cloud.)
In the meantime, if you want to check out Design Studio and the Enterprise Keyboard designer tool in Zebra DNA Cloud, go to ZDNA Cloud > Design Studio.
You don’t need a special license to access the Design Studio in Zebra DNA Cloud. However, if you do not have a Zebra DNA Cloud license, you will be limited to five designs per tool. If you have a license, there is no design limit.
In fact, if you want to create a customized enterprise keyboard design today, all you have to do is go into Zebra DNA Cloud > Design Studio > Enterprise Keyboard > New Design and follow the intuitive workflow for a keyboard creation. First, select the number of layouts you need in the new keyboard design. From there, you can go to the Editor page to further customize the keyboard and complete your design. Once the custom design is finalized, you will need to save and “Mark as complete.”
You can deploy the design directly from the landing page of the EKB Design Studio by clicking the hamburger menu against your completed design and selecting “Deploy.” This option takes you directly to the My Apps > Zebra Collection > Enterprise Keyboard Setup with this design already preselected as your keyboard option. Next you select the devices that you want to deploy this design on.
Or you can directly go to My Apps > Zebra Collection > Enterprise Keyboard Setup and select the “Add Custom Keyboard Layout” option to browse the Enterprise Keyboard Designer and select the desired design. Then continue to select the devices for the design deployment.
If you do not want to deploy via ZDNA Cloud, you can export the design to your local system or cloud storage and deploy it using either StageNow or your enterprise mobility management (EMM) partner, if you have one. You will need to create either a StageNow barcode via the StageNow procedure and push the file to the device(s) or follow your EMM procedure to deploy the design.
Thoughts?
I’d love to hear what you think once you’ve had a chance to check out Design Studio. Will Design Studio, and this first cloud-based Enterprise Keyboard designer tool, make your job easier? Will you be more likely to apply the desired customizations to your UI/UX given how simple the design and deployment process are now as compared to the previous on-device and desktop experiences? Send me your feedback and questions.
I’ll let you know once the additional designer tools are available in Design Studio as well.
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*Editor’s Note:
If your devices are older and not running Android 11, you will need to upgrade to a newer OS (if your device supports it) or a newer device to take advantage of Zebra DNA Cloud features, including Design Studio. Contact your Zebra account representative for assistance.
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Related Read:
Four New Ways You Can Use Zebra DNA Cloud (Whether or Not You Have an EMM)
