I saw many good presentations at Lotusphere 2007, but one that was among the most stimulating to my imagination was the one produced by Nathan Freeman and Chris Blatnick. Since then, they’ve both done some great work on their blogs using UI features I hadn’t used before, particularly layers and embedded editors (Chris’s blog is down right now, so I can’t link to more of his interesting work).
Anyway, one of the challenges I face after a conference is taking the ideas that get sparked during sessions and implementing them in the work I do. Often it’s easier just to slip back into my standard design toolbag. But when I saw these things in action, I immediately knew I had a use for them that wouldn’t just be showing off some new skill for the sake of trying it out.
Here’s the situation. I am designing a database to track diversity requests and related workflow. Requests can come from a variety of different sources which we generically call “companies.” The design specifications called for the diversity administrator to enter a new company document with some basic information, then create a new request document, select the company, and then begin the workflow. This is a classic example of the design needs driving the business process. We need the company information so that the users don’t have to enter the same data multiple times (as the same company asks for different data, for example). However, the users aren’t particularly interested in the “company” document; they are interested in the request. Read the rest of this entry »
