Could your business be more efficient if you could automate repetitive tasks? By creating a web application, you will streamline communication between your business and your customers or your employees. Moving internal business paperwork and processes online gives your employees the freedom to work from anywhere and gives you the information from them instantly. Web applications for client communication provide instant feedback, allow collaboration on transactions, and reduce your time dealing with each interaction.
Without being well-versed in the process of creating a new interactive web site or web-based application, getting started planning your site is difficult. By understanding what goes into the creation of a dynamic web site, it will become easier and faster to explain the structure of your web site in a way that will make sense to everybody involved from the designers to the developers to the end users.
How do I get started planning?
At the core of any good application is a solid structure. The structure defines all of the objects that are represented on your website and how they fit together. Objects on your website will mirror the objects in your business. As web designers, we have knowledge of how to create a useful website but not how to run your business. This model should contain all of the objects necessary for somebody to understand what your application does and the connections between the objects should provide how the application is intended to work.
The model for your application can be compared to the framing of a house. A solid frame is required before continuing construction of the house. Likewise, it can be difficult to go back and move a wall after the next steps in the construction have taken place.
By working out this model before construction begins, you can be assured that your application contains everything that you need to communicate with your users. A solid plan guarantees that neither party needs to waste time re-clarifying the purpose of the site or a specific function further down the road.
Creating a Model
Objects represented in your database can be anything that you need to keep track of. In this article, we are going to be creating a model for an application to keep track of employee hours and their activities for a delivery company. We will be keeping track of office locations, managers, delivery drivers, their time sheets and their meetings. Each type of object can contain properties for storing more information about the object. The time sheet object may contain properties to further describe the hours worked for a day such as whether or not to deduct time for a lunch break or if these hours are to be counted as overtime.
In the diagram above, objects are arranged vertically with parent objects on top of child objects: a user will belong to a user type and a location, a time sheet will belong to a user, locations contain links to both users and finances, etc.
Web applications can allow for multiple types of users to log in and be presented with different information. In our time sheet application we have two types of users: managers and administrators. Managers have the ability to log in and input time sheet hours and meeting information for their own employees. Administrators can log in to add and delete managers, their delivery drivers, and even their time sheets. Planning out these roles on the website are crucial to ensuring proper function and security.
When moving to the next steps in the design of your web site it is useful to provide estimated quantities of each object type. By giving this information up front we are able to make the best decisions on how to design the software and what type of hardware to run it on. Some quantities are easy to figure out; in our time sheet application, each employee will have one time sheet for each day. Some quantities are specific to your operation; an application to keep track of fifteen employees will require less resources than fifteen thousand employees.
Connections
Just knowing what objects are going to be represented in an application is not enough. In order to figure out how the application is going to work, the connections between them must also be defined. There are three types of connections between objects that are useful in planning your model.
One to Many
The most common type of link between objects is when an object contains links to many of another type of object. In our time sheet application, each user will have many time sheets and each time sheet will belong to an user.
One to One
The simplest type of connection is when one object of a particular type is linked directly to one object of another type. If we wanted to keep track of which computer an employee is currently using we would need to state each employee has one computer. The computer object would contain properties such as the computer’s serial number and what programs are installed on it.
With connections that define when one object has only one of another object it may seem like it would make sense to combine object types. It may seem possible in the above example to keep track of the employee’s computer serial number as simply a property of the employee. This type of oversimplification can cause problems when you want to keep more information about the computer or transfer the computer to another employee.
Many to Many
The last type of connection is when one type of object is connected to connected to another type of object many times in both directions. If we wanted to expand our time sheet application to include projects we would need to link an employee to many projects and each project to many employees.
What does a completed application look like?
Designing the site is where our expertise in user interface design can transform your model into a streamlined interaction for your users. After agreeing upon a solid model that covers all aspects of the site it is possible to make useful interfaces for your users to access your website. Your model will allow us to allow us to find the easiest way to transmit the necessary information from your website to your users and from your users back to your website.
We can begin calculating the best ways for people to interact with your web site in order to minimize input errors and eliminate confusion about how to use the site. Most websites begin with some wire frame diagrams on paper to decide what information is going to be on each page.
Our work designing the website is similar to figuring out the interior design of a house. The framing to define the rooms is necessary before deciding where to put the furniture in a room. Multiple kitchen arrangements will yield varied productivity just as different user interfaces will effect how successful users are at interacting with your website.
Our recently completed Creation Gardens Web Application provides their business with a tool for automating their time sheet system in a simple, usable interface.
After the interface has been decided upon, the site can be completed. Similar to the plumbing and electrical systems of a house, the back end system is the last step to creating a fully functioning website.