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Making of a Web App: Introduction

by scott on June 06, 2007 | Write a comment

Synap Software is designing a web application and in the flavor of Bare Naked App, I am documenting the experience from idea through design and deployment. Starting at the point where the idea and market has been selected and the technology choices have been made, this series will follow the design and development of the application.

Web Application Design

I enjoy the web application design process and have been devouring everything I can on the topic of going back to the basics of application design.

Note that in this series “design” includes visual design yet more importantly also includes feature selection, modeling, navigation, help, error handling, and all other facets of user interaction. For instance, here, here and here are a couple previous comments on design.

Design Inspiration

• Robert Hoekman Jr.’s Designing the Obvious, A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design has inspired a fresh look at this project. Robert’s blog is here.

• The highly regarded Don’t Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug.

• Readers of 37signals’ Getting Real will recognize some of the Getting Real approaches in this project.

• Ian Landsman shares valuable advice in his writeup on 10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur.

This series will quickly reveal a general theme of simplicity. Two good reads on simplicity are:

• The Laws of Simplicity; Design, Technology, Business, Life by John Maeda. See his blog for more info,

• Less is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity as a Competitive Tool in Business by Jason Jennings. (Jennings is author and co-author of several best sellers including It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business .)

These books have at least one thing in common: they are not step-by-step manuals on how to design a great web application or to compete on simplicity. They share general concepts to help one recognize a well-designed product, process, or application. They help you see the “there” there. Yet they do not talk in detail about “how to get there” because everyone’s specifics are so different. In this series I’ll share the path we took with no presumption that it is the right path for readers.

Now it’s time to start. If you want to easily follow along, you can subscribe by email here.