Instant Objects Ltd

Maxim - Design

Automated Design

We are very firm believers in automation. Given a specific technology platform and an application framework and a house-style for the user interface, then the transformation from Analysis work-products to Design work-products is a mechanical process. Therefore, we should let the computer do it.

Manual Design

Of course, the task is too complex to completely automate and we often don't get an optimum solution where we care most. In that case, we will do manual design work. In practice, this means that the less important areas of a system are 100% generated. They are just not important enough to warrant attention. By contrast, the really important parts of the system are 100% manually designed and potentially hand-coded.

The areas that need manual design seem to be decision support screens, high-speed data entry screens, paper reports and external system interfaces.

Because, we are generating using hints from the requirements analysis phase, we have to leave decisions undone. These are often actually deferred until run-time when they are influenced by site or personal preferences.

Many people feel that they can get more life out of a package than a custom application because a package has to be configurable to fit lots of companies. So over time, as the user's requirements change they can reconfigure the package. In contrast, a normal custom application fits a set of requirements very very well at a single point in time. Because we approximately generate and then reconfigure at run time, we have almost accidentally achieved the longevity benefits of a package as well as the closeness of fit of a custom application.

It is worth also pointing out that we don't start designing until we are very familiar with the problem domain. We have often cut two prototypes and done the data conversion before we start detailed design of key screens.

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