Challenge
To create the elegant, high-functioning applications users demand today requires designers and developers to work together—which can be a monumental challenge, as anyone familiar with software development knows.
As creator of much of the software designers and developers rely upon to make rich Internet applications (RIAs), Adobe Systems takes this challenge seriously. To meet it, they created Flash Catalyst, a technology platform that enables designers and developers to work together fluidly using Adobe’s most popular applications.
The question was, how could Adobe demonstrate the power of Flash Catalyst while it was still in early development?
“We needed to show how Adobe is fostering the design/develop workflow,” says Ryan Stewart, Rich Internet Application Evangelist at Adobe. “To demonstrate how Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder work with our main applications in a realistic way, even though they were in beta testing.”
It was a tall order, especially in the six-week timeframe that Adobe had allotted. With all this on the table, they turned to longtime partner Universal Mind.
“Universal Mind is a trusted resource,” says Stewart. “Because this was such an important demo from both the design and development side, we wanted that polished, pixel-perfect look as well as realistic functionality to show what Flash Catalyst was capable of when you start with a high fidelity design in something like Adobe Photoshop. And we knew that they’d be able to do it.”
“We’re fluent with applications like Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, and Cold Fusion 9 and how they work together,” says Brett Cortese, Universal Mind President.
Process
Universal Mind began work immediately to quickly create a plan of action.
The discovery phase was a fast inventory of Adobe’s requirements, which were three-fold. First, the demo needed to be an end-to-end project involving multiple Adobe applications working together, and would have to realistically demonstrate Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder, even though they were still in beta. Second, the demo needed to be business application-focused, addressing a concrete business process or need. And third, Adobe wanted feedback from the Universal Mind team of designers and developers on the workflow envisioned for Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. To do this, Universal Mind explored several different scenarios involving end-to-end development of applications.
With Adobe’s blessing, they went forward with what came to be known as the Adobe Universal Inventory Manager, an application that demonstrates how designers and developers work together to build an application for inventory management.
Adobe UIM uses realistic data that inventory managers track, such as stock alerts, inventory status, shipment schedules and other supply chain management events across an entire enterprise.
Result
The Universal Mart Inventory Manager lets presenters take an audience through the entire design/develop workflow. Whether it’s a five-minute press presentation or a 90-minute user group presentation, the demo covers how Flash Catalyst lets designers turn a static design into a working interactive prototype, then hand it off to a developer, who can use Flash Builder to create the backend. It includes many Adobe applications designers and developers are or will be working with, such as Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder, Cold Fusion 9, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.
“The Universal Mart Inventory Manager demonstrates the design/develop workflow in a real-world way,” says Stewart. “You can show which Adobe tools are being used at each step, what’s being built, what the process is, how easy it is, and most importantly, what the end-result is. Basically, you see everything.”
Working with early beta technology meant Universal Mind had to regularly adjust to their client’s own fast-moving development process, even working alongside them, with different teams running different pages while managing the quirks of beta software.
“Even though we were working on the cutting edge of beta technology, the demo is more than just smoke and mirrors,” says Cortese. “It’s a working application that accurately represents the capabilities of Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. It was a hard deadline, so people really broke a sweat on this one. But we’ve got a long history of dealing with beta software. It’s one of the things our team members do best.”
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