Thanks to EE’s advanced relations management, I was able to implement separate user groups within the site, each with its own homepage, events, articles, and member profiles. This lets the members of IREM update and manage their own content without putting a heavy workload on the webmaster.

Wrong.

What prompted me to write this post is Smashing Magazine’s newest project, the Smashing Magazine book. The folks at Smashing Magazine (one of the most, if not the most widely read web design blog) want to publish a book, and they are asking their readers for advice. They are asking you and me to “suggest the book content”, “suggest the cover design”, and “suggest the layout drafts”.

I was surprised by the globally positive response in the comments, but a few people pointed out that this more or less amounted to spec work, since most of the “suggestions” would not be rewarded, and that the whole project was a little dubious. Those people promptly got flamed by other commenters.

But the problem is not even spec work. This comment really embodies what’s wrong with this whole idea:

The good people at SMASHING MAGAZINE write and put together the book themselves, the reason they are asking such questions is that they want it to fill the best off its potential with regards to its readers…. US!

How are they supposed to know what we want without asking?!

That’s not how it works ! You don’t ask your readers what they want to read about and then write the book ! You write the book first because you have something to say, and if it’s good readers will come. This is exactly why companies like Apple or Nintendo have been so successful designing great products like the iPhone and the Wii: they create great products that they themselves love, they don’t ask people what they want.

So if you want to write a good book, ask your readers for advice. But if you want to write a great book, open up Word and start writing !

Besides the cool name and cool design, it has some really useful feature like an RSS feed for your product, multiple navigation menus, and a “featured items” section right on the home page. $10 really isn’t much, so if you like it and you need a simple Shopify theme, go buy it now !

The second theme is called Hermes, and is an upgraded version of Mercury. So besides all of the features available in Mercury, you get:

• An AJAX shopping cart
• “Add to cart” buttons on collections pages
• Blog with comments enabled

Since it’s premium, it costs a bit more than Mercury. But at ony $35 (provided you have already bought Mercury), I think it’s still quite reasonable. This include the theme as well as the PSD file in case you want to change images or create your own graphics.

If you want to get it, you need to buy Mercury first, because it’s being sold exclusively at ThemeForest. You can then contact me and I will send you the premium version.

Here’s mine, 512*512 px, png format:

Just right click and “save as…”

To modify your app’s icon, you can use a program such as Candybar, which is free to try. Just import the image (File > Import > Image) and select it. You then drag and drop your app from the Finder into the “quick drop” area, and you’re done ! Be sure to remove the icon from the dock and relaunch the app to see your new icon.

The questionnaire I developed gets sent out to World Heritage Sites managers every six years, asking them to evaluate their current situation, needs, and perspectives.

I was responsible both for software development and graphic design, and although I worked in collaboration with UNESCO members, I had a large degree of freedom and some tough choices to make regarding the interface and the functionalities. I also had to learn a new language (ColdFusion) from scratch, and work in the context of an existing website.

Note: since the questionnaires include private data, access is restricted and I cannot give you a link to try it out for yourself, sorry…

Interface design

I was limited to the World Heritage Center website’s existing color palette of blue and grey, but in the end those colors were very well suited to the project, since they don’t distract from the content.

I decided to separate each question into a single block of content with its own small toolbar. From left to right, the toolbar includes the question number, a check mark to indicate if the question is completed, a guidance link to display an in-line popup, and a reset link to erase all answers to the question.

A single question with its toolbar

Since the questionnaires will be filled in by people from all around the world, it was important to use accepted conventions and not try to reinvent the wheel. This is why I used the usual colors or red for errors, green for success, yellow for notices, and blue for help.

Front-end development

UNESCO staff can search for a questionnaire to review

One of the constraints of the project was working within the existing World Heritage structure, which includes Sites Managers responsible for each sites, State Parties Focal Points responsible for all of a country’s sites, and UNESCO staff; each user category having different roles, different access privileges, and even different surveys to fill out.

Some of the features of the online tool include:

• Quicksave your answers at any time without reloading the page (AJAX submit)
• Navigate to any section of the questionnaire using a survey map or pagination, and answer in any order
• Conditional questions that appear only if previous questions have been answered in a certain way
• Export as a Word document or print out the full questionnaire, or just the answers
  

  Print or export your questionnaire

• Multiple questions types such as comment field, data validation, multiple choice questions, etc.
  

  Data validation questions

  

  Custom question type

Back-end development

In many ways, the real challenge was in developing the admin interface for such a complex tool. It had to be powerful enough to control all aspects of the questionnaires, but simple enough to be used with 10 minutes of training.

Editing questions through the admin interface

The main feature of the back end was editing questions, and because of the number of questions (more than 300 altogether, with up to 10 potential answers each) the editing had to be as fast as possible. This is why all of the editing interface uses AJAX to minimize loading times.

But we quickly realized that managing the questionnaires involved far more than just editing questions. This is why I added the following features:

• User logging to see who has accessed the questionnaires and when
• Email management to send out emails to Sites Managers and Focal Points. Email templates are automatically filled in with the details and link for the corresponding questionnaire, and UNESCO staff can check if the links have been clicked
  

  UNESCO staff can review previously sent emails

• Automatic pre-filling of questions for which data already exists, such as addresses, geographical coordinates, etc.
• Language management lets you add languages and translate questions.
• Error reporting displays errors or warning messages encountered by users, which can be used to improve the user experience in later versions
• Caching minimizes the load on the server while speeding up the application

Altogether, this project spanned one year and gave me the occasion to aquire new skills, but more importantly introduced me to the countless problems than can arise when developing an online application for users speaking multiple languages and spanning all over the world.
I learned to work in a big organization, to meet (and in some cases exceed) user demands, and also when to simplay say “no” to feature requests.