Post from: The Galvin Blog

Shoutout to the Galvin Design Team

As someone who is a product of Generation X I understand that we are next in line to start taking care of our communities and our nation. This is our time to shine. I hope and pray that we elect the right officials, make conservative financial decisions, grow our businesses, properly educate our children and build success for the next generations to come. Each of us can make an impact.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

This is Our Time to Shine

A CMS allows people to maintain and edit the content and functionality of their websites easily and efficiently. Many companies do not have an in-house web team and a Content Management System gives them the ability to maintain the site without any previous HTML knowledge. Galvin is releasing a new Content Management System that gives clients a point of access to update news, projects and basic information so that their site will always be evolving and up-to-date. This evolution of content can stem from a basic one-page CMS to a very elaborate module based admin where specific functionality is essential. No-matter what the scale of CMS we can taylor each one to specific needs and goals of the client.

We decided to develop our own Content Management System because of the lack of features of many of the pre-built systems. We can also offer more specific functionality, no-matter how detailed, if a client so requires. These “business rules” create a customized system for each client. If there were any issues with the system, clients are able to get faster customer service with our support team because we built the system from the ground-up.

Our content management system also integrates well with third-party proprietary databases like NetSuite or Salesforce. This allows us to create a complete custom business solution. Our CMS was created with a high quality user-centered interface and a rigorously pre-tested back-end that together make it a very intuitive and solid system. When a client decides that a CMS is what they need it is their’s to keep. Our clients own the CMS, and no matter what changes take place at Galvin they will always be able to update the site.

There are many Content Management Systems on the market but we are able to give our clients a cost effective, intuitive and solid system that we can taylor to any project’s requirements and goals.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Galvin is Releasing a New Content Management System

Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

What would happen if, out of nowhere, a company came out with a better MP3 player than Apple? Better storage, more functions, etc. for a better price? Well, it’s happened. Multiple times. Some competing MP3 players offer all of these superiorities, but have failed to achieve the prestige of the Apple iPod due to its seemingly ever-increasing popularity. There are multiple reasons why the iPod has managed to own the competition, including – but not limited to – visual appeal of the product and the huge advantage that Apple has developed in advertising. Even if a product comes out on the market that is proven to be superior to the iPod, there’s a good chance it won’t surpass Apple’s stronghold on the mind of consumers as a whole.

A parallel can be drawn to the existence of a keyboard you might not be familiar with. The modern keyboard layout was created before computers even existed so as to prevent typewriters jamming. While the “QWERTY” layout (the most common modern keyboard) did indeed solve this relative annoyance, there was a concern about the fact that there existed only one vowel on the home row, a feature that still exists today. While effective in its purpose, the need for the layout of QWERTY was rendered moot by computers, machines that don’t have to be concerned with jamming in the same manner of typewriters. However, consumers had gotten extremely comfortable using the QWERTY, and it was perhaps inevitable that electronic keyboards would have the same character layout. Even today, the vast majority of the computer-using population uses a very slight variation of the original QWERTY. Look down at your hands, and there’s an exceedingly good chance that on the home row (middle row of letters), you will find exactly one vowel: “A.” One row up the first six letters will probably be Q-W-E-R-T-Y. The remnant of the typewriter-dominant past still exists.

Despite the fact that QWERTY prevented mechanical jamming on typewriters, there were concerns about the layout of the letters and the strain that was placed on hands during the action of typing. A different keyboard was created in the 1930s – the “DVORAK” – according to what letters were utilized most often and the way that people physically type; the most common characters are more accessible in DVORAK, and the lesser used are placed in more remote areas of the board. A, O, E, U and I are all on the home row, for example. Everything about the DVORAK points to superiority over the QWERTY. But, although the DVORAK is easier to get a hold of now than it was thirty years ago, the QWERTY still has the market by the throat. Yes, it would take you a bit of time to get used to the DVORAK, but carpel tunnel would be much less of a concern for you than it is now. Your efficiency would more than likely see a noticeable increase. But the QWERTY is what we are, as a whole, most comfortable with. The QWERTY, like the iPod, is what we use despite evidence that we should move on to the DVORAK, the usability pioneer in the keyboard world.

Our Interactive Portfolio

We at Galvin Technologies like to think of ourselves as the DVORAK of website usability. It’d be easy for us to go the same route as everybody else and design websites according to the QWERTY layout the industry has provided us, but we choose to take a step or two out of the box. We don’t want to completely buck the trend, and do pay close attention to the requirements of business models, but try to take into effect usability aspects: the QWERTY vs. the DVORAK. Just as the DVORAK was created with the user in mind, we design websites with the users in mind. The QWERTY was useful when it was necessary, but it’s time to move on; sometimes it’s better to come up with something new and a little different, more user-friendly, than continue to follow a trend of blatant usability inferiority.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Comfort of Popularity vs. Usability: Bucking the Trend

Ok. You have decided to make a monumental decision: you are going to hire an architectural company to build a new house for you. After months and months and what has to equal hundreds of thousands of dollars, you drive to your new home, walk in and…realize things aren’t quite right. You flip the switch for the garbage disposal and the upstairs toilet flushes. When the dryer runs, the air temperature drops thirty degrees. This is not what you had in mind. You have wasted lots of time and lots of money on a product that, in the end, was nowhere near what you wanted.

This is a legitimate concern in the software engineering and development world as well as any other type of construction. It’s easy to just build a house or just design a car if a customer asks you to, but there is so much room for error and disappointment, cost in both time and money, that we choose a little more intimate of a route. Not only do we develop websites for our clients, but we also develop business systems. To do this in at our most efficient level, we go over the functional requirements of the system with the client and follow that up with use cases.

Some sites can be basic, flat html pages, where the user can visit multiple pages via links and learn about the company, the products the company sells, and navigate pages without really doing anything other than that navigation. For example, a florist shop – let’s call it Fiona’s Flowers, based out of Tampa – has a website with a few pages that give the company’s bio, some contact information, some pictures and a list of various plants and boutiques one can purchase at the shop. All in all, it’s not much more than an online Power Point presentation that the user navigates. One can’t buy anything online, nor can one compare prices to other companies when Fiona boasts that her prices are the best in the area.

Now let’s backtrack and say Fiona hasn’t had this business designed yet, much less a website, but she knows what she wants there. She comes to us and says, “Hey, I’m going to be building a floral company. I have nothing except my idea and how I want it to work.” It is then our job to define the functional requirements – what Fiona’s system has to do – for the business system and the company. She has to have customer’s able to purchase online, has to have a shipping service and options for shipping, has to be able to compare prices for each and every plant she sells with the competitive market, etc. We end up with a laundry list of the client’s desired functions for their system because we want to design a complete system for you. Software engineering is, in essence, no different than engineering a car; what are the pieces and parts I have to build to make all this happen?

We’ve listed what the customer wants and documented what this product should do, and now we have a laundry list for system purposes – the functional requirements. Once we have that, we lay it all out into modules, creating a model for everything from application to the storage database. After looking at this list and modules, each building block in the application model, we start creating use cases.

Let’s look at an insurance company, for example. One objective for a use case, the process associated with it, might be creating a quote and saving it to the database for future viewing. The functional requirements are the ability to print the quote, generate a pdf file for emailing, etc. A use case for this quote creation would documents the flow of a user’s steps to creating a quote, from interface appearance, generating a quote number, attributes of the policies available and coverage, and so on and so forth. The use case basically walks through the steps of how a user uses the web page of the insurance company and its components.

Also documented are the specific business rules applied. The customer enters information on the screen  and clicks “save.” The next step would be applying a business rule according to what is laid out in the use case – what has to happen. A quote number needs to be created. What numbers are generated? How are they generated? These are business rules that have to be applied to meet the functional requirements discussed earlier. What happens if the driver’s license isn’t validated or wrong information is entered? What happens if a license number has expired? These are logical business outcomes that need to be very clearly laid out. If a user wants to take a policy on Dodge Viper and the business isn’t willing or able to take on that car value, what is the process that needs to occur that sends a message of refusal? The response is documented in the use case.

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We fully disclose to the client what we are going to develop before rather than during the building process, which makes construction both cost effective and easier to understand for everyone.

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Use cases are important because it forces both our client and us to agree on everything that is going to happen. We get sign off on everything before we sit down and design the product. We fully disclose to the client what we are going to develop before rather than during the building process, which makes construction both cost effective and easier to understand for everyone. It’s not only a system for agreement, but it gives the developer, who doesn’t make much contact with the client until the use case is developed, a very specific idea of what they’re going to be building and how to go about doing it. As the blocks agreed upon in the functional requirements are built, what we had previously discussed and agreed upon is enforced.

So, back to the house example from the very beginning. If we built houses, we would sit down with you and discuss – and agree upon – the functions for everything in the house. This switch will turn on the garbage disposal, this will turn up the heat, and this will lock the door. There’s no room for confusion or the possibility of a devastating mistake either on your expectations or our construction. The whole purpose is to get confirmation that what we’re developing is in essence what you need before the product is created. It saves you money. It makes us efficient. And it makes the products stronger, better, and faster.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Functional Requirements and Use Cases: Avoiding Accidents and Mix-ups in System Engineering

For more information on what Google Buzz offers and when it will be available from your g-mail account go here.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Google Buzz

As I was vacuuming the house I began to immediately think that the reasons why everyone likes a Dyson vacuum are that it truly does a great job and that you can see the results. Instead of a vacuum bag the Dyson has a plastic container that you can see through and see all the dirt you pick up. So as I was vacuuming the house I began to think about how successful Dyson is and their positive word of mouth. I then began to relate that to our industry and as well as to Galvin. In theory a vacuum can just be a commodity – you can buy them anywhere and price is a decision factor. But Dyson showcases that they are not a commodity but rather a high end vacuum that will pick up much more dirt and vacuum then any other vacuum. Then they show the results by showing you the dirt that you picked up.

Talk is cheap. For Galvin Creative Technologies to proclaim great service and great delivery we have to back that up with showing the results. The Dyson shows you the dirt you just collected and we show you the results by accurate budgeting and forecasting, approved use cases, constant communication, updated project plans, updated work break down structures, weekly status reports, an issue log and then the end product. With a vacuum that uses a vacuum bag to collect dirt you can only assume and hope the vacuum is working and with a web project if you are not getting weekly communications and updated documents you can only assume the project is being done properly.

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How My Dyson Vacuum is Like a Web Project

Here are few points I want to share to ease this pain.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Estimating Website Projects

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Wall Street Journal’s Web Watch

A friend of mine mailed me a copy of “Leadership is an Art”, by Max De Pree. It is a short read but very inspirational and informative. I got through the first couple chapters and I feel compelled to list some of the points I find important. This list is only from the first couple chapters. As I read on I will try to share more with you.

Post from: The Galvin Blog

Leadership is an Art