Duration: 6 weeks
Done at: Infosys Technologies Limited
Collaborators: 5 Developers
Tasks: Information Architecture, Interaction design for desktop applications, Low Fidelity Prototypes, Wireframes, Interface / Visual Design, Heuristic Evaluation
About Gradient:
GRADIENT (Grid Access of Distributed Information in the Enterprise) is a grid based Enterprise Information Integration tool from Infosys for accessing distributed information across an enterprise.
At the core of the GRADIENT lie three layers:
1. The Provisioning Layer – Provisioning layer helps provision the data sources that need to be exposed to the GRADIENT as services. The layer helps to hide the complexities involved in posting a Query for different type of data sources.
2. The Integration Layer– Integration layer integrates the metadata information of the different data sources that is used to search for the location of the data. The basic functionality of this layer includes parallelizing the query using Distributed Query Processor engine and Integration of the result sets.
3. The Access Layer – Access layer is the point of contact for the end user application to access the information exposed by the GRADIENT using standard SQL queries.
Fig: Wireframe Screen
Design Process and Solution:
This is a desktop application that is connected to a central Grid. The Grid also contains the other computers and servers. The work began by analyzing the existing framework and the requirement document that was prepared. Based on this the different ways of doing the above mentioned tasks were studied. The solution focused on making the interface intuitive for the user. The key functionalities involved using multiple rows of data to be used at the same time. Hence the solution looked at providing a better experience of working with tabular data as one of the features. The query generation functionality dealt with the selecting from the different fields in the database. This functionality was designed to facilitate a drag and drop mechanism.
The idea was to use Web 2.0 style guides onto a desktop application.
Evaluation of Interface:
The Wireframes underwent a Heuristic evaluation for check in the functionality and the navigation / interaction issues. After the visual designs were developed, they were against reviewed by expert reviewers.
