Sunday, September 29, 2013

Early UI, Early Feedback, Better Results

A few months back, I was reviewing some internal apps we had in our organization, and this thing we humbly call the "library app" got my attention. We have a lot of books (physical copies) lying around, and we encourage everyone in the organization to read and apply/share what they've read. So far, it seems to be working.

A group of young developers was learning Grails, and they built this "library app". I wanted to learn too, so I pushed myself to do something that ran on Google's App Engine, and I ended up learning more.

UI and User Experience

I started looking at the current user interface of the one built using Grails. Here's what I saw — a login page.

After logging in, I get the following.

Thanks to PJ for the screenshots.

I asked myself, "What would a typical user do if s/he was greeted with this landing page?" My first response was, I wouldn't even think of clicking any of the two icons. And here's what I saw after clicking on the "Book Listing" icon/link.

There was nothing there that "entices" me to explore and look at the available titles. So, I set out to create a landing page that would make we want to look at what's available.

Early Feedback

Here's what I came up with (largely inspired by iBooks and other similar apps).

libraryapp.onb-demo.appspot.com

I didn't build the code behind it (at least, not yet). I just started with some static HTML, deployed it to the cloud, and asked some colleagues to try it out. I was pleasantly surprised with their reaction. They asked if the app was a modified version of the one built using Grails. They also asked if I got help from our creatives team, and if it was written using Grails. Anyway, the early UI allowed me to get early feedback. And letting the landing page be seen without the need to login also helped (I guess everyone is too lazy busy to login).

So, I proceeded to turn the static HTML into something more dynamic. I started populating the database with book titles. Then, it occurred to me that I was spending so much time entering the titles, authors, publishers, etc. Even though we have about 50+ titles, it was taking too much time. So, I asked around how the current version was being maintained. I was surprised that they did it pretty much the same way I did (adding titles one by one, and typing everything in while looking at the physical copy). I started thinking of improving this. (Seems like an unarticulated need here)

I saw myself Googling the book's title every time I needed to enter its details. Light bulb moment! Why don't I enhance the entry form and allow the user to Google it up, and populate the entry form?

After some rough JavaScript, here's what I ended up with.

I added a "Search" button that would do the search (using Google Books API). The results are shown, and a button is added to use the book information to populate the form.

After I added this, I was able to add titles in no time! This would not have been possible for a user to articulate or express as a requirement. How would they know that APIs exist to help with finding book information? It's critical to observe and experience what the user goes through when using your app to achieve their goals and/or perform their tasks.

I'm no design guru. This simple enhancement is far from a breakthrough. I hardly observed our office admin team use the existing library app. But I'm glad I had this experience, and I hope sharing it here would help others. I indeed learned more than just building apps!

Future Enhancements

As you can see from the screenshot, I have not implemented the borrowing part of the app (yet). But I'm thinking of ways to add a "comments" section to allow users to post their comments about the book. I'm hoping that these comments shall further "entice" others to grab a copy, read, apply, and share.

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Model-View-Controller (MVC) Done Right?

I was pleasantly reminded of how I, as a budding junior software engineer (a couple of years back), misunderstood MVC and application architecture, and how others may misunderstand this too. So, please allow me to explain my journey in understanding MVC better.

MVC and Application Architecture

Martin Fowler provides a good explanation of MVC in his Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture.

When developing applications, one application architecture I'm usually exposed to is the layered architecture (also known as multi-layered, or multi-tiered). Each layer would usually be dependent on layers underneath it, but not above it. These layers provided abstraction (via interfaces), which is useful in tackling complex systems and allowing concurrent development.

A multilayered software architecture is a software architecture that uses many layers for allocating the different responsibilities of a software product.

Presentation Layer
Business Layer
Data Access (or Infrastructure) Layer

Missing Link Between MVC and Layered Architecture

So, I started thinking that MVC was mapped to layers like this:

LayerMVC Component
PresentationView
Business (or Domain)Controller
Data AccessModel

But that's the wrong way! A crucial point that I missed is that MVC is a presentation layer pattern. It is really intended for the user interface. So, what did I end up doing?

Because of this poor understanding of MVC, I ended up exposing domain entities as models to my views. This resulted in entities that exposed setters and getters, which made it difficult to implement invariants and DDD. This also resulted in business rules that were mixed with UI-related implementations. So, what is a better understanding of MVC?

LayerContent
PresentationMVC
Business (or Domain)Services / Domain Objects
Data AccessDAO / Repository Implementations / Gateways

As it was originally intended, MVC is found inside the presentation layer. It's important to note that the Model in MVC is not your Service Layer or the Domain Objects. It's the user interface's state (or View state).

If your application is simple enough, you could choose to have domain objects (usually entities) as your view state for simplicity. But please don't confuse MVC's Model with the Domain Objects.

If you find yourself having difficulty dealing with entities (or domain objects) in the presentation layer, perhaps you can consider converting domain objects to more portable DTOs that can be tailored to specific use cases (or specific UIs) and add an application service (typically using a facade pattern) that would handle the DTO-serializing responsibilities before exposing them to the presentation layer.