Over the past year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Sustainable Harvest by way of Relevance. Sustainable Harvest is one of the largest buyers of organic fair trade in the US and they train hundreds of thousands of farmers across the globe in best practices in coffee production and quality control. Apple has even written a business profile about them.
The applications that we’ve been building for them help the company’s supply chain manage the flow of coffee beans from farmer to roaster with a constant eye towards quality testing each step of the way.
The application that we’re currently working on will be used in the field by washing stations and dry mills in these various countries. The tool will allow the users to improve their process of recording which farmers brought which coffee cherries in for processing, how they were washed, dried, milled, and combined into larger units for storage and shipping.
The gentlemen in the photo above were part of a user testing session that took place earlier this week. Silverback was used for capturing the users’ sessions while they were asked to perform various tasks. Updates to the application will come once we have a better analysis of the Silverback videos (which, in turn, await a viable way to make their way back to the product team - most likely on CD or DVD since Internet bandwidth is rather limited from Tanzania).
One interesting bit of feedback made it’s way back to already though. I designed the interface to use big and “chunky” elements. We knew that the eventual users would be very intelligent people, but not necessarily proficient with computers, so the UI was created to feel more like a simple kiosk than a traditional web app.
It turns out that the users are actually used to visually scanning spreadsheets full of dense data and had difficulty quickly identifying items in this style interface. +1 for real world user testing.
I’ve worked remotely on projects for many years now, but this one really takes geographic diversity to an entirely different level. I’m working in Ohio with the development team in North Carolina for a client in Oregon and building an application for people in Africa. How great is that?
All photos courtesy Sustainable Harvest
Posted on March 5, 2010 ·
Shaun Inman (creator of Mint, Fever, and the upcoming Mimeo and the Kleptopus King) iPhone game is interviewed by Dan Benjamin.
Shaun embodies the type of person I most admire - the sort of polymath renaissance man who excels in multiple fields. In his case, his technical chops match his amazing design skills with an obsessive attention to detail across both.
One of my favorite quotes from the interview, when asked what advice he would give to people who want to start something, but don’t have time:
I made Mint while I was working fulltime in another company. I made it in the off-hours, probably between 7pm and 2am.
You can find ways to make time. Instead of watching TV or going out and getting a pint after work, bunker down with a laptop and learn something new and explore some ideas that you have.
Posted on March 5, 2010 ·
For my fellow Rails geeks out there. Chad Humphries (aka.spicycode) is a badass developer at Relevance (though not nearly as physically badass as his Tumblr avatar would lead you to believe). Great tip for ya’lls playing with RVM:
Step 1: Take a directory, any directory. Sprinkle a *.rvmrc* file in the directory.
Step 2: Put “rvm your-ruby-version” in the file.
Step 3: Magic! Let’s test this in the real world…
~/src/codes > ruby -v
ruby 1.9.2dev (2010-02-25 trunk 26759) [x86_64-darwin10]
~/src/codes > cd internet_superstar
~/src/codes/internet_superstar /msater > ruby -v
ruby 1.8.7 (2009-12-24 patchlevel 248) [i686-darwin10.2.0], MBARI
0x6770, Ruby Enterprise Edition 2010.01
~/src/codes/internet_superstar /msater > cat .rvmrc
rvm ree
Posted on March 4, 2010 ·
I just began using Harvest this week (after five years of using a time tracking Rails app I built for my own use). The timing is perfect with their great-looking iPhone app being released today.
Posted on March 3, 2010 ·
lessbetter:
Very clean & simple ad for Band Aid by JWT in Dubai.
Posted on March 3, 2010 ·
Once again my vote for the Tumblr Directory has vanished into thin air. Actually, it showed up immediately after I voted and then a few minutes later it was gone.
Am I the only who is having this problem?
FWIW, I voted for decodering - a newish blog with good HTML5, CSS3, and other modern web design/development-related links.
Posted on March 2, 2010 ·
Isn’t it time to get rid of the gas guzzler and start commuting in something a little more environmentally friendly? Like, say a 7 speed, 718HP
hybrid Porsche 918 Spyder?
Posted on March 2, 2010 ·
A new blog headed up by Michael Angeles (who, as I mentioned yesterday, has joined Balsamiq). I look forward to following their open research and design process.
Posted on March 2, 2010 ·
decodering:
CSS Killswitch lets you non- destructively black out a difficult client’s website with the click of a button.
Luckily I’ve never had a need for something like this (ok, maybe once), but it’s clever nonetheless.
Posted on March 2, 2010 ·
elanmiller:
Cup of inspiration
Posted on March 2, 2010 ·
