ePatterns was a startup founded by computer scientists developing a new technology for sharing information between databases. They knew that the technology would be helpful for corporations trying to control and monitor the business processes implicit in the company's data communications, but they didn't know how business process owners would interface with the system. They asked Cooper to do a thorough design of the process owners' tools ... with surprising results.
The solution
ePatterns had a powerful system with a very confusing object model. I redefined the way that they expressed that object model to users, including identifying important distinctions in the different ways that it needed to present itself to different classes of users. Technical users got an explicit view of the overall structure of relationships between databases, while business process owners got a process-oriented picture.
These illustrations are from our first conceptual check-in on the design:
What's cool
This project came to a strange and surprising conclusion. Cooper had been hired to work through to a complete behavior specification for the system, but the project ended very shortly after we presented our high-level overview of the interaction structure.
The client had been very enthusiastic about our work at that point, saying that our solution greatly clarified how their system worked. They then took our design to their venture capital funders, who were debating whether to provide them with their second round of funding, in order to demonstrate what the company had planned.
As the client explained it to me, their VC were happy to see my design work, saying that for the first time they really understood what it was that ePatterns did. And finally understanding it, they decided they didn't want to fund it.
I killed the client by making their product clear to their strategic decision-makers earlier than it otherwise would have been. Perhaps my work didn't exactly benefit the client ... but it served those VCs very well.
