Developing Embroidery-Academy.com

Over the past 2.5 years we have become active in a niche market that I never dreamed we would become a part of… Machine Embroidery. I am not by any means a “macho” guy. I always thought these sewing projects were done by conservative grandmothers in-between servings of prunes. I was naive and judgemental, but captivated by the charm and sincerity of these people. In fact, it’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

Our most recent project in the industry, Embroidery-Academy.com has perfectly proven the values of iterative development.

The Vision

Bonnie, the entrepreneurial brains behind the project rightfully had very high expectations and a detailed vision. The idea was an online training center where students could enroll in a course to learn a skill or sew a project. The students would have access to a classroom where they could interact with other students and the professor to ask questions, pose problems and help each other out.

The business process behind the project is simple and fundamentally solid.

Designing the Application

The idea is simple, but the application could quickly get out of hand. There are so many things we could build to make this a slick and cool training center. In fact, we investigated many technical paths to accomplish the project.

We looked at extending Adobe Connect to make a real-time classroom for training. Eventually this was shot down for a fundamental flaw: realtime classrooms. Forcing professors and students to take a class at a scheduled time was inconvenient.

Online training isn’t a new concept, so rather than reinvent the wheel we looked at existing 3rd party solutions. There were a number of acceptable solutions that would get the job done for her, but we had one major concern about them: Feature bloat. These products were chocked full of features that were only good for one thing, getting in the way.

The Solution

In the end we decided a custom application was warranted. An application that focused on the fundamentals. One that only did what was absolutely necessary and then let it grow and evolve over time.

We started simple. Courses were like books. They had chapters and pages. Each book/chapter had an author that would earn a commission on each student paying for the course. Each page of the course should allow for students to interact and ask questions.

We built something fundamental, but real. It was working and Bonnie could play with it. Of course it wasn’t finished, but by playing with real software we could get a feel for what was missing. In the end we embellished on a few things:

• Starting and ending dates
• Multiple Professors on a course
• File attachments for downloadable supplements
• Some administrative reporting tools
• amongst others…

In the end we had a nice clean application which completely fulfilled her business process while remaining simple enough for anyone to use. Maintenance takes hours not weeks. New features can be implemented quickly. We can change faster than any of her competitors to move in new directions.

We’ve watched over the past months while her business starts to grow and while copycats start to build their own classrooms bloated with features. Someday people will learn that to “one-up” your competition you should intentionally do less than they do.