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ff2003: building rich internet applications

current session: “Building Rich Internet Applications: A Development Handbook,” presented by Brian Ghidinelli, of IconMediaLab

Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are becoming a popular way to improve the user experience across many devices and platforms. This practical session will focus on take-home approaches for building RIAs, using real-world examples. Topics will include team selection, creative and technical workflow, application architecture, backend integration and usability. After attending this presentation, you will leave with a solid understanding of best practices in building RIAs which you can immediately apply to your next Flash challenge.

This was a great discussion of organization and workflow when building Flash RIAs. Ghidinelli zoomed through his slides — good thing he posted them online, too.

Flash RIA projects are much more complicated than regular “Flash movies,” and require a different project management/workflow approach. In Ghidinelli’s model, an RIA project can be broken down into four phases:

He says a unified project should anticipate change as the project evolves, and suggests working in small iterations that allow for lots of opportunities for user testing.

Phase 1: Inception - In this phase, you launch the project and organize your team. He offered three different models for team set-up - 6-person team, 3-person team, and 1-person team. Ideally, there are six roles that need to be filled: project manager, usability, design, front-end (Flash) engineering, back-end engineering, and user testing. This is also the time to come up with use cases.

Phase 2: Elaboration - At this point, you define the parameters of the project, and set up prototypes and storyboards to determine workflow. This is also the time to set up the developing environment, with a centralized development server and content versioning system. Ensure that the designers and developers are using consistent naming conventions and a standard directory structure. Set up the structure of the Flash application, with a main “application shell” with loadMovie and preloaders, and a series of sub-FLAs for various sections of the movie, allowing multiple engineers to work in tandem.

Phase 3: Construction - Start building iterations of the application. Build everything in steps. Set up an issue tracker system so that testers and team members can report bugs. Make sure to build in accountability, so that all reported bugs are resolved. This is also the time for heavy usability testing, ensuring that each iteration implements certain use cases. At this stage, the back-end and front-end teams collaborate to wire the visual components to the back-end application. Good words of wisdom in maximizing the efficiency of your Flash file:

“Give every byte a job to do.”

Phase 4: Transition - This phase encompasses the beta test through the product release. In this stage, your team should identify and resolve any remaining issues and get the client’s sign-off. This phase ends with the product release, and the begnning of planning for the next version/release of the product.