Think Say Do - Web Applications, User Experience

Thirteen Years In The Internet Industry

This year I am celebrating 13 years in the Internet Industry. I can hardly believe that I’ve been building online experiences for 13 years! So much has changed since 1996… the “information superhighway” was young and untested. In fact, most businesses that I dealt with back then saw no real value in the Internet. It was a toy. Kind of like blogs were a few years ago, or twitter was a few months ago. Now everyone’s onboard, and there seems to be this frenzy to find the next big thing — to spot business value in the “toys” before anyone else does.

After 13 years of writing code, I often find myself burned out. I find it especially difficult to write one more line of code when I realize that 99% of what I wrote 13 years ago doesn’t exist anymore. The Internet is such a fleeting, instantaneous place. One millisecond you’re hot, and the next you’re not. So, to encourage myself and to celebrate, here are a few of my favorite, worthwhile projects from the past thirteen years and the lessons I learned from each:

• United Way’s ENCompass Project (1998-2001)
  Designed to house information on all Northwestern Illinois non-profits to provide a unified service experience for constituents. The system was originally a joint project with Orlando, Florida-based Human Resource Technologies and Northwestern, Illinois-based InterClay Software (my employer at the time). Lesson learned: non-profit projects are rewarding when people work together to build something great
   
• Milio’s Sandwiches (2000-Current)
  Designed to provide online sandwich orders. Yes, we took online sandwich orders in 2000. In 2008, Milio’s did nearly $1 million in online orders despite the fact that there are no Internet connections in-store. This was a joint project between Rippe-Keane Marketing and e-Media Resources. Lesson learned: there are always solutions, even to the most challenging problems
   
• OshKosh B’Gosh E-Commerce Site & Corporate Intranet (2000-2005)
  Designed to offer all of the famous OshKosh kids clothing online. The project was a huge success from a design standpoint, but the web application platform based on IBM WebSphere failed. I worked for e-Media Resources & The Gunter Agency at the time. We were in charge of the online experience — the design side of things. Lesson learned: design is always worth the investment. design is not just graphic designers. it’s for every project stakeholder - managers, developers, CEOs, customer service reps, etc..
   
• Firestone Tires E-Learning (2007)
  Designed to offer all of the Firestone Tire Center employees comprehensive customer service training. This was an e-Media Resources / Gunter Agency project. Lesson learned: take on projects that are new territory, learn constantly
• Sun Prairie Today Online Newspaper (2004-2008)
  Designed to allow journalists and the community at large in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin to post photos and stories easily. The site run by Paul & Teresa Bauman, was a huge success. Lesson learned: write amazing software designed for people instead of developers. even non-technical people can easily update a web site with only 20 minutes of training.
• BankingMyWay.com (2007)
  Designed to allow people to search for bank rates simply. The site was an e-Media Resources project. Lesson learned: teamwork is the more than the sum of it’s parts

Love what you do. Learn constantly. Give back. Here’s to another enjoyable and unforgettable Thirteen Years!

~ Collin Schneider, Founder / Systems Designer

A Quick List Of What We've Been Doing

For those of you not familiar with Think Say Do, LLC, here’s a quick list of what we’ve been working on in 2008 and early 2009:

• Training Application System for Associated Training Services
  Allows applicants to apply for classes online and apply for financial aid. Ties in tightly with legacy applications in MS SQL Server. Applicants can save their progress and return later for status updates. This project was in partnership with e-Media Resources, LLC.
   
• Customer Information Management System & Visual Query Builder
  for Chamberlain Research
  Allows potential research participants to sign up online and fill in extensive background data. They can opt into and out of research panels. The system also includes a sophisticated Visual Query Builder for Chamberlain Research staff members to build participant lists in real-time. I’ll post more on this project in the future. This project was in partnership with e-Media Resources, LLC.
   
• Online Donation System for The Wesleyan Church World Headquarters
  (See earlier post for details about this project.)
  
  
  
• Inventory Management System for Peterson Machinery
  Prior to our involvement, customers were waiting several minutes to view a massive list of inventory on their browser screens. We reviewed the process and rewrote the entire system to allow searching and browsing. In addition we developed a back office management piece to allow staff to manage their complete inventory, including location information, as inventory is spread across several states. The site was a big success and has streamlined inventory management. As a final piece, we added a dynamic email quote builder to automatically create machinery quotes based off inventory data.
   
• A Bride’s Choice Florist, An award-winning wedding florist in Indianapolis
  Although we don’t often do web site designs, we took on this project for enjoyment. The site is built on a custom Content Management System (CMS) that allows staff to make content updates themselves. We also did some SEO work to assist with search engine ranking.
  
  
• Real-Time Sales Quotes iPhone Web Application for The Art Press
  The web application allows staff to generate real-time t-shirt order quotes for clients. Sales staff just visit the web application, add the job requirements, and they can get a real-time cost complete with material costs, labor costs, and delivery fees. The application can also take completed quotes and send them directly to customers via the iPhone’s email software.
   
• Custom Artist Stores for Vardagen Brands
  Vardagen prints private-label shirts for bands, artists, and small independent lifestyle brands. As part of the deal, artist get their own private-label store through Vardagen where they can sell their shirts to fans. Totally sweet gig. Vardagen fulfills the order and the artists get a generous cut of the proceeds. Think Say Do wrote the custom code for Shopify to allow per-artist private-label stores. Check Vardagen out!

We’ve been doing even more than that, but I wanted to list the major projects. If we can assist you in any way, let us know! Call us at 317-489-9184

~ Collin Schneider, Founder / Systems Designer

Online Payment System

Online donations to non-profits have been steadily growing as people look for more convenient donation methods that offer more control over giving. According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, in 2007, Americans donated $306 billion, three-percent of that was given online. That’s more $9 billion dollars donated online! If you’re working for a non-profit, are you getting a piece of that?

In 2008, Think Say Do was commissioned to design and develop an online donation system for The Wesleyan Church World Headquarters, based in Fishers, Indiana. In previous years, The Wesleyan Church had taken online donations via email. There was no real-time credit card validation, no automated fund transfers, and no instant receipting. This caused some big problems come December, as you might imagine. Donors scrambled to donate before the end of the tax year, only to find their cards rejected because of mistyping, or worse, no one in the office to actually run the cards.

Late in December 2007, while the entire office was out for the holidays, one lone employee had to actually visit the office to process cards so donations could be taken. Not an ideal situation for an organization with hundreds of thousands of constituents.

That’s where we came in. After assessing the situation, we began the process of studying legacy donation methods - how do people currently process donations? Come to find out, they use a piece of software called The Raiser’s Edge from Blackbaud Software. Many non-profits use this software to manage their constituent lists and to keep track of donations. But the software has antiquated methods for online donations and no web-based API. So, we wrote our own.

We first started by building a new online donation form, one that could easily take multiple gifts from all over the Wesleyan web sites (there are three donation-driven sites, each for a different department at the church). The new form backed into a custom online payment system, which works much like PayPal, but it’s all in-house. The service-oriented architecture (SOA) allowed constituents to easily add items as they browsed the site, for example, adding a missionary donation here and a special summer project there. Once they’d finished browsing, they could “checkout” and finish their donations, selecting recurring options, designations, and updating account information.

We also built a powerful, yet simple to use management console for Wesleyan HQ staff members. From the console, they can manage donors, view online giving histories, and export donations directly - get this -  into The Raiser’s Edge! We wanted the entire system to operate smoothly, from end to end, for everyone involved, not just the constituents, but also the staff.

After weeks of reviewing Raiser’s Edge, we decided the best, most stable approach would be to tap the SQL Server database powering the software. We wrote a process that runs nightly that dumps data from key tables into a web application that then conforms the data to a MySQL Server database accessible to the Internet. The MySQL tables then are accessed by the Online Payment System (known as OPS) to allow constituents to retrieve their Wesleyan Account information. After a constituent gives, we flag their record to be updated in Raiser’s Edge pending human review. We also take all gifts made, and pending human review, automatically export the gifts into a Raiser’s Edge CSV format. A custom macro written in VB then allows the staff to import the CSV and automatically add the online giving history into Raiser’s Edge.

The system works incredibly well for them. We were delighted to do the project, and enjoyed working with the great folks over there.

Bottom Line: If you’re not taking online donations, you’re missing out on that $9 billion opportunity! We’d love to talk with you about implementing an Online Donation System for your organization.

Email us: projects at thinksaydo dot com or call us at 317-489-9184.

~ Collin Schneider, Founder / Systems Designer