Hospital Success Story

[Andy Sjostrom]

<a href="http://www.devbuzz.com/content/zinc_visual_ce_II_pg1.asp">http://www.devbuzz.com/content/zinc_visual_ce_II_pg1.asp</a><br /><br />I always enjoy reading about Pocket PC solutions deployed in real life. This article published on deVBuzz.com describes the business case, design, development and deployment of a Pocket PC healthcare solution. Very interesting read!<br /><br />"Geoff Lawton, Director of Pharmacy Services at the Medical Center of Aurora, Colorado, saw the potential for handhelds to reduce the paper burden in the Pharmacy department of the 350-bed acute care hospital. He is emphatically not a programmer - his background is in pharmacy, along with an MBA. However, despite his lack of development experience, he was able to use a software productivity tool called Visual CE to create valuable applications that are in constant use by the 45-person Pharmacy department. As far as Lawton is concerned, there's no turning back. "Why would you ever want to use paper? Anything that you do on a paper form is much easier on a handheld computer using point and click technology. The more you use it, the more opportunities you find.""<br /><br />Great story, but I am starting to work up a concern: what's up with the user interface of most Visual CE applications!? :roll:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/hospital_01.gif" />

[Peter Foot]

Great story, but I am starting to work up a concern: what's up with the user interface of most Visual CE applications!? :roll:

I've got a migrane just looking at the screenshot! Is it that Visual CE only supports bright colours for the interface elements or is it like the old days of ascii interfaces where blues, magentas, yellows, greens etc were all mixed together in the name of W?BIC

I think the app would look a lot more professional if
A) A more subdued colourscheme was used
B) The wiggly alignment of all the comboboxes was tidied up
c) Perhaps instead some thin dividing lines between sections

[andersw]

Great story, but I am starting to work up a concern: what's up with the user interface of most Visual CE applications!? :roll:


I´ve seen some other samples of Visual CE apps and they also had the same - eh - ugly interface. Maybe the same programmer or maybe it´s in the Syware guidelines never to follow any MS GUI standards...I don´t know...

[dazz]

The GUI certainly does not have to be so garish. I think since these apps are normally done by non-techs who just want to bang out a solution quickly they don't take the time to create a nice GUI.

Here is a form I have created for a Visual CE review:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/reviewimages/dazz-jan03-syware-1.jpg

It's a little busy but you get the idea.

dazz

[Scott R]

Great story, but I am starting to work up a concern: what's up with the user interface of most Visual CE applications!? :roll:
You've already got your answer:
He is emphatically not a programmer - his background is in pharmacy, along with an MBA. However, despite his lack of development experience, he was able to use a software productivity tool called Visual CE to create valuable applications that are in constant use by the 45-person Pharmacy department. As far as Lawton is concerned, there's no turning back.
This is the same sort of stuff that I saw a lot of in the early days of Visual Basic. When I first started in the Systems department of my last company, I had experience with computer graphics and PCs while many of the VB programmers there were very un-PC-friendly and had most of their programming experience in COBOL. It was very common to see people design applications which were intended to always be maximized (to a 640x480 screen at the time, I believe), and designed around a button-menu interface (e.g. - five buttons in the middle of an otherwise empty 640x480 window). Basically, they were using VB in the same way that they used COBOL.

RAD tools are great, but the downside is that they can allow people who have absolutely no design sense to create horrible looking (and poor usability) applications.

Scott

[Janak Parekh]

RAD tools are great, but the downside is that they can allow people who have absolutely no design sense to create horrible looking (and poor usability) applications.
True, but is it a bad thing that the end-user can now access development tools? If it holds back the competent programmer from doing slick design, then sure it needs work; but in this case it's enabling someone who might not deploy such a solution in the first place to come up with something that at least works.

--janak

[dazz]

True, but is it a bad thing that the end-user can now access development tools? If it holds back the competent programmer from doing slick design, then sure it needs work; but in this case it's enabling someone who might not deploy such a solution in the first place to come up with something that at least works.

--janak

Amen!!

Once someone has been able to create a solution that is better than what they had they can then improve it. Since there are a LOT of people/professional (not to say professionals aren't people :wink: ) that are not developers or can't afford one for a pilot program this type of RAD makes a lot of sense. If the users cry foul then the UI will be improved. Either that or they can hand the current solution of to a developer to create a commercial version.

dazz

[Scott R]

True, but is it a bad thing that the end-user can now access development tools?
Certainly not. Sorry if you got the impression that I felt that way.

Scott

[cyclwestks]

I think sometimes in the beginning people think they look cool, but after using them day to day it gets old really quick for business solutions. I'm a total neophyte in the development area, but I stumbled across ForwardPass which uses a form editor on the PPC & a modified version (?) of vbscript. Has anyone tried this, or have you thought about doing a review in this section of the forum?