exploring the relationship between social science and software development methodologies: a blog by Pascal Belouin

I recently had the opportunity to write a first draft for a web application allowing office workers to order hot and cold drinks online. It’s far from perfect, but gives an idea of how this problem can be approached! Introduction The aim of this document is to provide a first draft design for an online [...]

Read more...



I have tried to show in previous posts how certain aspects of an interactive system such as how it works, what it does, or what it represents, could be seen as emerging in the framework of its actual use. Furthermore, I have tried to provide a theoretical grounding to such an approach by borrowing from [...]

Read more...



I am currently working on a medium-size web development project for a public organisation: the project is implemented by a small, agile team of developers external to the organisation (rather talented I must say!) on the basis of specifications written by myself and my colleague. These specs mostly consist on word documents as well as [...]

Read more...



Although only remotely connected to what should be the main concern for software development projects (that is to say that the specifications are right), the interplay of power relationships between stakeholders can really cause a lot of damage. I am not talking only about tensions that may arise between, for example, the sales team and [...]

Read more...



I try and follow a few number of simple principles when I develop the front-end of enterprise web applications (that is to say web applications which aim is to support the processes of a particular organisation), both to inform design decisions and to avoid scope creep. The main approach I tend to follow and advocate [...]

Read more...



I recently came across an interesting problem, which I guess is quite a common one for web application developers. I am currently working on a small to middle sized web application, and the development team is using Merb, a nice and neat MVC framework, and are making very good use of the ‘spirit’ and elegance [...]

Read more...