We talk about “human-centered design.” Why not “human-centered data“?
It sounds like an oxymoron, a contradiction. Data—the cold, hard facts—meets the flexible, collaborative human element.
But it doesn’t have to be contradictory.
With the right technology, your organization can maximize the value of your existing systems, data, and personnel. To do this, you need to operationalize your data, making it more accessible for the people on your team.
One way to do that is through application development, by creating custom software applications to meet your specific user needs or business challenges. For example, you might create an app that allows your frontline healthcare workers to enter symptom data or one that gives your sales reps access to updated customer insights in a single view.
It’s this quick access to real-time data—in the hands of every employee who needs it—that drives decision-making and helps you scale.
In this guide, you’ll learn the building blocks of app dev, the difference between traditional and scalable development, and how to take app dev further to harness the power of your data.
We’ll try to break it to you as gently as possible: your current approach to application development may be holding you back.
The problem is that traditional app development is tricky and code-forward, leaving developers to pull the strings. If a sales rep needs a report run from internal app data, they might need to submit a request and wait. Meanwhile, data sits siloed and underutilized, and employee efficiency and productivity can drop.
We propose a shift to “human-centered data”—data that prioritizes the needs of actual human end-users. Instead of simply sitting, data gets integrated into workflows and decision-making processes so users can get the information they need to drive fast progress and scale.
Where traditional app dev focuses on three building blocks—data, logic, and user interface (UI)—modern app dev adds another: scalability.
With the right technology, namely an easy-to-use, low-code app dev platform, your organization is one step closer to achieving true data democratization and growth.
The building blocks of app dev
When diving into app dev, you need to understand its core building blocks—data, logic, user interface (UI), and scale. You’ll want to choose an app dev platform that offers power and flexibility in these components in a way that’s easy to use for your team.
- Data
An app must bring data together inside a unified user experience. Once you connect your data sources, you can then mix and match your data within a single page.
In other words, you need a library of connectors—one that connects to your various internal databases, REST APIs, or other software-as-a-service (SaaS) products your team might use.
“A library of connectors makes it so you don’t necessarily need backend developers to create integrations to get the data you need,” says Jackson Alexander, Sr. Director of Product Management at Nintex.
Those connectors feed data into data models, which bring your data into your applications. For example, say you want to display a table of records in your app. You would create a data model and connect it to an Account object—an individual shopper—in Salesforce. In Salesforce, a shopper’s data is represented through a standard account and contact together or a person account and contact together. The connector automatically would bring in all the fields on that object, and then you could select the ones you need.
“The data model is a reusable package for that,” says Alexander. “It’s a reusable data query you can create without writing code.”
So, the same data model—let’s say on that Account object—might feed data into a table or list of accounts, but it could also be used to create a form for adding new accounts. And that means time and effort saved for your team.
Did you know? Nintex App Dev lets you quickly connect data from dozens of platforms, like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and AWS. Plus, our data connectors also support common approaches like SQL, REST, and OData. If you want to connect to a new tool, use Nintex App Dev to quickly build a working prototype that integrates the new system with your existing business data.
- Logic
To do something with your connected data, you need logic. Logic is fundamental to app dev because it lets developers define how an app should behave, process data, and handle errors. It’s the backbone of your app’s functionality, ensuring a positive experience for your team.
When building apps, you need to create logic flows that take action on your connected data and make it easy for your team to get their work done. This requires you to build comprehensive expressions or actions that can be triggered from multiple places within the app.
Natural language processing (NLP) makes it easy to create logical expressions.
“Nintex has Flow Builder and Display Logic, which can be configured to some degree with natural language—writing logical expressions and creating reusable action flows,” says Alexander. “It offers a way to create the logic you need for your application in a scalable way, in a reusable way, in a way that you don’t have to be a developer to understand.”
- UI
If you want apps your team will actually adopt, you need to create easy-to-use interfaces. That means customizing your app’s page layout, data views, images or charts, and more.
To do this, turn to the component library in your app dev platform. You can use theme and style components to set up your design system and use them across all your applications for a smooth, consistent user experience.
The name of the game here is easy. You need drag-and-drop functionality—and low or minimal code requirements—to save your team stress and time in creating a consistent UI.
“With Nintex, you have 70+ different UI components, and variants of those components, available out of the box to address most use cases,” Alexander says. “Styling and variant creation can be done easily with clicks, not code. So, that gives you a scalable system, themes, and UI components to work with across all your applications.”
- Scale
In each of the above areas—data, logic, and UI—you have scalable abstractions that almost anyone can build with. And when you combine those together, it’s even more powerful.
That warrants a special callout here. Let’s review the way the other building blocks help you scale:
- Data: Create reusable connections across models and reusable data models or queries to obtain the data you need.
- Logic: Build reusable action flows to take action on your connected data
- UI: Use drag-and-drop components to configure a clear, consistent design system
“For each of those layers, Nintex has created abstractions that make them reusable and configurable by almost anyone,” Alexander says.
That makes a world of difference for scale and democratization. Your team doesn’t have to know how SQL databases or REST APIs work. Nintex’s connectors and data model abstractions let them connect to tools and systems of record so they can access only the data they need for their applications.
Traditional development vs. scalable app dev
Traditional application development involves assembling a specialized team with various skill sets.
For example, with front-end development, you might need a ton of different frameworks, tech tools, and code bases. If you don’t have a design system, you could end up with different versions of the same button across all your applications.
This increases your development and maintenance costs—and that’s just the front-end development piece.
Then, consider backend development. You have design, workforce, and product management teams, and you have to figure out how to manage services, APIs, database administration, and more. This means more management and coordination, which takes a toll on internal efficiency and business operations.
“What we often see, especially for operational or internal apps, is even if a company has software developers, they’re often focused on—somewhat understandably—what’s needed for customers and partners,” Alexander says. “The operational applications, the internal applications, and the processes tend to get less attention.”
Essentially, traditional development slows you down at a time when the pace of change is speeding up.
“By the time you’ve solved the problem, the problem has changed,” Alexander says. “It can take six months to a year to develop a traditional application. The app’s underlying requirements often change when you’ve been trying to do all the work.”
Low-code or no-code app development, with a platform like Nintex, reduces your need in all those areas.
- If you don’t have front-end development, that’s completely fine. You have a design system and component library you can work with, and a drag-and-drop interface to put those together.
- You don’t need database administrators or back-end developers. Instead, you can connect easily to your various systems and data sources and use them to solve problems.
- No designers, no problem. With the design system, you can create good functional applications without relying on all those roles and skill sets.
A good app dev platform a business analyst or a somewhat technical line-of-business user to solve their team’s problems quickly as requirements change and as you scale.
How to take app dev even further
A scalable solution lets you take app dev—and your business—further than you ever thought possible. With Nintex, you’ll start to notice major operational changes as you:
Extend your declarative cliff
In the past, low-code app development solutions saved time but had limited functionality. You’d quickly run up against the limit of how far you could customize it for your company—meaning you’d have to extend its capabilities with code, bringing in professional developers to help you.
With Nintex App Dev, you can handle more complexity and configuration from the jump, meaning you can go a long way before hitting that “declarative cliff.”
Differentiate roles
One way to take app dev further is to differentiate roles between technical leaders and business users. This creates a sense of clarity—ensuring you avoid redundant actions or tasks falling through the cracks.
For example, IT might set up data models and manage the security and permissions layers, and business users are responsible for working within those parameters.
“Nintex respects the underlying security model of any systems, APIs, or databases it connects to,” Alexander says. “So database administrators still have full control of their security model and can set the permissions on what data can be accessed by Nintex apps. Then, they can give access to the different teams or business departments to what they need to build their application.”
By clearly differentiating roles, you set the foundation for a successful partnership. Then, your IT team doesn’t have to worry about iteratively supporting app dev all the time—freeing them up to focus on more complex or strategic problems.
Take on a product-forward mindset
For best results with app dev, you need to adopt a product management approach toward problem-solving.
As Alexander puts it, “Having tools helps. But they’re most successful when you pair them with the right mindset of how you’re approaching your problem.”
That means asking questions like:
- How do we identify and prioritize use cases and solutions?
- How do we ensure our solutions are actually solving the right problems?
- What’s our process for developing an internal app?
- How can we involve users to ensure the UI is as helpful as possible?
“If you have abstractions that allow you to create and iterate quickly, that doesn’t guarantee you’re building the right things,” Alexander says. “We encourage our customers and partners to have a product mindset to what they’re developing—to be clear on what problems they’re trying to solve and which are the most important.”
This product mindset goes a long way toward leveraging speed, efficiency, and iteration at scale.
Achieve data accessibility and democratization with Nintex
Organizations can create internal apps without a designated tech squad of front-end, back-end, and design specialists. Start with the right mindset—and the right platform—and you’ll empower your team to solve business problems quickly at scale.
Nintex App Dev gives you a drag-and-drop, low-code way to improve your operational efficiency. To see for yourself, contact us for a demo.
