Public Funding for Blueberry Consultants Limited

Instant App Designer (IAD) will be a revolutionary software development tool that builds upon the concept of the spreadsheet to enable non-programmers to create software applications that run through a web browser in “the cloud” quickly and interactively. Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are used in most businesses as a tool to build models that support business processes. However, Excel is not intended to be an application development tool, and therefore is weak for designing user interfaces, integrating with databases and enabling collaboration. Non-technical users who want to build more complete data-centric applications often then turn to other tools such as Access and Sharepoint, but these also have limitations and require technical knowledge to build, deploy and maintain them. IAD will overcome these limitations. It will require no technical knowledge beyond the skillset of an average Excel user, but it will enable complete, ready-to-deploy software to be created which will run in a standard computing environment, accessible to users through a web browser. IAD will handle the deployment of the software to a server and database (in the “cloud”) so that the designer does not need to be concerned with hardware, database setup or network connectivity. IAD combines a number of conceptual design innovations into a single tool aimed at reducing learning curve and enabling design speed. The goal of the project is to implement the initial design of IAD through experimental development of the key features within a POC prototype. The project will be considered successful if an average Excel user, a non-programmer, can successfully use IAD to design, build and publish a simple information collection prototype application to the web with minimal training. IAD will make the development of typical applications accessible to “Excel users” we expect wide adoption, placing the power to create software into the hands of business analysts, project leaders and entrepreneurs.