When people think of usability improvements, they often think of the front end. But when you really understand your domain, using the power of the back end can be the best way to save your users’ time.

A book app is often a starter example for learning to code. Using an example audiobook, I show how quickly a basic book record becomes complex.

A side quest to explain Ranganathan’s five laws of library science and how well they translate to building web apps (particularly law 4 - “Save the time of the reader user”).

Video by

I am a Senior Back End Developer working on the Rails app that runs Consonance publishing management software. Previous to this, I worked in the education sector for over a decade both as a librarian and a software developer, and in all manner of libraries before that.