User Interface design for the front-end of an application running on Mainframes
The challenges faced in designing the interface for this application were:
• The restricted size of the window, hence the limited space available to incorporate the features.
• The navigation through the pages of the application can only be done using the keyboard keys and the mouse is disabled.
• The only colours available for use are Blue, Red, Pink,Green, Turquoise, Yellow and White.
• Everything that needs to be displayed on the screen has to be coded in COBOL-CICS.
• The logo, icons, buttons, tables etc. can only be created using the symbols available on the keyboard.
Following images show some of the unique front-end pages from the application. The bottom-left corner of each map shows the various small scale occupations from which people are involved with this application like Farming, Construction, Fisheries and Poultry:
Why Mainframes?
During my term as a Software Engineer at Igate (Capgemini), I received training in Mainframes.
In simple terms, Mainframe computers are big machines used primarily by large organizations like banks, finance, stock market, insurance etc. for hosting critical applications to perform bulk processing. During the training period we were expected to build an application in Mainframes with the code written in COBOL - CICS.
About the application:
The application we built was a Microfinance Lending System named "₹PAY" (Rupay).
• Microfinance Lending is an application that provides a simple way of accessing a borrowers records of money flow from and to the lender.
• Microfinance is a general term to describe financial services to low-income individuals or to those who do not have access to typical banking services. It is also the idea that low-income individuals are capable of lifting themselves out of poverty if given access to financial services.
My responsibility in this project was to design the front-end i.e. the layout for the pages(BMS - Basic Mapping Support) of our application. An application consists of formatted screens which act as a bridge between the terminal and the CICS programs. We use BMS to create screen designs with proper positions and attributes.
Our aim was to make the application as user-friendly as possible, especially since our target audience were people belonging to the low income group like farmers and members of self-help groups.
Our aim was to make the application as user-friendly as possible, especially since our target audience were people belonging to the low income group like farmers and members of self-help groups.
This is how the BMS map looks while designing.
