Welcome to the Opal UI Case Study series by Bits And Pixels.

Opal is the Enterprise SMS Messaging RIA that Bits And Pixels built in conjunction with Ali McLeod and Steven Webster for Telrock Communications. In this series, I will take you through Opal's user interface, highlighting some of the usability and UI design decisions that were made and discuss the challenges we faced and how we overcame them.

If you have not seen Opal in action, we have prepared a narrated Flash Presentation on the Opal UI over at Bits And Pixels that should give you a good idea of how the application looks and works.

Present installments:

• Part I: Architecting the User Experience
• Part II: Design Decisions and Emerging Usability Design Patterns

Future installments:

• Part III: Dances with Components
• Part IV: Lessons Learned and Applied
• Part V: Opal: Future Directions

Editorial: Would Flash MX 2004 or Flex have decreased development time and lowered risk for Opal?

The Flash Ant Opal UI Case Study Series article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.