Department of Development Part 2: Front-End

The Internet can be so simple: we will enter an address and see beautifully designed sites. Then we write a word into a designated area – click – and the screen displays the results. But behind what looks to most users so quick and natural, lies the work of programmers and designers.
At gruuna this happens in the teams of the IT department. One of them, the back-end team, we have presented to you already. It is responsible for all activities that occur in the background. Another group in the department is the front-end team. As the name suggests, it deals with everything that happens in front, so visible to customers.
At the beginning any well designed website is a graphical idea. It is designed and drawn by a designer. Front-end task of the team now is to translate this idea, because everything that looks good on the drawing, must also appear on screen. The optical idea has to have a very specific code that can read and process the computer system. Also, developers have to remember that customers go into the Internet with different programs – the browsers – and that doesn’t look automatically the same for all.
When this is all coordinated, the colleagues of the back end team, then ensure that it is also supplied with the correct data from the background. If the customer enters a keyword on gruuna, then the result should look not only beautiful but also correct.
And even more: At gruuna the benefits for customers is the focus. Therefore, in February 2010, half a year before the official start of the trading platform, we invited potential users for a customer workshop. Here they could test gruuna intensive and have their say on the design and functionality. Their suggestions ultimately flowed into the website. Of course, the ideas of customers are still welcome, because gruuna is a living platform that is aligned to the needs of their users and therefore constantly evolving.