Rasa Design Studio » Case Study – Cognos

Case Study: Cognos

Cognos hired Rasa Design Studio to design the interface for its Intra-net Sales Channel. This was one of the earliest examples of a ‘dynamic’ site in which the content and navigation menu items couldn’t be known or anticipated. Further, navigation menu items had to be designed with the possibility of ‘nested’ sub-items. Today, this is commonplace and found in nearly every site, but at the time, no internet site was doing this.

Our solution had to work in the ‘new’ version 4 browsers of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. The solutions couldn’t employ complicated JavaScript unless we could make the JS also work with Mac IE and NN. DHTML was employed and the server data used Java to access an oracle server.

Sales personnel were now able to present information to clients with a back-up staff “at home” feeding data as needed. The presentations were ‘live’ and in real time and often assembled, in part, while the sales people were on the road. All information was accessible during Q & A from within 3 clicks and, as far as we know, this is the first instance of the “three click rule” that later became a standard for eCommerce checkout systems.