UQ Engineering student speeds up web design process

If necessity is the mother of invention, then frustration must be its father because that is what drove entrepreneur and University of Queensland engineering student Paul Knittel to develop a visual on-line tool for website designers—Documaps.

Documaps has streamlined the recreation of web structures from three steps to just one, significantly reducing the time spent on this process.
Mr Knittel and his business partner, Tristan Mathias, are offering free subscriptions to the service, for a limited time, to encourage user feedback.
“Documaps was born from a group of developers frustrated by the waste of time when steps and processes had to be repeated because of inefficient methods of website mapping,” said the UQ Engineering student.
“With our easy-to-understand visual tool, web developers can plan websites with their clients more efficiently.” 
Visual sitemaps are essential for organising the architecture of a website’s content before development begins.
With existing software packages, the same underlying structure needs to be created three times in three different environments: the visual site map, the design document and in the content management system.
Documaps can save developers about 90 minutes each time with its one-step process.
Documaps was launched this year, after being fast-tracked through technology start-up incubator ilab, run by UQ’s commercialisation company, UniQuest.
“Taking part in ilab’s Germinate program was really important for getting our idea ready for subscribers,” Mr Knittel said.
“The network and resources ilab provided over the last three months has really made a difference to our plans and confidence.
“We’re about to really kick off the marketing for Documaps and we have some new features to release very soon, such as the capability to import existing websites,” he said. 
Documaps supports WordPress, Basecamp and Drupal, and the feedback from the free subscriptions should help with adapting the tool for other packages.
The Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at UQ is characterized by the quality of its graduates, its international research profile, and its highly successful links to industry.

• Master of Engineering Science (Specializations: Electrical Engineering, Electricity Market, Software Engineering, Systems Engineering, Undeclared))
• Master of Information Technology

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