The original purpose of SmartWork™ was to provide a simple and practical web service which enables entire schools to post homework, test dates, announcements, upcoming events, etc. Students and parents can then check the school's website for these things from home, eliminating forgotten homework, notes, and reminders, while continually informing the parents of future tests and other important information.

To design SmartWork™ we used Macromedia MX, Adobe Photoshop CS. The web server used was IIS 5.1, with support for PHP 5.0.3 backed by a MySQL database.

John Mulqueen created the layout and design aspects, while Tom Joyce implemented the full code of the site.

We wanted a simple design that would load quickly and be printer-friendly. Therefore, we turned to CSS for a site-wide customizable layout in a single file. Using CSS, one single file controls the "look-and-feel" of all of the pages in the site. Next, the images were produced; the SmartWork™ logo was created, and while John was on a roll, he created a logo for the fictitious school used solely for demos and testing (Central Middle). We wanted to allow administrators and teachers to login quickly by access via the home page. At the same time, students can use the same page to view any teacher's page, or any class' page. Tom designed and created the database using MySQL. Next he created the administration sub-site, followed by the teacher sub-site, then the generally-accessible pages (student pages). They were made completely using PHP, a common technology used to create pages generated based on info taken from the database.

Finally, we collaborated, merging the design and code into one.