Memorabilia: No Place Like HomeLink!

[ornoth]

Of all the places I’ve worked, the one I’m most proud of was Sapient, one of the first and most successful Internet consulting agencies of the Dot-Com Bubble.

And probably the thing that I’m most proud of about Sapient is the list of amazing and noteworthy clients I got to work with, including National Geographic Magazine, Verizon, JP Morgan, Staples, Vanguard, WorldCom, Wells Fargo, Cardinal Health, and many others.

But one client and project will always stand out in my memory: HomeLink and OfficeLink, BankBoston’s first Web-based banking sites for individual consumers and small businesses respectively. And because of that, I’ve retained a not-small pile of memorabilia.

Why does that client stand out? Because I was already a HomeLink user! I had been using the first iteration of HomeLink for a few years already, back when “online banking” meant installing the bank’s dedicated software, which used your modem and public telephone lines to connect directly to the bank’s systems!

In 1997, the bank wanted to scrap the old dialup system and create secure, online banking websites for home and business use. They came to Sapient to design and build it, and Sapient assigned me to the project, since I had already accumulated fifteen years of experience programming Internet-based information services.

Before I go on, don’t let the company names confuse you. When I first started using HomeLink, I was a customer of BayBank, who had licensed the dedicated dialup software from Citicorp. But in 1996, BayBank merged with the Bank of Boston to become BankBoston, who wanted to offer HomeLink via the Internet. They were in turn bought out by Fleet Financial, which became FleetBoston; which was in turn acquired by Bank of America in 2004. But unlike the company name, HomeLink survived all those mergers.

Now let me share some of my archaeological exhibits, beginning with the old BayBank days, back when I was a dialup modem customer, years before Sapient got involved. First there’s this branded mousepad and 3½” HomeLink install diskette (version 1.0c)!

Tho my favorite memorabile from the old BayBank system is this screen capture from the installation program, where a really mediocre drawing of the greatest Boston Bruins player of all time says, “Let’s log on,” while a huge disclaimer reads, “This is a fictional situation. In real life, Bobby Orr is not authorized to view your account information under any circumstances.” Effin’ priceless!

Moving on to Sapient’s design and development of the new HomeLink, here’s a couple of Sapient “design center” signs. We used these to direct client staff where to go when they arrived for design sessions and development checkpoints, and I kept dozens of these from my old projects. Note how the eventual OfficeLink site was originally named “BusinessLink”.

Finally, here’s some marketing materials that BankBoston produced for the new HomeLink rollout, along with a demo CD-ROM.

The client engagement began with the design of the consumer banking site. As that transitioned into the development phase, the design of the small business site kicked off. I joined the latter team, and did requirements gathering and user interface design for OfficeLink, but once those plans were signed off, we all rolled into a single, unified development team. I was on the project for about a year.

This was the best example of doing development on a product where I was already the intended end-user. As such, I was immensely proud of my contribution, the site’s rollout, and its long-running success in the marketplace. And it still stands out in my memory, even amongst all the other prestigious clients and projects I worked on.