AboutUs

Since 1989, IQ Design has been providing software development services and systems support to our SME customers in a diverse range of industries.

The majority of our solutions have satisfied niche requirements in business and accounting fields, but we have also developed technical applications for engineering customers.

As everybody's requirements are different, it has been necessary to work with a variety of languages (VB, C, C++, C#), internet technologies (ASP, ASP.NET, javascript) and databases (Microsoft Access and MS SQL Server) to acheive the desired results.
During these many years of development, it has become apparent that while computers have become hundreds or even thousands of times faster and the programs have grown immensely more complex, they have not essentially become any "smarter".

That is to say, a computer today has no greater ability to work with the data it holds than it did 20 years ago, unless a specific program is written to handle that data. This is because to the computer everything is just data - 1's and 0's - without any "understanding" of what the data means.

One result of this is that programmers will always be writing code at a basic level to store, retrieve and validate data, such as email addresses, web addresses and telephone numbers because the computer itself has no standard pattern for these and other pieces of information.

Another side effect is the frustration that computer users experience on a daily basis when they want to achieve a particular result, but can't remember where the information was stored, or which program to run or which menu or tab holds the option they are looking for. It would be so much easier if we could just ask the computer what we want!

Have you ever noticed that in all science fiction and futuristic movies you have ever seen, the people talk to the computers (or robots or cars or houses) in natural language? They never say "Start, All Programs, Accessories, calculator". If we are to achieve these goals in future, we need to start on a natural language interface, that works in co-operation with a graphical user interface such as Windows.

Having identified this problem, we have set a goal to develop software that is more intelligent. Software that can recognise information by its patterns, in a similar way that humans do, and act upon it accordingly. It must also be able to learn new, or modified patterns easily, allowing it to expand its knowledgebase over time.

Of course, this is a very ambitious goal, and our first product - AINO - is a humble, but quite powerful beginning. AINO is based upon a new method (patent pending) for storing and retrieving information in a database. Using this technology, we hope to bring you simpler but more productive ways of interacting with your computer.

With the support of our customers, we see an exciting and interesting development period over the coming years as we attempt to make computers "more human".