This paper describes experience obtained through a joint project between a university research group and a shipping company in developing a prototype for a global customer service system. The research group had no previous knowledge of the complex business of shipping, but succeeded in developing a prototype that more than fulfilled the expectations of the shipping company. A major reason for the success of the project is due to an experimental and multiperspective approach to designing for practice. Some of the lessons to be learned for object-orientation are (1) analysis is more than finding nouns and verbs, (2) design is more than filling in details in the object-oriented analysis model, and (3) implementation is more than translating design models into code. Implications for system development in general and objectorientation in particular consist in the preliminary respecification of the classical working order: analysis — design — implementation.