I come across multiple challenges every week that need solutions. Even though I don’t necessarily know how to solve the problem initially, i’m confident in my abilities and the solution can be found and it’s just a process I go through.
One of my more challenging projects was Canvas Eyewear. I was at the time (3 years ago) working for Online Designs and was assigned this project as senior programmer (Backend developer really). This company from Stamford, Connecticut in the USA was a start up business that received funds from crowed funding website Indiegogo. The concept was an intuitive website that you the user to design your own custom one-of-a-kind sunglasses.
My responsibility was to work along side our senior designer (providing both graphic design and front end development) and build this easy to use website. The website required a what you see is what you are going to get experience, provide a 3D render of the glasses before checking out and also provide the manufacture specifications and masked PSD’s ready for manufacture.
At the time our research could find no pure HTML / javascript solutions that had the same complexity we were planning to build. We did find more basic solutions out there for products such as cups or clothing. At the time, our proposal was going to push the browser to the limits of what was possible.
Quick animation showing some of what the editor could do from the the included presets. Users are also able to upload their own .png or .jpeg images for a completely customised look.
The editor was all very complicated in this project, but it was 2D, it was just a process of getting the right set of images superimposed on-top of each other to make it work – Don’t get me wrong, it was still extremely challenging and hours of thought, planning and development involved.
The 3D render was where I found myself stretching the limit of my mathematical abilities. I knew what I wanted to do was possible, after all, I could replicate an outcome in photoshop, I just needed to find a way to produce the results automatically from a set of instructions provided by my javascript editor. After about a week of very sleepless nights I contacted my sister in law who at the time was doing her PhD in mathmatics. She was able to help provide some solutions to my math problems and was able to continue to create my pre processor that gave the final set of instructions to the image processor.
The ‘Preview my Sunglasses’ which created a 3D render of the glasses you created in the editor.
We ended up pulling this project together within 3 months, with primary team of 3 people (Project Manager, Designer and myself as a programmer). We did have to grab another programmer in the last few days to help tidy up a loose ends before the final deadline. Overall, considering I was working on other projects during this same time frame, I wonder how we pulled it off, I put it down to an amazing team.