Timeframe: 08/2013 – 12/2015
Position: Frontend Engineer (contract)
Technologies: Unity, C#, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, jQuery, Smart Fox Server, REST APIs
Status: No longer active.
The Story:
I landed at InsightNG right after I left WillPwn4Food, and started as a front-end engineer using Unity’s Web Player plugin in the browser again, but this time as a UI for an AI-assisted mind-mapping service.
Unity itself worked great, but an issue cropped up soon enough when analyzing the user funnel. Users were simply turned off by the prompt to install a plugin (this was before Unity itself dropped the plugin in favor of the newer Web Player builds). With that knowledge, we retooled on the fly and switched over to using JavaScript/Canvas natively in the browser with jQuery instead- all without missing the deadlines for the features scheduled to be in development. Throughout, we connected to our backend via REST APIs, which were fed by Smart Fox Server.
The service worked great, and users found some very interesting ways to use the service while we explored more ways to help the user link information. Alas, traction did not get high enough, and things petered out around the end of 2015.
