Re-conceptualize centralized marketplace idea around leveraging Blockchain.
Action
Going into Q1/18 after the mania of 2017 ICOs, I assisted the CEO to re-conceptualize the centralized marketplace idea around leveraging Blockchain. I dove into the Blockchain ecosystem, prototyped around Origin Protocol, and crafted the initial beginnings of a White Paper.
As part of that process, I explored options leveraging Truffle…
POC (derivative of Truffle Petstore DApp)
… as well as Origin Protocol.
POC (derivative of Origin Protocol DApp)
As the market cooled, we slowed down towards project planning a gradual transition to a decentralized paradigm.
For the client, I probed their UX using multiple tools to determine low-hanging fruit, worked with the CTO and VP PROD to understand resourcing constraints given the product roadmap, and enumerate several tactics in a (prioritized) phased approach towards improving performance.
Heuristic discoveries included FE perf bottlenecks such as:
multiple inline JS snippets causing slowdowns
un-optimized JS libs, including of React components
multiple 3rd party JS libs that were no longer necessary
JS libs that loaded neither async nor defer
retrieval of multiple styling resources
I found that the greatest opportunity to optimize existed for two key user experiences at ~6s avg page load and ~4.5s average page load respectively.
During one iteration, changes lead to a 52% reduction in the Webpack bundle of React components, improving page speed by 10% or better across four key user experiences.
During another iteration, one key UX was sped up by 39.4% without Cache, 53.8% with Cache.
During a final iteration, changes lead to a 20% page speed improvement on one key user experience and 10% or better on two others.
Results
Introduced Performance Engineering mindset leading to 20% page-load speedup.
I took the basics of use cases that had been articulated, in spreadsheet and Pivotal forms, and refined them with an intent to GTD while keeping our eyes-on-the-prize. Also, I introduced feature and bug templates in Pivotal to make it easy for team members to follow a quality process…
PRD, original
… as well as the use of Koan for retrospective-like reflection.
Growth
Survey
After our first broadcast event, I sent out a simple survey gathering NPS and other key data.
To help everyone keep their eyes on the prize, I threw together a quick spreadsheet tracking KPIs. At first I was tracking daily but switched to weekly.
Landing Page
To facilitiate a better understanding for customers, both demand- and supply-side, I put together a first, simple version of a Landing Page.
Design Improvement
In addition to all other improvements I’ve already mentioned, I applied minimalist quick improvements to take the general UX from this on the PLP
… to this (w/hand-rolled JS and CSS ‘filters’ added in the header)
… and this on the Activity Feed
… to this
Being Social
In a bid to help the supply-side of the market promote their brand, learned how user metadata is managed in WordPress in order to modify the registration form in order to capture salient social media handles.
regisration form, after
Once submitted, the handles were captured in the DB and then rendered in three locations.
After I started, I saw an opportunity to improve code DRYess and consolidated the rendering code into a single place.
Refined Strategy
In addition to being the technical contributions as Head of Engineering, I helped refine strategy:
incl. for the pitch deck
introduced structured approach to product management
budgeted ops costs in prep for pre-seed/seed funding
introduced process around password credential and software license management
Results
Led Growth efforts with Landing Pages, NPS Surveys, social virality, and KPI tracking.
