SimaPro
SimaPro is a leading solution for LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) and I was honored to work on SimaPro web platform during 7 years.
When I joined PRé sustainability - the developer of SimaPro, we had a small team of two back-end developers and two QA engineers. At the same time SimaPro platform was a living product, users could run assessments and collect data from their suppliers.
My first tasks were to implement small features on existing codebase, using knockout.js and angular.js. I gradually familiarized myself with the field of LCA, as well the codebase itself. Being a quick learner with high standards I looked into back-end code and the data base, I wanted my design solutions to be deliverable in the first place, while ensuring business continuity.
LCA is a complex field, involving users with different backgrounds. Those are supply-chain and sustainability managers, LCA experts, and potentially more users who get occasionally involved. Our team started working on visual modeling feature, to allow our users create and inspect their models in a visual manner. I collaborated with back-end developer in building REST API, implemented visualization and modeling using go.js.
As field of front-end development was progressing I proposed to start implementing next features in Angular 6+, and build hybrid app. I proposed that we would migrate necessary features once we are redesigning them. I felt this resonates well with Dutch approach of not fixing what's not broken and with my approach of designing with what you have (in material).
One other example of designing in material was a feature that allowed users to feed dynamic data into their LC models, and run comparisons on different data sets, collected from suppliers. Later we collaborated with our data base engineer to build a solution for generating reports from those data sets, making models reusable.
With transition to react our team started growing. I isolated the legacy app, which made build procedure slightly more complex but allowed us to start delivering new features in react, without loosing the old functionality.
Thanks to the team growth I could focus more on designing GUI components, following TDD principles, isolating test cases and quickly addressing issues. At the same time I was involved in onboarding new developers, supporting them in building new features, generic and specialized components.
Together with a junior developer, who also had a design background we worked as product designers. We started revisiting the visual modeling experience, conducted user research to make the product more solid, ensuring at does one thing really well.
Due to personal circumstances I concluded to leave the Netherlands and we started looking into finalizing my work at PRé.
During my last days I worked on documenting design system of our custom components. The design system implementation followed atomic design and gradual release principles. Enabling more developers to jump-start building new features in SimaPro, staying aligned with our desired look and feel.
