map.stlzoo.org
let abstract = "map.stlzoo.org was the last project I architected and built in my time at Paradowski, elegantly solving for 3 million annual free visitors the difficult problem of navigating the Saint Louis Zoo’s 90-acres and 16,000+ animals using modern open source 3D web tech. There’s no install, no app store – just a short URL or QR code that loads like 🫰⚡ because the entire build is optimized to 14mb (or about one 4k photo). All animal and destination data is searchable and content-managed. Get turn-by-turn directions anywhere in the park, without using Google Maps or any external API – everything happens on-device in milliseconds using a clever combination of GPS signal and videogame “navmesh” technology. The app even works offline, and can be installed to your iOS or Android homescreen as a PWA. It supports six languages, and it can tell you where to get a hot dog or ice cream. It runs well on a Samsung Galaxy S10 (2014) using Android 8 (12 major versions behind). I drove the vision for the project, built early prototypes and proofs of concept which turned into a polished final product. I built the entire content management system in a modern node.js framework, wired all that data into Algolia Search (and secured non-profit credits for my client with them), and created the 2D DOM UI and 3D world space UI components for the app. I also did all the estimating, scoping and scheduling accurately for a completely novel product, keeping production costs under 1,000 hours all-in on a three month schedule for a world-beating concept and execution. For more information, see the informational page zoo’s official site, or try the map yourself: https://map.stlzoo.org"
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