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. I was the key person responsible for developing the map concept and selling it into our marketing scope with carefully designed features to meet the client’s specific needs at the right budget. 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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