Gucci
Aug 2014 - Dec 2015
Lead front end developer
This was the most challenging, and therefore my favourite role by far. I was lead front end for over a year here and it was the most intense project I’d ever worked on. As Gucci is a luxury brand they were understandably very particular about the look and feel of the site. This made the work extra challenging but very rewarding in the end, which I loved.
Create new Hybris components
As I was the lead on this project I wasn't very hands-on, but I did work on a few of the new components to help the team out: the homepage hero component, mega menu navigation (responsive), footer layout, header navigation icons, PDP layout and global bug fixing.
Challenges
Gucci were understandably extremely particular on designs and how the site looked visually. Even once completed, a lot of the components had to be re-worked, based on new designs. This wasn't in any way unique to Gucci, but proved challenging after every sprint. Some of the bug fixes proved very tricky; especially one where the parallaxing product card stuttered on scroll. The fix was to make sure images were properly optimised for loading.
Proudest of
The mega menu was especially challenging, so I was particularly pleased it worked and looked great on mobile and desktop. All in all this was my favourite project to work on, not only because of Gucci being such a well known brand, but because it was the most challenging from start to production.
Review the static code base (provided by a design agency), clean it up and merge it into Gucci’s new Hybris system
One of my regular tasks was to liaise with the Gucci design team/ UX team, third-party design team, marketing department (Florence and New York). We would review the wire-frames, code and imagery: estimating work times, comparing to existing Jira tickets, creating new Jira tickets and making sure expectations were realistic for provided assets to work within Hybris. I also had regular meetings with our on-site backend Hybris developers, Business Analyst's, QA's and project managers.
Challenges
The biggest challenge here was the amount of decision-makers to liaise with, time zones and numerous design changes to work already completed.
Proudest of
I was proudest of the front end team because with all their effort it ended up running smoothly. Most importantly, the client, design agency and stakeholders were extremely happy with the end product.
