Awesome_E Directing and developing Hopscotch’s entire web platform to open their product to a new market
I started coding in Hopscotch around 2014. Once I felt limited by what the app’s editor provided, I started creating scripts and web pages to create projects that were otherwise not possible. Because the Hopscotch team was open to it, I’ve always been tinkering and seeing what else I could find or create. They have been around since 2013, but there was never a way to browse for people’s projects on the web. So, within a day of Hopscotch documenting a few public API endpoints, I created a “proof of concept” page (using Hopscotch’s public API endpoints) that let you do just that.
My announcement to the community in 2019 got quite popular, and to my surprise the cofounder of Hopscotch, Samantha John, came across my post and asked if I was willing to help implement it in a full time internship! That marked the start of the internship, where I began by rewriting components of my unofficial version and officially creating their web platform.
Within the team, I was the only person actively working on the web platform. In the summer of 2021, I created the “explorer” part of the Hopscotch web platform, which allows users to browse community projects, follow users, and give likes. I worked closely with the Product Manager at the time, and together we defined what features were most important, wrote down the expected behavior for every step of the flow, and made a timeline for the development of that feature.
Once an idea was fleshed out and approved, I would develop it, submit for code review from a senior software engineer, then get acceptance from the Product Manager before pushing the change to production. The first summer, I made 101 pull requests and worked with the Community Manager to announce 2 major releases!
Sticky Planning: before developing the login feature, we scoped how the environments should change.
User Login Menu Design: Screenshot of the design for when the user taps the profile icon.
Planting Projects: At the end of my first internship, I implemented donating in-app currency to projects.
Editor Scoping: In summer 2022, I scoped out editor features based on existing Hopscotch tools I made.
Editor Design: Using the MVP feature list, I created a design resembling an old version of the iOS app.
The Final Product: I designed the explorer and editor in a way that would work well for both desktop and mobile.
While my experience at Hopscotch was an internship role, my years of experience using their product allowed it to be a lot more than just a summer internship. Within the internship, I spearheaded the development of Hopscotch’s entire web platform and took on a very product-centric role. It challenged me to prioritize features that lined up with the company’s goals and were more important to an average user, and the hands-off management structure really allowed me to take charge of my own schedule, pacing, and development of the product as a whole.