Aria Minaei

Karaj Azad University

Founder at Theatre.js (Berlin & Helsinki)

Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Theatre.js is a modern design and animation tool that exports production-grade code components.It allows designers to create highly interactive graphics and animation, while saving up to 80% of frontend developers` time by automating the design->code conversion step.

Theatre.js

Founder & CEO

I had a very productive year at Nord Software (acquired by Digia in 2017), leading two frontend projects and collaborating on a few more. I closely worked with the CTO and was given a lot of freedom to experiment with different technologies and try out different ideas. This was educational for me, and a turned out to be a productivity boost for the rest of the company, as these ideas were later adopted by the other projects.All of the products I was involved in were very popular with the clients and their own end-users:• Verisure — A company with over 2 million customers. I led the project, and managed technical relationship with the client. <a href="https://www.digia.com/asiakkaamme/asiakastarinoita/verisure/%E2%80%A2">https://www.digia.com/asiakkaamme/asiakastarinoita/verisure/•</a> Frank — An organization that gives bargaining power to students with corporations. It was the most popular student services app in Finland. I ran the frontend team for the second version of their app <a href="https://www.digia.com/asiakkaamme/asiakastarinoita/frank/%E2%80%A2">https://www.digia.com/asiakkaamme/asiakastarinoita/frank/•</a> Bolt — A mobile app (react native) that connects customers with construction workers. I did the frontend architecture in collaboration with the CTO <a href="https://www.bolt.worksI">https://www.bolt.worksI</a> left Nord Software after one year to start my own company, with the main shareholders of Nord Software as my first investors.

Digia Plc

Lead Software Engineer

In Kiosked, I took on a variety of tasks, mainly focused on improving the developer experience of the front-end team, namely:* I designed and implemented a new front-end testing framework. The goal was to make it more ergonomic to write unit tests and integration tests by having a testing setup that provides rapid feedback to the developer upon each change in the code. The framework runs test-cases in parallel, as opposed to most existing testing frameworks of the time that run tests in sequence. It also provides an API that encourages writing isolated tests, while still allowing the older, non-isolatable parts of the code to be tested the regular way. (<a href="http://github.com/kiosked/cynical-bunny)*">github.com/kiosked/cynical-bunny)*</a> Took part in modernizing the front-end team's development stack, making it more robust and less error-prone.* Worked on and implemented new features in Kiosked's user-facing product.Technologies used: React, Redux, ES6/7, Flow, Webpack, etc.

Kiosked

Senior Front-End Engineer

I joined NotionWave full-time as a consultant to modernize their technology stack, manage a product, and form a web platform team.• Designed and developed an alternative UI for NotionWave's existing product.• Formed the web platform team.• Lead the development of a new product (currently unannounced).

NotionWave Tehran

Full-time consultant

I founded Pixana as a small creative shop. At first, we focused on experimenting with the web platform, and later took on a full-time consultancy job for NotionWave. Our most interesting experiments and projects were:The early prototype of Theatre.js (<a href="http://github.com/AriaMinaei/theatrejs)%E2%80%A2">github.com/AriaMinaei/theatrejs)•</a> This is what later turned into the Theatre.js startup in Finland. At the time Theatre.js was a timeline-based animation editor for web designers. It allowed animating web-based graphics, whether in HTLM or WebGL, with fine-grained control and in-sync with audio tracks.• I developed the prototype for internal use. We later experimented with using it with other technologies. We created particle shows in WebGL using Theatre.js and an in-house physics engine, and we also experimented with doing kinetic typography with Theatre.js and SVG.• Technologies used: CoffeeScript, Sass, Socket.io, SVG.Griddify and its demo: (<a href="http://gelobi.org/griddify)%E2%80%A2">gelobi.org/griddify)•</a> I developed Griddify as a small Photoshop plugin to help me compose grid systems.• For launching Griddify, we created an animated demo for it, using Theatre.js. The demo is a narrated, 3 minute-long animation that runs live in the user's browser. It's made to showcase the simplicity of Griddify while giving a sneak peek of TheatreJS.• Both Griddify and its demo were well received by the community. They were featured in Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Depot, and hundreds of other websites. They also received thousands of tweets and sparked a conversation on how animated demos can be an effective way to showcase products and increase engagement.• Technologies used: Theatre.js and a set of in-house libraries.

Pixana

Non-Technical responsibilities:• Turned Dr. Hooshdar's vision of an affordable, computer-assisted medical workflow, into a product.• Formed a small team and iterated through different business models.• Achieved 90.6% satisfaction rate with our customers, and acquired 0.9 new customers as referrals by each existing customer.Technical responsibilities:• Developed the backend in PHP using Zend Framework.• Developed an EDSL for expressing medical questionnaires and diagnosis logic safely and easily.• Optimized Zend Framework and reduced page generation time by 40%, which improved our iteration process.• Created an application for medical professionals to manage the medical recommendations generated by the system. Technologies used: CodeIgniter, MooTools, AppCache.• Developed an encrypted URL router for improved security.• Designed the theme, iteratively with feedback from users.• Developed the front-end, using technologies such as MooTools, Sass, and Modernizr.