EVAN HOURIGAN

San Francisco, CA

Web UI Developer

May 2009—Present

Revision3

Mountain View, CA

Software Engineer

Dec 2004—Jan 2009

Fanfare

• Built out the user interface of our J2EE server product in a variety of different technologies. The initial implementation was done using JSF, Facelets, and GWT/Ajax. In order to meet time-to-market requirements, rapidly adapted the existing code to a Flex-based UI.
• Developed much of the integration between iTest and the server product. This was based on a push-model where all communication was done via web services to allow for client machines to function within separate subnets and behind firewalls.
• Led the development of the presentation layer for the latest Eclipse RCP-based (Java) flagship product, iTest, using an MVC architecture for the foundation, and integrating with the Eclipse UI infrastructure via their extensibility model, facilitating rapid GUI development and resulting in a faster time to market. Simultaneously maintained the old .NET-based (C#) product in a separate code base.
• Designed and developed a scheme for unique identification of target widgets into our existing GUI infrastructure. Augmented the Rational target finding system to rely on unique identifiers for target identification, decreasing test maintenance in constantly changing areas by 90%.
• Architected an in-house GUI testing tool that provided a means of writing automated GUI tests, and worked better than Silk and Rational GUI testers.
• Played a key role in bridging technical capabilities with marketing requirements, with user experience being of utmost importance. Attended usability sessions to deeply understand users' expectation of product concepts and functionality, and reorganized existing workflows to create a much more intuitive and friendly user experience.
• Oversaw various GUI projects, providing architectural advice and design expertise to junior members of the team.
• Dove deep into the internals of SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) to thoroughly understand the complexities of the windowing system to diagnose and solve complex problems in the presentation layer leading to a faster and more responsive user experience.
• Pioneered the development of a wizard to simplify the most complex technology concept in the product into an intuitive set of steps, leading to the winning of key accounts for the company and increasing adoption rates in several accounts by as much as 10x.
• Designed and implemented the licensing of FanfareSVT 1.0. Developed a variety of licensing schemes managed by the database-centric server portion of our heavyweight enterprise 1.0 product. Clients checked out licenses when connected to the server, and would keep their licenses checked out with the existence of a heartbeat that timed out after an extended period of inactivity. The design intent of this was to be least disruptive to the user.
• Overhauled and restructured the presentation layer of FanfareSVT to allow for a more scalable architecture by massively decoupling the different components of the GUI layer into a centralized controller and event model.
• Improved pattern recognition technology for FanfareSVT 1.0.