---
layout: post
title:  "Skift IQ"
content_type: Web Application
description: "A dashboard for analyzing the social media activity of the travel industry."
thumbnail_url: /images/posts/skift-iq-landing-banner.png
---


Skift IQ is my first commercial product (most of its content is currently under a trial pay wall), and so 
building it required me to prioritize issues of software engineering and product development that I hadn't
previously focused on before. Because news organizations traditionally operate under a "publish and move on" rhythm, 
there isn't much incentive or time to implement test-driven development or
automated systems deployment, nor have I had in news projects any reason to build a custom payments and accounts system.

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In addition to these requirements, I applied and expanded on my past development experience. We had a design firm 
create the look of the site, but I implemented most of the front-end code, including the JavaScript data visualizations. And I also wrote
all the code needed in between to connect the visuals to the underlying data, such as efficient
scrapers and queries to collect and analyze the data without crashing our MySQL server.

I've found that no matter the business goals, the conceptual design and programming remain nearly the same. Attractive graphs 
still have to show interesting data stories. Writing maintainable code requires the same abstraction of real-world concepts and processes
no matter what the actual topic . And massive project goals, whether it's for business or for the public interest, needs the best tools 
and creative problem solving skills.