Sun Valley and Snow Basin

Developing 2 kentico websites with different brand requirements at the same time on a very tight timeframe

The goal of this project was to create websites for two separate ski resorts at the same time utilizing one design system with separate branding for each property.

This was my second time working on a site when the backend team lead left the company right before development started. I REALLY hope I don't have do this again any time soon.

Snow Basin live site: https://www.snowbasin.com/

Sun Valley live site: https://www.sunvalley.com/

Team

My Role: Lead Frontend Developer

Full Team:

• 1 Internal Product Owner
• 1 Client Product Owner
• 1 Project Manager
• 2 UX designers
• 2 Members of the design team (a designer and a creative director)
• 2 Internal Devs
• 3-4 Freelance Devs

FE Tech/Tooling

The goal of this frontend tooling setup was to produce 2 separate bundles of css and js for the two sites from a single source codebase. The basic setup was very similar to the VisitUtah project, involving a build system using webpack and npm, along with sass, babel, browsersync, handlebars, and GSAP (Green Sock Animation Platform). The key difference here was to use Webpack chunks to separate out certain imports for each site to allow for various branding changes in each bundle. The vast majority of the variations were all css based, so most of these were handled with separate sass partials containing all relevant brand-specific variables such as colors, typography, border treatments and background colors.

Key Features

1. Two sites on a single codebase, with the option to scale up as needed
2. A variety of complicated UI elements, in particular the desktop global header which provided an interesting UI challenge
3. Page templates implemented alongside the general design system to maintain design cohesion in different content types
4. The designs produced for the clients were structured in a much more component driven and single source of truth style of figma file setup, allowing the team to capture more details regarding context and behavior of individual components
5. Regardless the fact that both sites have different branding and typography requirements, the vast majority of design system components were able to mostly stay the same minus theme adjustments per brand

Challenges

1. As with the Visit Utah site build, once again, the backend team lead who had most of the technical discussions with the client left for a new opportunity right as the project was set to start development
2. The compressed timeframe on this project required supplementing the team with a variety of freelance contractors, most of which the team hadn't worked with before
3. The complicated nature of the main navigation on this site presented a number of edge case issues
4. During discussions with the client, it was decided that the site should have a 'seasonal toggle' that would allow users to see different content when applicable
5. The tight timeline provided no wiggle room, and required very stacked sprints

Takeaways

While this project did launch on time, in general, this was possibly the least successful large project I've worked on in the last 8 years or so. That said, since I'm trying to only talk about the frontend of this site, I'm not going too deep into what I would consider the failures of this project aside from some minor frontend considerations.

The primary issue on the frontend side was that I think this site did really need a design system audit before any development started, and While I always enjoy the challenge of building complicated UI elements, I think some of the UX choices may have needed some stress-testing and ironing out, or perhaps the user stories may have needed more eyes on them.

That said, even the parts that I think needed more work don't really take away from the overall achievement of the site, and building two sites at the same time (even if they only had minor cosmetic differences) was a first for me, which is always fun. REALLY wish this client would have signed a maintenance agreement though, so I could have fixed some of the stuff. Oh well.