BACK TO SHOWCASE LISTPlease note that these projects are proof of concept exercises and in no way related to or affiliated with any of the referenced entities.
OVERVIEW
The challenge was quite exciting as I was learning and exploring NodeJS and JavaScript at that point and I was able to apply all my skills in the project.My project, Hawaii.gov Unemployment Claims Website, aimed to create awareness and provide knowledge about filing an unemployment claim and unemployment benefits in the state of Hawaii. Government agencies could also keep track of user engagement.
My primary motivation behind the site was the “Hawaii.gov” website. I chose to create a miniature clone of it with a focus on unemployment, since unemployment cases were pretty high during COVID. I also incorporated a few features of other government websites in my site.
HOW I APPROACHED THE CHALLENGE
I decided to use NodeJS and Express library for my backend and Handlebars as the templating engine. My primary motivation was that I wanted to spend minimal time on getting things set up. The next major requirement was to use the Adobe View SDK in the app to interactively display the PDFs and collect analytics. After this, the most fun part was to create a Google Analytics Dashboard to display some stats related to the PDFs. I tried my best to make the UI nice.
I chose to display these statistics:
Most Viewed PDFs
Total Page Views
Number of Visitors
Average time per PDF
Downloads and Prints
Users by Device Category and Browsers
Most Affected Cities
I feel that these stats were quite useful in getting insight into the state of unemployment in various cities. I also incorporated Google Translate API in the site, which will allow people to explore it in the language of their choice. A lot of effort was made from my side to improve the performance of the site and make it load faster.
FINAL THOUGHTs
I would like to highlight the importance of Adobe Document Tools in the project. I feel that the View SDK is the best option for a great PDF viewing experience. It has many features which conventional viewers lack. The Tools API is great at manipulating PDF files.
Overall the challenge was really interesting and it allowed me to explore new technologies. All the participants and the copilot were very friendly.
