Lix

The story

Sometimes the best opportunities come from your mates. A friend of mine was building Lix, a data scraping Chrome extension, and needed someone to handle the frontend. I came on board as the sole frontend developer, responsible for both the marketing website and the extension interface itself.

The challenges

Being the only frontend developer meant wearing all the hats - there was no one else to bounce ideas off or share the load. I had to set up everything from scratch: the development workflow, testing infrastructure, and the bridge between design and code. Working on a Chrome extension also brought its own quirks - you're building within the constraints of browser APIs whilst trying to keep the user experience smooth and intuitive.

My favourite project

Setting up our component-driven development workflow was probably my proudest achievement at Lix. I introduced Storybook for component development and built out automated testing, which cut our QA cycles in half. It might not sound glamorous, but when you're a small startup moving fast, halving the time from development to deployment is massive.

Most impactful work

Working directly with the founder, I established our design-to-development workflow, translating Figma designs into production code. We created a rhythm where designs could move from concept to implementation smoothly, which is crucial when you're trying to iterate quickly in a startup environment. This workflow became the foundation for how we shipped features, and honestly, it felt like we were building the plane whilst flying it - in the best possible way.