Permission to Come Aboard - Development Log #242

An unusual yet special week has come to an end. The mic was passed to Martin for the rundown.

Martin

You know something’s up when I get to write a devlog all by myself…

Readers of this blog might be aware of the fact that we applied for and received a grant from the German government in late 2019. Ever since we’ve been looking for new team members, a process that had its ups and downs: While Fabian joined us in January already, filling the game design position, another candidate left us hanging literally at the last minute. Fabian, Michi and myself were waiting in a meeting room for “number four”, only to receive a message that he wouldn’t show. We wasted several weeks trying to remedy the situation before giving up and starting from scratch. This meant that the search for the “frontend developer/designer” position dragged on for several more months, postponing the official launch of the project for which we received the funding. We finally signed a new contract in late March but didn’t want to jinx it this time and kept the news mostly under wraps.

Now I can reveal the secret: With both excitement and relief, I am happy to announce that as of this July, Manoj joins us officially as a UI/UX designer!

I am also able to finally reveal what he and the rest of the team will be working on: His primary project bears the working title “Prosperous Universe Mobile”!

To fulfil the selection criteria of the funding program, we had to find a self-contained project to propose. A generic more-work-on-PrUn wasn’t an option, so after some discussion we decided that the most effective use of the additional funds would be as a visual overhaul of the existing web app combined with a dedicated UI for small screens. The reasoning behind this was that only the external funding could allow for us to create a dedicated position just for frontend design, presenting completely new opportunities.

We won’t be creating any native apps, the mobile UI will be browser-based just like the existing application. But we know that a lot of you have been asking for better touch support for a long time and I hope you are as excited as I am about the fact that it’s finally coming! With Manoj working on this pretty much full-time for at least the next 12 months, we’re convinced we’ll see some impressive results soon.

And we’ve already started: Last week, the whole of the Prosperous Universe team came together in Darmstadt to discuss first steps and to get to know each other. There’s even photographic proof:

So once again: Welcome on board, Manoj!

As always: We’d love to hear what you think. Join us on Discord or the forums!

Happy trading!

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