Reimagining of the entire explore.org ecosystem

The monumental task of rebuilding the entire ecosystem that explore.org had been running for close to a decade required a team that was well-versed in all aspects of application development and delivery. From understanding the existing architecture and user experience, to completely redesigning the infrastructure and tech stack, the challenge was large in scope and delicate in nature. The new platform would give die-hard fans of the platform an improved experience while being able to attract new users from around the world.

We meticulously analyzed the existing tech stack and user experience and began drafting a scope of work that would satisfy the vast requirements of the updated platform. We decided to begin by refactoring the tech stack and migrating from an old and slow platform to a modernized, microservice-based stack. We began with building a brand new RESTful API and migrating the website to a modernized ReactJS single page web app. We then helped modernize the streaming infrastructure, running on AWS and updated the mobile applications by building them from scratch using React Native. The process was long, arduous, and challenging, but took every little bit of know-how to complete, and we achieved remarkable results. The platform is now scalable, performant, and effortless to continue building upon.

Millions of users from all over the globe visit explore.org every month. The rollout of the updated suite of apps was taken in phases, and included constant feedback from the dedicated community of viewers and volunteers. Each step of the way, we worked closely with the stakeholders and users to craft a solution that met their growing needs, while continuing to optimize the performance and experience for all. We helped build scalable, cost-effective infrastructure to manage the hundreds of always-on camera streams, and built an intuitive backend management portal for administrators to manage all of the platform content.