Its ooooooooover.

Let’s be frank, the year 2023 was not the most relaxed year on earth… but still, we managed to fill it with inspiring projects for ambitious clients and a cool EPIC team. If you’re lazy and don’t read beyond this, at least you’ll have had a good summary!

Who run the world? GIRLS!

2023 celebrated the rise of women at EPIC: this year, we welcomed 5 more girls to the team: Amélie, Constance, Danaé, Léa, and Marie!

Seems trivial? Not at all! Considering that 77% of digital sector positions are held by men, we’re pretty proud to have a team where gender parity hovers around the 50/50 ratio!

Ask a designer

What was your favourite moment among your 2023 projects ?

Everyone knows I’m a huge fan of motion design (I even wrote an article about it)… Since I can’t do it all year round, I make sure to bring motion to any web project I designed!

It can be done in many different ways through what we call micro-animations: Onboarding animation, page transitions, element appearances on the screen, etc.

Beyond being playful and adding dynamism to websites, these micro-interactions are an integral part of the site’s UX and make the difference between a standard user experience and a premium one.

They can get the users’ attention and encourage them to follow a navigation path that we’ve designed specifically for them.

_Wenzhu Wei

Ask a frontend developer

Name a project typology that differed from the ordinary this year.

To be at the top of their game for a major fair trade (BAU trade fair in Munich), our client BEA wanted to offer visitors a physical and digital experience to visualize the real-time functioning of a new sensor model (Note: BEA is a leader in sensor solutions).

We developed a system that interprets data recorded by a door sensor in real-time and displays it as clouds of particles on a giant screen!

The project was undertaken in two phases: the first to structure the raw data received by the sensor to be then consumed in Javascript. The second phase was dedicated to displaying the data as particles on the screen.

This project was highly interesting as the collaboration between designers and frontend devs differed from classic web projects and required a whole lot more back-and-forths to iterate, test and adapt the final product.

At the project’s outset, the designers couldn’t really create anything because they didn’t know the possibilities of the final experience… but at the same time, developers couldn’t really code anything as they didn’t know the designers’ intent… simple stuff, really 😅

The project had to progress in a very agile way and in the end… we all love the result!

It was also the very  first Sprint Review in which I saw a client dance… in front of a door-opening sensor.

_Théo Gil Cerqueira

Ask a backend developer

What was your most challenging project this year?

Without hesitation, the EPIC Form Builder WordPress plugin.

The plugins we formerly used to create and manage contact forms (Contact Form7 and Gravity Form) no longer satisfied us in terms of output, ease of setup, and flexibility. So, we developed our own form management plugin!

What’s so great about it ? Well, to put it simply: adding a contact form to a website is now just a matter of installing that plugin… that’s it! It can then be customized in terms of style, email routing configurations, etc… but that’s basically it.

In terms of integration, it works with Postmark and Mailtjet. We’ve also developed a feature allowing the client to export the data from submitted forms on their website, and the plugin is compatible with Recaptcha V3 and Turnstile.

Ultimately, the goal is for anyone at EPIC, and maybe even on the client’s side, to freely configure their site’s forms. More updates to come!

The plugin is active on our latest releases this year, and it will be used on all future ones! Take a look at Gimi, Olivia Garden, Vinventions, Van Dijck.

_Nicolas Collard

How (not) to build your team in 4 simple steps

Discover in the images below the perfect cocktail that jeopardized our team while tightening our bonds through absurd and/or fun activities (depending on your perspective).

• We were given a map and a compass, then were dropped in the middle of the woods. We then had to find our way, alone, without water or food… for 2 whole hours !!!
• We had to build a boat raft to cross an oceana pond that apparently was full of Piranhas trouts (but did you know trouts have teeth? So it was still very dangerous ok?)
• We were locked in huge plastic bubbles and forced to play a football tournament on the hottest day of the year. External temperature: 35°C, internal temperature inside the bubbles: 45°C… let’s not bring up the smell factor, we haven’t healed from that quite yet.
• We had to participate in a hot-pepper-eating contest while answering dumb questions from Trivial Pursuit (sounds random doesn’t it ? Well, it is!)

As you can tell from the pictures, it was basically torture and we sure hope this will never, EVER, happen again!

Let’s kick-off 2024!

Anyway, 2023 was a good year even if it was a challenging one! We’re now ready to dive into 2024!