The 20% Project initiative

Many departments at Axis participate in the “20% Project” concept, an initiative popularized by Google LLC. For us it takes place every second Friday, and the idea is that you can take charge of your own time and work on things you want to work on. Do you want to read up on a new innovative subject? Do you have a refactoring you want to make? Or a cool new feature waiting to be implemented which never seems to make it to the top of the backlog?

Axis has offered this benefit for several years now, and although many had to be convinced of how good of an initiative this is, everyone has seen the advantages over the years. If you do something you really want to work on you will put in some extra effort and often create more in less time. Product owners get extra features “for free”, developers can catch up in their own areas and managers see happier employees – a great combination of both having fun and creating value. Something worth noting is that while these “free” features sometimes bypass the regular backlog, they of course still adhere to standard requirements such as code reviews, security assessments, maintainability and quality assurance.

The flashing cameras feature

To illustrate how features from the 20% Project can deliver real value, rather than just being a fun exercise for developers, we would like to share a quick case study, namely our “flashing cameras” feature. This feature is a good example of how a seemingly small UI improvement, that might otherwise have been lost in the void of the backlog, can make a big difference for users.

In AXIS Camera Station, users can create maps to help them visualize surveillance needs of their site and provide a better overview for their operators. While this is a very useful feature on its own, large sites or sites containing many cameras may end up with maps that become too cluttered.

For example, consider the map above where one of the cameras is currently recording due to motion detection, but which one? Identifying which camera can be challenging, especially when the camera icons are small and coverage areas are the same color (we did this on purpose, hopefully you can forgive us for the sake of pedagogics). It’s simply information overload when trying to detect the actively recording camera.

After identifying this ‘information overload’ issue and investigating potential solutions, I decided to spend time during one of our initiative Fridays to try and find a solution, as simple as possible, to improve the overall visibility of cluttered maps.

Now, this makes quite the difference, doesn’t it? The map now flashes the coverage area of those cameras that are recording due to motion detection. This approach instantly focuses our instinctive ability to notice changes in a scene and makes the cluttered maps much easier (and quicker) to read.

Of course, flashing can have its own drawbacks, scenarios where the whole map flashes like a strobe light isn’t helpful either and could quickly annoy the operator. Hence, I made the flashing optional, and something users can turn on for selected cameras when setting up their map.

Customer meeting

For many 20% Project features the story ends here. The feature is merged, enhancing the product value for its users, while the developers focus returns to the regular backlog. But in some cases, such as for the “Flashing camera” feature, customer feedback and appreciation makes its way back to the developers in extraordinary ways!

A prominent organization visiting Axis headquarters in Lund expressed appreciation for the newly introduced flashing feature. I was invited to a meeting where we got the opportunity to host a direct feedback session with the customer, discussing their usage and potential future improvements of the feature. This meeting definitely ranks as one of the most inspiring meetings I’ve held, prompting me to share this experience through a Lightning talk and now, through this blog post.

I am more enthusiastic than ever about future ‘20% Project’ features, and after reading this – I hope you are too!

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Would you like to work with these kinds of things too? We are constantly looking for skilled engineers to join our team and the rest of the company. Please keep an eye open on our career page or check out any open positions here!