Show the thing instead of describing it.
You have numbers nobody looks at or a product nobody can picture. I turn them into dashboards, 3D viewers and live maps that run in the browser on a phone.
What usually arrives
- A dashboard that nobody trustsThe numbers live in the ERP, the accounting system, the store and three spreadsheets, and the Monday report is assembled by hand. I connect the sources, keep one copy of the truth, and put the figures that run the business on one screen that updates itself.
- A product people need to turn aroundMachinery, furniture, parts, anything with options. A 3D viewer or configurator from your CAD files, light enough to load on a phone, with the price and the part number following every choice.
- A map of something that movesOrders, assets, traffic, deliveries, sites. A live map or globe fed by your own data, so the question "where is it" has an answer that is current.
- An explainer for the sales conversationA process, a mechanism, a system that takes a whiteboard to describe. An interactive version that a prospect can scroll, turn and take apart does the explaining for you.
- Data a spreadsheet cannot showEngineering results, sensor logs, simulations, anything with tens of thousands of points or a third dimension. Rendered in the browser, fast, with the detail one click away.
What I work on
- three.js and WebGL, with WebGPU where it helps, for 3D scenes, globes and large point sets
- Charts in Canvas and SVG, with D3 and Observable Plot, when the job is a chart and not a scene
- glTF pipelines: CAD and engineering models cleaned, optimised and compressed so they load in seconds on a phone
- The data path behind the picture: scheduled extracts, SQL, APIs, a small warehouse table, and caching so the screen is never waiting on the ERP
- Scroll stories and explore modes: cutaways, exploded views, labels, a camera that knows where to look
- A plain fallback for everything: a table under every chart, a still image for every scene, so nothing depends on WebGL or on a mouse
Work I have done
- How a mechanical watch works: a hand-wound Swiss movement drawn from CAD as live outlines, taken apart step by step on scroll, with every gear turning at the maker's published ratios and an explore mode to orbit, cut away and click any part. See the case study.
- ZoneSteward's live globe: request traffic from visitors to Cloudflare data centres drawn as arcs, with six display modes, a replay of the last day and a fleet view across every zone, next to a dashboard wall of saved widgets
- The skills network on this site's home page: a few hundred nodes in WebGL that regroup by discipline, with a non-WebGL version for everyone else
- The admin behind this site: a pipeline board and a week calendar that read from a database and draw themselves
- The traffic globe below, which reads this site's own Cloudflare analytics while you look at it
What you get
- The thing itself, on your site or inside your app, with your design system applied
- The data path documented, so the next person can see where every number comes from
- A fallback that works without WebGL, and an accessible version with the same numbers in text
- Performance measured on a mid-range phone, because that is where it will be looked at
- Source files and models you own, including the optimised glTF
Where this site's visitors came from today.
Requests to balian.dev by country over the last 24 hours, read from Cloudflare's analytics while you look at it. Aggregates only. No cookies, no tracking of you.
Reading the last 24 hours from Cloudflare.
| Country | Requests |
|---|---|
| Waiting for figures. | |
Bot and scanner traffic is included, which is part of what a live view shows you that an analytics report does not.
Related
Does it work on phones?
Yes, and that is where I test it first. Models are optimised and compressed before they ship, scenes drop detail on weaker devices, and the fallback is a still image and a table, never a blank box.
What about visitors without WebGL or with motion turned off?
They get the same information in a form they can use: a table for every chart, a still frame for every scene, and nothing that moves for anyone who asked their device for less motion. It is built that way from the start, because retrofitting it costs more.
Can it read from our ERP, our CRM or our own database?
Yes. Any system with a working API or a database I can reach. The usual path is a scheduled extract into a small table I control, so the dashboard reads from that and your system of record is never under load from a web page. Live sources work where the API allows it.
Do we need a designer?
No. I design it, inside your existing design system if you have one. Good data design is mostly restraint, and I would rather be accountable for the whole thing than hand you a chart in someone else's colours.
We have CAD files. Is that enough for a 3D viewer?
Usually. STEP, IGES and most native formats convert to glTF, and the real work is cleaning the model, choosing what to keep, and making it light. If all you have is drawings or photos, a model can be made, and I will tell you what that costs before anything starts.
How is this priced?
A fixed price for a written scope, like everything else I do. A dashboard with a few sources, a product viewer and an interactive explainer are very different sizes of job, and the proposal says which one yours is.