• Draw tool From Intern Project to Production: How I Shipped the Draw Tool for Canva’s Present Mode Overview of the technical hurdles I overcame to evolve my intern project into a new feature for users. • Canvaâs internship offering is a 12-week summer program for penultimate year tertiary students.â (opens in a new tab or window) Every intern is empowered to own a project over the course of the internship. • When I joined as a Frontend Software Engineering Intern in the Summer of 2022/2023, my project was to add the ability to draw in Canvaâs present mode - one of the top feature requests for Presentations. • By the end of the internship, I built a working proof of concept that enabled users to draw while presenting in real time. • After returning to Canva as a Graduate in 2024, I continued working on the feature as the lead engineer on the project, driving its development and completion. • This involved: - Breaking down the project into achievable milestones - Implementing and testing the code - Working through code reviews to make sure it met Canvaâs high quality standards - Formulating a release plan - Monitoring analytics - Continuous coordination with various stakeholders âDraw in Present Modeâ has been shipped to production, and has seen strong adoption, with an average of 10 million uses over a 2 week period and average of 470 K Monthly Active Users.

Article Summaries:

  • Draw tool From Intern Project to Production: How I Shipped the Draw Tool for Canva’s Present Mode Overview of the technical hurdles I overcame to evolve my intern project into a new feature for users. Canvaâs internship offering is a 12-week summer program for penultimate year tertiary students.â (opens in a new tab or window) Every intern is empowered to own a project over the course of the internship. When I joined as a Frontend Software Engineering Intern in the Summer of 2022/2023, my project was to add the ability to draw in Canvaâs present mode - one of the top feature requests for Prese
  • In 2022/23, a Canva intern developed a real‑time drawing feature for the company’s Present Mode, a highly requested addition for presentations. The intern’s proof‑of‑concept was later expanded by the graduate engineer who led the project into production. Key milestones included refactoring the draw tool for reusability, resolving cross‑package dependency rules, correcting scaling issues between presenter and audience windows, and mitigating a 7 % load‑time increase. The feature launched in 2024, achieving roughly 10 million uses in two weeks and 470 k monthly active users, demonstrating strong adoption and the feasibility of turning internship work into a full‑scale product.

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