What's been done

Designing an app to help middle school and high school students curate their projects into a presentable document that they can share for future opportunities.

Project Context

For this personal project I consulted my brother Aaron, who directs innovation strategy in high school academia. In both middle school and high school, students begin shaping their engineering and design projects around what interests them and what makes them unique. What colleges and preparatory schools need to see is a student's capability to engage and contribute to a field of study.

This app provides under-represented students a helpful nudge: a framework to present documentation of their work, without the software tasks of file structuring and formatting.

A bridge diagram of students on one side, and schools on the other. The bridge between them is the help they need to bridge the gap.

The Premise:

Students do their classwork, and take pictures of their projects as they go, but they need help getting their work into a format they can present to others and send out. These students do not need to learn Photoshop, Illustrator, or edit PDF's. In time, they can, but now they just need help putting together a portfolio.

A software application can provide a simple structure for uploading a student's documented work and making it ready to share.

Visual Strategy

The student work must take visual priority, where no software design elements over-power or distract from the student's creative work.

Structure

As a component of the student's assigned curriculum, the use of the app must be administered through the school faculty, so access and privileges will vary by user type.

Interfaces will be assigned based on email accounts.

Administrator

The school administrator decides if their institution will implement this software to one or multiple class levels. The administrator keeps a relationship with a software representative of Project Portfolio.

Teacher

A batch of profiles of student email accounts are provided to classroom teachers.
Each teacher has managing oversight of the student profiles of their class.

Student

Each student can sign in to their account with the provided credentials from their teacher. After accessing, they can begin to build their profile and build a portfolio.

Student Process

What do students do with the app?

1.1. - Add a picture of themselves to their profile.
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1.2. - Create projects.
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1.3. - Begin adding photos and accompanying descriptions to projects.
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1.4. - Crop uploaded photos and edit their accompany text.
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1.5. - Exit the project editor and create more projects.
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1.6. - Re-enter each project and revise, and continue to upload content to existing projects.
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1.6. - Share their projects with administrators, friends/cohort, and future development opportunities like schools or employers.

How will the app work?

2.1. - Students are provided sign-in credentials with their student email.
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2.2. - After signing in, they will see that they are part of their class.
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2.3. - A profile photo and bio will be ready to add. Their class will be pre-established and will not be editable.
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2.4. - On a student's profile will be their profile image, their class, and a prompt to begin a new project.
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2.4. - By selecting to add a project, they will be taken into that project's editor to begin uploading content into a pre-made structure.
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2.5. - They can leave this new project and go back to their profile to create another project.
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2.6. - The portfolio of projects can be available in a full screen viewer or can be exported. (Sent from their email as a PDF or web link)

2.7 - Projects can be individually exported and the Portfolio of projects can be exported.
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2.8. - Projects can be re-arranged on the profile, which will re-arrange their order in the portfolio viewer and exported portfolio.
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2.9. - Teachers will be able to view student portfolios and limit project visibility if needed.