Learn and Share

Our first explorations

The first goal was to start thinking about our subject, “provide easy access to in-demand skills”, in order to find two projects. This was a way to get familiar with our projects, and to try to understand what needs we were answering, and who could be our targets. What appeared clearly in our researches was that the labor market is constantly changing, always asking for new or upgraded skills, which are not taught in school, or which just can not be taught in school since they are a result of experience. That is how we quickly realized that this experience should be valued and transmitted. That way, people who spent years working in a field and developping new skills could share them to other people, who could start working while already knowing what to expect, and what would be expected of them. This transmission was a priority for us, and it quickly appeared that technologies had to ben in the center of our project, in order to be able to promise an easy access to those skills. Here is our first mindmap, which we wanted to share with you in order to understand our first ideas about this project

Deeper study of our topic

After that, we had to really think about our project to get more precise about its identity, its goals, and how we would like it to work. This is where the project Learn and Share really took shape. Here is the glitch project which was made in order to have a deeper understanding of what our app would be like : Project Phase 1: Prototype.

Wireframe

Then, in order to have an idea of what our application would look like, we made a wireframe of our project. It was a way to have a first practical point of view of our project, and to see have it would work, and what would be the user experience. We wanted to make it as easy as possible, so the application would be clear and easy to use for everybody. We decided on four main pages, which would be connected to other more detailed pages such as the general profile. The first mais page would be the dashboard, onece connected, the user would directly see his next classes, or suggestions of profiles to connect with. Then, there would be a page were users could search for a particular job or a skill. The third main page would be the chatroom, to allow users to talk and plan meetings. Finally, the profile would be the last important page, with all of the user’s informations, and feedbacks written by other users. Here is th link to our wireframes: Learn and Share Wireframe

Mockup and user tests

The next step was to create a mockup of our application so it could be tested by users , who then, gave us their feedback. It was a great way to help us realize what was working or not in our app. Since we want our app to ba a tool used by people of every age, it was quite important for us to test it on younger and older users. Our final test was made by a 56 years old women, in order to see if the final version was easy and intuitive to use, to check if she had any problems using the app.
For the moment, we mainly focused od the side of the learner, and not yet on the sharer's one. However, we have already started to think about the user flow concerning the sharer. When the learner chooses a course with a particular teacher, he has to click on "register", then the sharer whould get a notification. Following this first encounter, sharer and learner will start a chat, in order to choose a date for the course. Then, the sharer just has to enter the date and time of the course in his interface of the app (which has yet to be developped), so that it appears on the learner's dashboard.
Here is our mockup, and you can find a link to our mockup there: Learn and Share Mockup.
Here is a link to see our user tests: User Tests.

References

Here are some references that were useful for us in order to develop our project:

Technologies

Our project relies on the use of 4 main technologies : APIs, databases, search engine and built-in chat. APIs will serve as an intermediary to help multiple applications to communicate between them, permitting users to send requests an to give their authorization. For example, we would like to link the user's website and the app, that is why we are thinking about using Google Calendar. Another API that would be helpful is Google Translate, in order to help users talking in different languages to communicate. It would allow us to create an international website.
As in all learning apps, databases are a central point : they are used to store and retrieve data of the course offer and the multiple users. We were thinking about using MySQL in order to manage our database.
A search engine is also necessary because the database couldn’t be effective without an efficient search engine like AppCrawlr.
When our users are put in contact, our app offers a built-in chatroom. We would like it to be powered by the Chatlio solution, as it is a very well-known and reliable one (for instance, it is used to power the Slack chatrooms). This solution also enables an easy implementation of push notifications, an essential criteria when it comes to learning apps.

What's next?

First of all, we would like to focus on the second aspect of our app which is the sharing one. We have started to think about it, and we already have an idea of what we would like to do, and how we want it to work, but we still need to create it.
For us, it is really important that our project is accessible to a majority of people, this is why we want it to be available everywhere in the world. This way, not only everybody could use it, but it would also allow people to meet other people coming from different cultures, maybe even learning their language!
We would also like to take it one step further, and maybe make this exchange easier by organizing in-person mettings for people to learn in groups or even conferences to have a larger, more general approach of the subject