Codana

Coaching custom web app for students

MyCompass is a digital guidance tool to support students in realizing their professional dreams. Students and coaches are given the necessary tools to work out their own dream and to focus on the actions needed to achieve it. 

Odisee student met app

Odisee is the co-college

Odisee is an open community of students, education and field professionals who learn, teach and research together. Students do not receive further guidance after their studies to make their professional dreams come true. Therefore, Odisee itself has devised a method of studying, based on dream/focus/... levels and they wanted to bring more unity to this. Using the Compass platform, the coaches/coachees/peers can support each other in a smooth way to make their dreams come true. At Codana we took this challenge with both hands! 

Odisee

Digital strategy and design

As a first point, we took care of the digital strategy and design. This is a first important step in delivering a new platform.  

Based on the specifications, we held the first workshops together with the client and joined hands. 

Knowledge and understanding of the product vision  

Working out a platform together is not just based on code and technology. It starts with empathy for the project. What are the ultimate goals? 
In an initial workshop, we asked a few open-ended questions and soon found ourselves in a flurry of ideas. These formed a broad base of understanding with which we could lay the foundations. 

Strategic and UX workshops  

After the empathy the conceptual and strategic work followed.    

  • How should a student be able to develop a dream?  

  • How should a coach be able to support? What is coaching?  

  • How will peers share content? And what can they share?  

  • What does a showcase look like? What do you want to achieve with it?  

Using the wireframes and the visual concept, we were able to draw up a product backlog and step-by-step plan. We also provided the corporate identity and visual elements. 

Product delivery in phases

After the analysis, the product was delivered in 3 phases where we worked in multiple sprints per phase.

  1. MyCompass
  2. MyCoach
  3. MyNetwork & MyShowcase
Odisee MyCompass Lookback

MyCompass

During the first 3 sprints we worked out the MyCompass page. Here a student can create their dream and put the focus where needed: create a schedule, develop action items and add self-reflection. The trajectory and their experiences along the way are displayed through posts. 

Odisee MyCoach Chat

MyCoach

The coach inspires and can respond to the progress of his coachee based on chat and comments. To ensure that these chats reach the users in a smooth manner, we use websockets. This advanced technique makes it possible to open an interactive connection between the server and the user's browser. As soon as someone sends a chat message, it is added in real time to the recipient's chat window. 

myNetwork

MyNetwork & MyShowcase

In the network section you can invite friends and use the popular social wall to follow each other's dreams and experiences. You can also encourage or help your colleagues by posting nice comments! 
As a user you decide what you want to share and what you'd rather keep to yourself. 

Finally, you can make a compilation of the entire route and digitally open it up to a company where you are applying or use it for other purposes. 

Take a look at Sigert's showcase for an example: https://www.mycompass.be/nl/showcase/case-mycompass. 

Pilot groups and testing

The phased delivery allowed students to start creating content even before the full development was complete. 

During this start-up of the different phases, we only worked with pilot groups. Based on limited numbers we could test feedback and performance before fully launching the platform. With the cooperation of our colleagues from ScaleCity for the monitoring and the frequent use and feedback of the test groups, we put the finishing touches and ensured a performant and responsive webapp. 

Technologies

For this project, a real-time chat was created. For this we used Laravel, React and Laravel echo server. How exactly we applied these technologies can be found in the blog article ‘Real-time chat with Laravel, React and Node.js’.

We also hope to do our part with this project to help make many dreams come true. Good luck to all students!

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Joris De Groot
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Joris De Groot
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