Final projects of our Full-Stack class #12
by Ruben Villalon
During the last three weeks of the Full-Stack development program the students work on a final project and develop a website from scratch. The main objective is to deliver a functional prototype for companies like Sailcom or to develop additional functionalities for existing platforms. This is a particularly important part of the bootcamp, as the students get the chance to implement the knowledge they have acquired during the previous weeks and to work on a real project for a company.
The Full Stack Class (Batch 12: May 11, 2020 - July 31, 2020) worked on and presented the following five projects:
- a platform to incentivize blood donation,
- a web application to improve the process to rent and manage sailboats,
- an application to digitize the process for the Beach Volley Referees in Switzerland,
- a system to simplify technical coding interviews,
- and a new CV and cover letter generator tool for a Job Tracking platform (jobtracker.ai).
Read more about each individual project below:
BloodvalYou - Blood Donation Platform
There are two common phenomena: repeated blood shortage due to a lack of donors and regular visits to the doctor by many, often young and healthy people, merely to “check” blood values.
For this, a non-monetary platform was created, to incentivise people to donate blood and get rewarded based on a points system. For each donation, the donor is credited with a certain number of points, which can then be exchanged for a blood test. The results from the blood test can be looked up directly via a web application and if necessary be forwarded to the doctor. The advantage of this approach lies in the simplification of processes between blood donation centers, laboratories, and donors.
Based on this idea, the students created a new platform with the following features:
- different types of accounts for clinics and donors
- search functionality with an interactive map for users (donors) to find nearby clinics
- reward system for users, to earn points and show them in the users account dashboard
- function to redeem points for blood tests
- QR system integration
- functionality for clinics to create a request for donations and determine the number of points to be redeemed
SailCom Platform
for sailcom.ch
SailCom is a company that rents sailing boats to its members. Currently, SailCom has about 2’800 members and owns 60 boats. To become a member, one needs to have a sailing license and pay the membership fee. Users can book the boats they are certified for, after having taken classes.
The main challenge in this project was to automate all main processes, for which the students were working on the following new features and functionalities:
- account login for users
- getting instructions and registering for courses
- booking and reservation system to rent sailboats
- find and invite other users for a trip
- mobile-friendly user interface
Outlook:
The prototype has been finished and is now going to be presented to SailCom for feedback and to address the possibility of continuing to work on the project.
Referee Management Tool
for the Swiss Volley Association
One of the students, Laura Rüegg, is the president of the beach volleyball refereeing commission in Switzerland. The problem in the past was that the assignment of the referees to the tournaments of the highest beach volleyball tour has been done with an Excel spreadsheet. Referees have sent their availability via email to the president, who then had to manually check who is available and assign them to different events. This was a very time-consuming and error-prone process.
To overcome this problem, a platform was developed.
- every referee can create an account and log in to keep their contact details up to date with two different user roles as "administrator" and "referee"
- the administrator can see the availability of the referees during the upcoming season and assign them to a tournament
- the administrator can create events and accept or decline referees for each event
Technical Interview platform for the Full-Stack Program admission
for Constructor Academy
To get accepted to the Full-Stack program at Constructor Academy, the candidates must pass a technical interview based on JavaScript, which is conducted by the Constructor Academy Team. Since Constructor Academy receives more than one hundred applications per batch, it is a time-consuming process for the student and the team.
To overcome this problem, a platform was created, where the program managers (from Constructor Academy) can send a link to the candidates to create their accounts and complete the technical interview within a period. The results will be calculated immediately to let the candidate know if he passed or not.
Some features and functionalities that were developed are:
- emails can be sent to the candidate with a link to the platform
- the administrator can create diverse types of programming language tests from JavaScript to Python
- candidates can create and log in to their account and view the available/completed tests and update their profiles
- web development environment where the tests can be done in real-time
- results are calculated immediately, and an automatically generated email is sent to the administrator and candidate
Outlook:
The platform can not only help Constructor Academy streamline its application process and save hundreds of hours per year interviewing candidates, but it can also be helpful for other companies that hire technical people.
Companies can improve the quality of their hiring process by choosing the skills they require (React, CSS) for a specific role and letting the candidates complete the assignment during a given period. The platform can help to improve the hiring process and get a better understanding of the current knowledge of the candidate.
JobTracker - CV and Cover Letter Generator Features
for Constructor Academy
Job Tracker started as a platform built by Constructor Academy for the students, to keep track of their job applications, using a Kanban dashboard with a Drag and Drop functionality. One particularly useful functionality of the platform is that users can add an administrator to the account, making it possible for the administrator not only to review the job-seeker dashboard, but also to propose new jobs and support the jobseeker in the application process.
An additional challenge was to add extra functionalities to the current version of the Job Tracker platform. One of those new features was that users can create and download their CV in a PDF format, based on the information on their profile. To get there it was necessary to improve the profile section, where users are now able to:
- add basic information like a phone number or/and address
- add the last 3 job experiences with dates, descriptions, company names, and position
- add skills and languages
The second feature we wanted to implement was a Cover Letter generator. For this, it was necessary to implement extra fields in the job description to be extracted in the cover letter generation process and at the same time allowing the job-seeker to edit or improve any section of the cover letter in the preview mode.
Outlook:
The new features and the improved design had a profound impact on the CV tracking tool, which is currently used by all Constructor Academy students and will be released in the coming days for all the jobseekers out there. We can't wait.
We were excited to see what our students learned during this short period of time and the amazing projects they developed at the end of the bootcamp. We want to thank you for your hard work, and dedication and we wish you all the best for your next career steps.
