For ZEAL and LEARN Academy, we created a user-friendly app that allows mentors to effectively evaluate and monitor the progress of their mentees throughout the software residency program.
The Software Residency App emerged from a partnership between ZEAL, a software consultancy, and LEARN, a coding bootcamp, aimed at bridging the gap between junior and senior software engineers by fostering professional development and mentorship in the industry. The challenge was to develop an easy-to-use platform for mentors in the software residency program to evaluate and track their mentees' progress, ultimately enhancing the mentorship and support provided to the residents.
To create a user-friendly app that allows mentors to effectively evaluate and monitor the progress of their mentees throughout the software residency program.
The design process was rooted in user research, prototyping, and rigorous usability testing. This ensured the end product was not just functional but deeply user-centric.
Surveys and affinity mapping unveiled key needs and challenges faced by mentors.
Streamlined the user journey, identifying potential bottlenecks.
A blend of wireframes, high-fidelity designs, and constant stakeholder feedback.
Direct feedback from mentors helped refine the product for optimum usability.
Transitioning to a custom application provides more control, enabling a unique software residency experience. Zeal utilized the framework RedwoodJS, a technology stack encompassing React, TypeScript, GraphQL, Prisma, Storybook, and Jest testing for efficient development. In styling, Tailwind CSS was installed to offer a consistent guide in collaborating on the project, ensuring maintainability throughout its lifecycle. To track the progress of development, Zeal managed through GitHub Projects for backlog, stories, and epics, as well as Notion for the overall project's information, resources, team members, deliverables, and retrospectives.
The Residency App is a comprehensive solution that enables mentors to have an overview of all their mentees, their mentors, and their program progress, facilitating progress tracking and identification of improvement areas. Features include efficiently tracking weekly focus areas, easy quarterly evaluations, and comprehensive data comparison.
Despite the app not making it to production, the project was incredibly valuable. Understanding the mentors, stakeholders, and their needs enabled us to evolve the product and helped us refine the app to better meet the users' needs. The designs and tested flows have since been utilized as a base for other SAAS solutions requiring CRUD (Create, Read, Update, and Delete) of users and roles, demonstrating the project's ongoing value and impact.
