InfoMe

InfoMe was my first serious freelance client. A group of Harvard Graduate School of Education alumni had asked Alice Chuang to design an app to help students plan and manage their college courses, and she recommended me to develop it. The end product was presented as a finalist in a multi-million dollar education app competition.

Platform

iPhone

Role

Sole Developer

Timeline

November 2014 — January 2015

Our clients had done research in education and psychology, and knew what techniques would be effective in guiding students toward academic success. Alice and I zoomed in on these concepts and translated them into specific features. Together, we specced and scoped the project, estimated the work, and delivered iterations in weekly sprints. We created functionality for viewing current courses, grades, professors, and a completable reminder and task list for each course. We also created a course catalog planner, which allowed users to plan their upcoming semesters, including enforcing prerequisites and number of credits to graduate in their major.

The app was purely for a demo and used mockup data, but the InfoMe team knew that if they advanced to the final round of the competition, they would have access to actual colleges’ infrastructure. They asked me to develop the app as though it were really connecting to data sources, with complete and robust models. We used actual college course catalogs and syllabi for sample data, and randomized things like grades.