My University professors often recapped their lectures by saying “…and that’s the theory students, it is a bit different in practice.”
Truer words have never been spoken. Reality struck really hard and my skill set was far from job-ready after graduation.
Today and here, at Brainster, we believe that education doesn’t have to be that way. Learning by doing is the ultimate methodology.
Working on real projects is a mandatory part of each Brainster Bootcamp. Students immerse in the subject while completing a project (that besides its educational purpose, serves as an addition to their portfolio).
This winter, the students on the UX/UI Design Bootcamp worked on a project for Traivelling – an Austrian startup whose mission is enabling everyone to travel sustainably – by train.
Traivelling embarked on an ambitious mission to connect train systems all over the world. They came to Brainster with a unique problem. They have already designed and developed the new website and booking system for customers, but what they didn’t have was the booking management system – a centralized platform where all Traivelling agents would have access to all booking information and which would be the source of truth for the whole organization.
Admissions are open for the next UX/UI Design Bootcamp. Apply for a chance to future-proof your career by learning from the best professionals around the globe.
Now we’re talking challenges! Their mentor for this project was their instructor – Amedea Derenda Mujezinovic who orchestrated this project from start to finish.
The first thing that students needed to do was stakeholder interviews with the company CEO and CTO, to understand the processes and goals of the platform. Next, they did empathy maps for all users, and when they saw what information they were missing, did more user interviews – with agents and travellers.
Managing this type of booking is a tedious job. Connecting all different routes, getting access to all tickets (even in places, where there are no online booking systems), tracking all the changes in real-time, and notifying the customer on top of all that, all of these tasks had to be done in the booking management system.
To understand the whole process and all its tiny details, the students made a very comprehensive user journey – connecting the journeys of the customer booking the travel, Vienna agent managing it, and then local agents buying the tickets in person where online was not possible. All tasks were then formed as jobs to be done.
After this, they went into prototyping. First brainstorming possible solutions, developing these solutions with task flows and upgraded into user flows, trying out different methods with sketching and basic paper prototypes, transferring those into the tool of their choice, and making a low fidelity interactive prototype.
When the basic prototype was ready, they prepared for the testing. They developed a testing scenario with all tasks, they tested this scenario and upgraded the prototype to really make sure all screens were there, so the flow is clear for the tester. They tested the prototype with stakeholders and user agents and upgraded the prototype accordingly.
All this in the course of just one month! After wrapping up the module, they said their goodbyes to the completed project and moved on to the next phase.
Admissions are open for the next UX/UI Design Bootcamp. Apply for a chance to future-proof your career by learning from the best professionals around the globe.
