Counselab


A Marketplace for 1:1 Advising Sessions


Marcel Kida, Alexander Zheng, Rachel Pierce


Background


We worked on building a user-facing web application for our client Counselab which is a platform that allows users to offer and seek 1:1 advising sessions on any topic they want. On the website, we created a few static pages as well as a user profile page. The static pages include landing page, about page, team page, and contact form. The user profile page has a component that displays all the user information such as education and social media links as well as a component that displays a calendar that shows when the user is available. Rachel designed the website and its components using Figma. Marcel and Alex coded the front end application based on the UI mockups.

Technologies Used: React, JavaScript, HTML, CSS



Timeline


Our project had the following timeline:

Week 1: Meet with client, figure out MVP
Week 2: Created Mockup UI
Week 3: Completed landing page
Week 4: Completed about us
Week 5: Completed team page and contact form
Week 6: Created Mockup for individual user profiles
Week 7: Completed user information page
Week 8: Completed Calendar integration to allow for users to book times with other users



Challenges


  • One technical challenge we encountered was making the website responsive. We had to follow the mockups which often did not have the same information as the desktop view.
  • Another technical challenge we faced was implementing the calendar functionality. It was complex since we had to work with an api and minimize the number of api calls as possible.



Takeaways


  • Marcel K: I think I significantly improved my frontend development skills. I also learned how to communicate with a designer and articulate the feasibility of features.
  • Alex Z: This was my first time working on a team to create a product that hundred of others would use. I learned a lot about communication as well as how to talk to clients.
  • Rachel P: This was a great opportunity to work with multiple stakeholders, the co-founders and the customers, so my communication skills have definitely evolved. This was also a great way to feel the energy, demand, and strategy of a startup.



Looking Forward


Looking forward, we could continue to expand our project by:

  • Being able to set up accounts directly on the website
  • Conduct user research into the onboarding process of the mobile app to make it more efficient and user-friendly
  • Adjust some design elements of the website