Riipen Platform User Experience Evaluation - Employer Onboarding

The goal of this project is to evaluate the user experience of the Riipen platform from the perspective of a new employer. A team of students will sign up on Riipen as an employer, create a company profile, and develop a project. They will then navigate the marketplace to find a suitable experience to match with, using input from a Riipen contact to guide their process. (Do not submit any match requests before discussing with the project administrator at Riipen.) Throughout this journey, students will document their experiences, identifying which parts of the process are intuitive and which are challenging. The ultimate aim is to provide actionable feedback to Riipen, highlighting areas for improvement to enhance user satisfaction and reduce user drop-off rates. This project allows students to apply their knowledge of user experience design and evaluation in a real-world context.

Website UI/UX Enhancement for A&Z Consultants

A&Z Consultants aims to enhance the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of their company website to improve user satisfaction and engagement. The current website design may not fully meet the needs of its users, potentially affecting the company's online presence and client interactions. The project involves conducting comprehensive user testing to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Students will apply their knowledge of UI/UX principles to analyze user feedback and website analytics. The goal is to provide actionable recommendations that align with best practices in web design and enhance the overall user experience. This project offers learners the opportunity to apply classroom knowledge in a real-world setting, focusing on improving digital interfaces.

Business Operations and Revenue Optimization Consultation

Riipen is seeking a comprehensive consultation to evaluate and enhance its business operations. This could focus on revenue, marketing, internal operations, marketing, business structure or market expansion. The goal of this project is to identify areas of improvement and provide actionable recommendations that can help Riipen streamline its operations, increase revenue, and enhance client satisfaction. Students will apply their classroom knowledge in business analysis, operations management, and strategic planning to conduct a thorough assessment of Riipen's current practices. The project will involve data collection, analysis, and the development of a detailed report outlining opportunities for improvement. This project offers a practical application of theoretical concepts and allows students to gain hands-on experience in business consulting.

Pueblo Science test project

This is where the main project goal from the employer is shown. They should explain background information on their organization relevant to the project, and cover what they hope to have students work on here. This is where the main project goal from the employer is shown. They should explain background information on their organization relevant to the project, and cover what they hope to have students work on here.

Website Enhancement for Improved UI/UX and Accessibility

A&Z Consultants is seeking to enhance its company website to provide a more intuitive and engaging experience for its users. The current website has been identified as having areas that could benefit from improved user interface (UI) design, user experience (UX) optimization, and enhanced accessibility features. The goal of this project is to create a more seamless and inclusive online environment that caters to a diverse audience, including individuals with disabilities. By applying principles learned in web design and development courses, learners will analyze the existing website, identify areas for improvement, and implement changes that align with best practices in UI/UX design and accessibility standards. The project will involve tasks such as redesigning navigation elements, optimizing page layouts, and ensuring compliance with accessibility guidelines like WCAG 2.1.

EcoTech Innovation Challenge

The main objective of the EcoTech Innovation Challenge is to empower learners to design and develop innovative technology solutions that address pressing environmental challenges. In this project, learners will have the opportunity to apply their creativity and problem-solving skills to develop sustainable tech products that contribute to environmental conservation and promote eco-friendly practices. Problem Statement: Learners will be tasked with identifying a specific environmental challenge, such as air or water pollution, deforestation, plastic waste, or climate change, and developing a technology-driven solution to mitigate its impact. Whether it's creating a device to reduce energy consumption, an app to promote recycling, or a sensor to monitor air quality, learners will have the freedom to explore various environmental issues and propose innovative solutions. Expected Outcome: By the end of the project, learners are expected to have designed and prototyped a sustainable technology product that addresses the identified environmental challenge. Additionally, learners will develop a comprehensive marketing strategy to promote their product and raise awareness about the importance of environmental conservation.

Product specifications document - Sharing feedback and achievements

Develop a product requirements document describing how the feedback and achievements that users receive on Riipen could more easily be shared to other platforms, primarily LinkedIn. Currently, all users receive feedback from other users at the conclusion of a project. They also receive gamification awards called "achievements" at different points in the user journey. We would like to promote the opportunity to share achievements and feedback, and provide easy tools for users to do so. The only current offering is for learners; from received feedback they can access a "share" icon to share a piece of feedback to their LinkedIn profile as a "certification." The goal is to get more users leveraging the recognition they receive on Riipen in other contexts, and to make them aware of the benefits of doing so.

Product specifications document - Learner project ranking

Develop a product requirements document describing a feature for learners to rank their preferred projects under a single experience. Our thinking with this feature is that an educator could invite learners to the experience to allow them to review all projects and identify their preferences. The educator could use these preferences to assign learners into teams and assign them to projects based on what projects they are most interested in. The goal is to provide educators with an option to give students more say in project assignment, and to improve student engagement with projects and ultimately their outcomes, as they'll be completing projects they have more interest in.

UI/UX Design Project: Riipen learner experience

Our goal is to reduce friction in the onboarding process for learners. As a learner, you join Riipen at the invitation of an educator or facilitator, join an experience, and from there find and start a project. We want to make this process as short and seamless as possible to reduce effort on the part of the user, and to avoid confusion or potential escalations to support.

How can charities continue to serve the increasing needs of financially challenged families during a recession that reduces donations and government supports?

Help an educational organization help children from financially challenged families thrive. The Education Bank is an Ontario-based organization that provides free materials and supplementary learning opportunities to financially challenged children/youth - however, like most charities today, the effect of a strained economy has significantly reduced donations. What steps can be taken to secure sufficient operating revenue to continue operations for the 1500 kids that rely on the Education Bank’s services?

New product marketing

Goal will go here

Business Strategy Consulting 101

As a B2C company, our primary goal is creating products that are closely aligned to our market segment’s wants and needs, so that we can maximize our sales. We have recently created a new product to increase the breadth of our product line. It will be important to gather information on buying behaviour, experiences, expectations, and perception of both our brand and our largest competitors. Tasks may involve: Creating an unbiased survey with questions regarding consumer experience with our brand, perception of our products/services, and opinions on our competitors. Creating effective conversation questions for customer interviews. Determining the best way to reach customers and how to motivate them to provide feedback on the company (we will distribute the survey accordingly). Analyzing trends within primary data collected through the survey and interviews, and reporting on them.

Anonymous Peer to Peer Digital Letter Exchange

Positions available: 1 Purpose: Letter Help is meant to connect users via an anonymous mailing system. At a high level, users should be able to register on the WordPress website, and become paired with another user in a manual process of pairing users. These user pairs should then be able to anonymously communicate with each other, without exposing their email addresses to the other. Because we don’t want to leak the email details, a forwarder is not a viable option unfortunately. Technological Stack: The Letter Help website is hosted on a shared LAMP hosting setup, with a cPanel interface. Since this is a shared hosting environment, we only have limited access to the underlying linux environment. However, we do have access to cPanels, “Pipe to Program” which will allow access to the PHP environment to execute a script when receiving an email to the account. Required Deliverables: ● A Wordpress plugin or custom options page to control the pairing of inputting users. ○ The admin should be able to create an email pair in this interface ○ The admin should be able to delete the email pairing as well ○ An email can only be assigned to 1 partner only. ○ Should be able to view and sort (via a wordpress data table) these pairings. ● Email Delivery Scripting ○ These email pairs should create a relationship in the system where, when User A emails the forwarder account, it will strip the content of the email, and send a new email to User B. (Without exposing User A’s email). The same in reverse. ■ While ‘how’ this exactly works is to be left to the developer to determine, I would imagine something as simple as adding a new table to the existing Wordpress database. Thus whenever User A emails the forwarder, it could lookup in our user pair table for the match, and find its corresponding pair. ○ On the note of emailing, since we are not forwarding the email, we have several options. We could use something as simple as the phpMailer, or we could look at sending these via an API to a third party service as one off emails. I would suggest for now we plan for phpMailer. ○ Email deliverability should be logged as well, even if it’s just sending an email to the administrator on a failed email delivery. Perhaps it should be indicated if an email hard bounces on the wordpress plugin view?

Suffolk: Business Consulting Project

In partnership with teacher prep programs across the country, TeachersConnect is laying the groundwork to ensure a world in which teaching is never a solo activity and "teacher prep" stays with their new-teacher alumni for as long as they want. TeachersConnect is an in-person and online network that gives new K-12 teachers a safe place to ask their most urgent questions—even the embarrassing ones—and get answers from a trusted network of peers, mentors, and experts who understand the real-world classroom challenges. TeachersConnect also enables teacher prep programs to build deep, lasting relationships with their graduates and gather the data they need to meet new standards and improve their courses swiftly and purposefully. Our number one goal for the next 12 months is user growth (e.g. Get K-12 teachers onto our platform). We’ve determined that partnerships with other teacher communities (companies like TeachersPayTeachers; associations like the teachers unions or National Council of Teachers of Math; and “hacked” teacher communities on Pinterest and Twitter) is the most efficient way to acquire lots of new teachers quickly. We need to develop a funnel/pipeline for these strategic partnerships. Of all the communities and companies out there, which ones most need us and what’s the specific story we’d take to them to get them to partner with us (i.e. Why would it make sense for them to partner with us? What urgent itch would we scratch for them?). It’s a big qualitative market research project. If time allows, the students would also explore three other types of partnerships we believe we'll need: Partnerships that yield functionality for us quickly. For example, we know that teachers will want to share videos of themselves and get expert feedback. Should we build or buy that functionality, and if the answer is "buy" from whom should we consider buying? Partnerships that yield sponsors who want to give away free stuff to teachers. For example, we currently have a rewards program for teachers who provide us with feedback as we develop. If we decided to find sponsors whose stuff we use as prizes to teachers, where would we start? Whose stuff would make teachers happiest? Partnerships that yield revenue via references. There's a whole slew of teacher professional development products ($18B annual market in the US) that comprise a very fragmented and cut-throat market. We believe those companies would benefit from getting in front of teachers like ours, and we think we can charge a click through or referral fee. A database of companies to fill the top of our biz dev pipeline that includes something like: Name of company / Description of what they do / Type of partnership (from the list above) / How we'd solve a problem for them / How they'd solve a problem for us (i.e. Why it's a partnership that would benefit both orgs) / The person within the org to speak with first / Some of their main competitors / organizational goals, and/or what really motivates them right now. An annotated list of the top 10-12 "hot" candidates for us to begin approaching. This is a massive, multi-faceted project. Each of the 5 groups will be in charge of a facet of the project (answering important questions that you co-create with the professor) and do 3 months of work to help your firm find creative, tangible, and implementable solutions - a total of 1000 hours of work. Each group will provide a 15-minute presentation, as well as a report answer your questions, which together will formulate your strategy moving forward.