IBhelpin'

UI/UX - Illustration - Teamwork

Role: co-designer, Adobe Jam participant

Collaboratively made, inclusive app for International Baccalaureate students helping them manage and organise their extra curricular community service activities.

Background

IBhelpin' was developed as a part of an Adobe Jam challenge. In a week, my project partner and I had to design an inclusive app for high school students looking for community service opportunities.

Both me and my project partner graduated from the IB programme, and we had first hand experience of how stressful managing the service activites together with academic and other types of extra curriculars was. Develping IBhelpin' with an international community of IB students in mind seemed like a natural step. The app provides a calming experience to relieve the students from some of the programme’s pressure.

Inclusivity

IB is a programme available to students around the world, so inclusivity was at the core of IBhelpin’s values. Language options, adjustable type size, and colour-blind tested colours were some of our ideas for how to make this experience available to as many people as possible.

Inclusive features including modes accomodating vision impairments, profile customising options, and encouraging community

Mascot

Stefan the Bee — our app's mascot — highlights the feeling of togetherness and mutual help. He creates a welcoming, calming atmosphere and guides the user through the experience. He is situated on the top navigation bar in order for the students to feel reassured that they can always find help. The bee was a deliberate choice, as they are considered to be diligent, and they work together. To highlight this nature of our app’s users we also let the students customise their bee as an avatar.

Stefan accompanies the user in every step of the experience

IB requirements

Service activity requirements for IB students are strict, and require long-term planning. Features such as a calendar with colour-coded activities, built in reflection feature (mandatory part of completing IB extracurriculars), and a page for setting and tracking goals were implemented to help navigate the abundance of planning and mental effort that goes into this part of the IB curriculum.

IB-oriented features were at a core of planning and executing IBhelpin'