Student: an e-learning platform

Along with the client’s in-house team, Geniusee presented a new solution for those who want to learn and those who can teach. Future international students, educational agents, and other companies that are involved in the university application preparation process come together on a single platform. Geniusee assisted in development of the platform where students can find the knowledge providers, select and pay for a chosen expertise, and tutors can propose their services. Student obtains 79th place among 110 718 other solutions in the world as a high-demand product in the EdTech industry.

Services:

Industry:

EdTech

Location:

China
UAE

Business context

Student owns two main consultation domains: help with education (entering university, courses, language studying, etc.) and apartment renting. The Geniusee team developed the cooperation stage between agents and students on this platform. We also built the mobile application from scratch and updated the current one.

Our client is headquartered in the UAE, and the in-house team is in China. Building clear communication and aligning work processes across borders and time differences was a test for our team.

Key challenges:

Build trust in cooperation with the client’s in-house teams
Shape and integrate proper communication
Solve intercultural issues and align work with teams in different time zones
Set up and configure the architecture stack with the existing one

Work approach

SCRUM framework

With SCRUM, we manage SDLC efficiently, having a ready-to-work-with increment every two weeks. We present a demo for a client before each release to approve it for production and retrospect our work at the end of the sprint.
Agile methodology

Thanks to Agile methodology, our client can change tasks and priorities at any time according to business needs. Instead of a big bang, we work with small launches to respond to changes faster and more flexibly.
User feedback-based iterations

The development process is based on user acceptance testing (UAT) conducted by our client to ensure the complete satisfaction of end customer needs. Agile and SCRUM allow us to implement those changes quickly and fast.
Lean approach

To ensure we can make more in less time and empower motivation, we started using Lean’s Lessons Learned to avoid repeating mistakes. It allows us to nurture talents and perfectly fits a self-disciplined team with clear leadership.

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Process

We developed proactive collaboration with the client, offering solutions and improvements based on our expertise, market, user, and competitors' research.

A properly conducted discovery phase allowed us to move fast on SDLC, delivering MVP in six months. This also was thanks to the trust between the Geniusee team and our client.

Our delivery manager conducted well-thought-out research on competitors and users and created documentation. The result was a project charter research, user, and project road maps that allowed us to identify the main features and project scope. We developed a business model and handled a design thinking workshop.
Our business analyst is also a proxy product owner, managing our backlog in a truly Agile way. Constant research of the market and brainstorming allow us to find room for evolution and improvement. Smart prioritization of requirements and tasks ensures continuous delivery and smooth project management.
To ensure continuous delivery, we actively work on the active tracking of documents, among which stakeholders register and communication plan, a risk listing that we track with the client, and a road map based on the time and material model. We also use metrics on sprint releases, team performance, quality assurance, and finance.
We developed a user-attractive design of online tutoring platform from scratch, bringing into the process our product vision and analysis. Our designer also regularly conducts competitive research that is the basis for improvements. The constant market study enables us to ensure tailoring an “alive” and modern profile and interface.
We base our development process on a CI/CD method to ensure continuous integration, delivery, and deployment. This allowed us to align web and mobile (native iOS and Android) application development, deliver an admin panel, and build the architecture and infrastructure. We used cloud services to ensure high performance and security.
Many of our tests are manual, yet we developed automated test cases for around 50% of functionality to ensure process optimization. Here we rely on test strategy and plans, QA metrics, and health checks. We conduct functional, regression, and smoke testing. As the project is scaling, we’re going to run stress tests.
Our tech lead created serverless architecture on GraphQL base and AWS servers. We base our regular research on architecture and infrastructure diagrams, seeking constant improvements. Infrastructure environments and staging are designed to optimize and automate development and deployment processes.

Project tech stack

As we cooperated with the in-house China team, we bound two utterly different technology stacks together and aligned architectures. We chose fast and easy-to-connect technologies to build a scalable architecture, serverless platform, server-side rendering, and a mobile app.

Backend:

Front End:

Web application:

Mobile application:

Geniusee team

Attractive solutions allow our specialists to grow, yet motivation is also essential. We designed internal training and initiatives to support the growth of our team members. This is also supported by the attitude of our client and his confidence in Geniusee.

Product team

Development team

Ihor

Tech lead

This project stands out from others in the communication culture and trust nurtured by the client. Processes are smooth and advanced optimizations as enterprise-oriented cashing and compressing allowed us to expand our expertise. Student is a successful project with two different teams with different stacks integrated together.
Kristina

Project manager

This project was challenging due to cultural and time differences. I’m proud to succeed with this responsibility. Another great challenge was keeping the team motivated. Together with the client, we implemented an into-context model and knowledge-sharing process. As Student strives to face new horizons and acquire new branches, we scrupulously make all processes commonplace.

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Features

Requests
- Direct (individual) and generic requests
- Fast processing of service flow
- Access to agents' contacts only after payment
Monetization
- Payments powered by third-party systems Stripe and AliPay
- Development of bonus system (Student Coins)
Analytics
- Tracking of requests number
- Inquiry of platform events
- User steps and flow mapping
- User analytics dashboard
Admin panel
- User verification according to the know your customer (KYC) model
- Content moderation and analysis
- User activity and behaviour analysis
- Security rules and management
User profiles
- Students' and agents' profiles, including social media contacts
- Possibility to upload certifications and video presentations
- Categorization and filters for simple navigatione
Notifications
- E-mails powered by third-party service Mailchimp
- Custom development of mobile notifications/li>
3d party services
- Stripe — a payment system
- AliPay — an online payment platform
- Mailchimp — a mailing service