Apply+ (Senior Design Project WIP)
My idea is to create an app that acts as a toolkit to guide and support low-income students through the arduous college application process. The need for such an app can be supported by numerous studies showing that while all students encounter struggles in the college application process, it can be especially difficult for low-income students. My app will be created with the intention of helping students overcome common struggles such as mistranslating applications, lack of information, and lack of connection to available resources. There is a breadth of knowledge about the process however, it is sometimes difficult for students to identify the information that pertains directly to them due to the sheer amount of resources out there. My app will solve this by allowing the user to create personalized profiles that maximizes inclusivity and will ultimately connect them with the information they need.
Inspiration
My biggest inspiration is the work that I have done with students from underrepresented and marginalized communities. As someone who has the same experience as my students, I was able to really understand the problems of the college-going process my students were going through. I was also inspired from programs/websites such as TurboTax that make income tax preparation easy by explaining and breaking tax code language in simple terms. This allows people who don’t have backgrounds in working with taxes be more independent.
Ideation
A lot of my research and feedback from field experts were that students really need simple and easy to use interfaces that focus mainly on one thing at a time.
Design development
