LaunchLink

We empower high school and college students with hands-on experiences to create personal websites tailored to the needs of small businesses, fueling entrepreneurship & growth.

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Please take a look at our short slideshow that talks about our project as well: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFpXwbsG5U/PfgfTHqZEXgVQTaRwh12fw/view?utm_content=DAFpXwbsG5U&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

Inspiration

We've noticed that in the recent years, technology usage has been skyrocketing, especially during the pandemic. But for many small businesses, they haven't caught up to the latest tech and are lacking websites and applications for their business. In turn, this has caused many small business to lose potential customers. Another problem we've noticed is that a lot of students are enrolling to computer science classes, but are not utilizing their skills after. There's a lot of lost potential for these high school students to gain coding experience, build their resume, and make a difference. So we decided to create LaunchLink, a platform that connects passionate high school students with local small businesses and empowers both the community and student body alike.

What it does

Our website has two primary functions, businesses requesting for projects and students viewing those requests and deciding whether or not they would want to work on it. In order to access both functions, you will have to create a student or business account, and you are also required to verify your identity.

How we built it

We used github to coordinate and upload our changes, which allow for seamless code integration and version control. We also used python and django to build the web application. We decided to use PostgreSQL as the database management and paired it with Supabase, which can enhance user interaction. For the front-end aspect, we used the tried and true method of HTML5 for structure, CSS3 for styling, and JavaScript for functions. We used jQuery streamlined DOM manipulation and event handling, while Bootstrap expedited UI design with its responsive and customizable components. Finally, we deployed it on vercel since its scalable and is very reliable in hosting our website.

Challenges

Coordinating with three team members posed challenges due to potential communication gaps and different working styles, but we managed it through semi-formal meetings and splitting up the work into parts that can be assigned deadlines. Some of the team members had to learn everything about front-end development, which slowed us down a lot, but despite these obstacles, our determination and teamwork paid off, leading to a successful project that improved our software skills.

Accomplishments

We persevered and finished the website despite the early difficulty of several team members needing to learn front-end development. We succeeded in building a polished and expert-looking platform through perseverance and hard effort that not only surpassed expectations but also satisfied the project's needs. Together, we made sure that the website was not only useful but also aesthetically pleasing, providing a positive user experience.

Our Takeaways

During the project, we learned front-end development, worked with servers, and improved our coordination as a team. This enabled us to create a functional and visually appealing website successfully. The experience enriched our skills and prepared us for future projects.

What's next for LaunchLink

We hope to be able to actually create this into a formal non-profit, and to get it up an running with passionate student coders, as well as small businesses looking for help in creating their online presence. For now, we plan on looking for small businesses in our community, and to help create a website for them. This will help us build credibility, and allows us to get more people involved.

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