AfterClass

AfterClass was built for the Drivhuset 2026 Ideathon, which came with some restrictions regarding both the subject of the design and the tools we could use. We were required to prototype using Lovable, and a number of example problems were provided as starting points.

After looking at the themes in those examples, we decided to formulate our own problem based on our own experiences.

Because the Ideathon lasted only 24 hours, there was very little time for proper user testing. We therefore decided to design for a group we already understood well: university students.

To better understand the pain points students faced, we narrowed the scope further to students in IT, since this was the group we knew best.

The design industry is currently going through major changes, and no one really knows what the future will look like. Anxiety around whether you are doing enough during your studies was something everyone in our group could relate to. Uncertainty about the job market was also something we knew from experience was a common topic at our university.

This obviously was not the highest level of research. Much of it consisted of discussing our own experiences as students. Still, we believe this approach worked well within the constraints of a 24-hour Ideathon. It gave us a user perspective to discuss in our pitch, while many of the other projects focused more heavily on the idea itself.

The strongest point of agreement in our discussions was that it can be difficult for university students to gain experience working on projects outside regular coursework.

During our studies, for example, we work on many projects with other interaction designers, but rarely with programmers, project leads, visual designers, or people from other disciplines.

We therefore arrived at a simple conclusion: as students, we need somewhere to gain experience working with people outside our own field.

This led to our main question:

With the goal of creating a place where IT students could find each other, we created a user flow for the platform.

This also helped us divide the work within the team, as each person could take responsibility for different parts of the experience while still working from the same overall flow.

The part of the user flow I personally spent the most time designing was the onboarding experience.

Because AfterClass was specifically intended for students who wanted to gain experience, the onboarding needed to communicate that users did not already have to be experts.

We identified two main decisions a user needed to make:

1. Which role do I want experience in?
2. Do I have an idea I want to realise, or do I want to join someone else’s project?

The wording of the first step was especially important. Unlike something like LinkedIn, users should not feel that they need to qualify for the role they select.

Someone selecting Developer, for example, is not saying: “I am an experienced developer.” They are saying:

The goal was to use language that encouraged students to join projects rather than making them feel that they were not experienced enough.

This also influenced our decision to keep the role categories fairly broad, since students rarely have the same level of specialisation as professionals already working in the industry.

The final prototype allowed students to explore projects, select the type of role they wanted experience in, create their own projects, and find teams looking for people with their skills or interests.