October 23, 2017 TCO17 Day 1: UI Design Semi Finals

The competition has finally kicked off! Monday brought us two Design Semifinals, the Marathon Match Final, and the Algorithm Competition Semi Final 1. The UI Design Competition Finals Sponsor, is M&T Bank, which had a design project as part of their Buffalo Promise Neighborhood collaboration. As part of this collaboration, they support Westminster Community Charter School on providing students with the resources needed to succeed. Topcoder designers were working on designing a responsive solution that helps students connect and collaborate with mentors with different skills and careers, so their life will still be guided once they leave WCCS
Both Semifinal 1 and 2 had the same purpose: to focus on designing the user experience for the students. The targeted age here is older than 14 years old. Compared to last year’s specification, this challenge is pretty straightforward, so once designers read and planned the application user experience, they quickly started designing on their laptops.
The majority of the designs followed a few steps like entering the name, email, chosing their interests and then seeing the potential list of coaches. Once the user clicked on a coach, he could see more details about that coach. For some designers, the dashboard was a feed of their friends activities, but for others is was about potential coaches, what they could learn and their progress.
All the designs had great approached and I am sure the judge, Adam Morehead, will have a hard time defining the leaderboard. Check below to see the details in no particular order:
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Once the semifinals were closed, designers had a design workshop with the client, M&T Bank and they were able to ask questions and understand the requirements better. This proved to be very helpful as it cleared out the specifications. Then each design was brought up and presented by Adam and designer had the chance to explain things on his work and get direct feedback.

Besides the design workshop, we also had yesterday a copilot workshop where Kyle Bowerman together with Ward Loving, Adam Morehead and Rashid Sial, explaining what a copilot duties are and how to fulfil them the best. The workshop was addressed to design copilots, development copilots but also marathon match testers. They also went to explain the difference between regular projects and those brought through Connect. The other experienced copilots who were there, helped with their testimonials.
Check the Welcome Reception video here:
https://tco17.topcoder.com/videos/
Check out the photos as we keep adding them:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53993064@N03/albums/72157661757249588
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53993064@N03/albums
Follow TCO17:
https://tco17.topcoder.com/blog/