Jessie's Design Month Dash - Round 3

Welcome to Jessie’s Design Month Dash – Round 3! If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! We are so happy to have you here for round 3!

In this challenge, we are looking to design a new, fun and exciting Topcoder Educational Center page, for all our community members.

This challenge is part of a 3 Challenges Fun Series at the end of which we are offering a trip to TCO19 as the final grand prize, among other significant rewards in between. The challenge has a special structure and you can read more information about it in the General Rules below.

Note: this is the LAST round of our series and it’s a FAST 24 hours challenge so plan your time accordingly and do your best to win the ticket to TCO19!

Prizes:

• The GRAND PRIZE WINNER of this three round challenge will win a trip to the 2019 Topcoder Open Finals!  
• 1st place: trip to TCO19 (note: the $1000 added as first prize is just a placeholder in the system as the winner will get the trip to TCO19, not the payment)
• 2nd place: $500;
• 3rd place: $250.
• All the other passing submitters will win $100.

Note: you can only submit ONE screen for this challenge

Round  1
Submit the following design for the final deadline:

• Topcoder Educational Center Landing page

Challenge Objectives

• Design the interface for the application
• 1 screen at 1366px width
• Web application

Project Background

• The purpose of this project is to design a page for Topcoder members where they can learn more about how the platform works as well as different technical skills per tracks
• The application will also allow members to upvote the content
• Through this page the users will also have an option to submit a resource

Participation
Please see the list below, only members that their Topcoder Handle mentioned here eligible to join this challenge:

• petetebe, ToxicPixel, iaminfinite, billthezab, ndondo_
• VivekSati, Brianbinar, ioyik, dkumar1810, rajeshrathod
• cendhika, laptopapik, ankit.passi, fauzanmaulidi, riopurba, iqbalhood
• FortunateSon, Journeyu, Rizqykhairani, chamdi, yanwarpro
• konthet, oninkxronda, starck181995, Naufal_hamidy, armaan6651

General Rules
This fun challenge is a unique type of challenge that follows the rules below:

• The unique/fun things to include in this particular challenge are:
  • Random item 1: Fire
  • Random item 2: Football (soccer) player
  • Color palette: Green (#71B340), Pink (#D94CCA), Yellow (#FFCE59)
• The scope of this challenge is to design a fun and creative Topcoder Educational Center Landing page, but remember to keep it modern and useful at the same time (no need to follow the current Topcoder user interface style)
• Once you completed your design, you have to place it in the template we provided (height of the template can be adjusted based on your design) and submit it
• The winners of this challenge will be announced live on the Wednesday Workshop on May 29

Screen Requirements:
1. Topcoder Educational Center Landing page

General Considerations
If you come to Topcoder site, you will see that we have a lot of educational content but right now is spread all over the place: in the help center, in forums, on the blog, newsletters, webinars on youtube, etc. In this challenge, we are looking to revamp and streamline the platform’s learning roadmap experience and provide a proper mix of educational content and support to empower Topcoder’s community members to:

• improve existing skills
• learn new technologies
• promote greater levels of community engagement and collaboration       

    
A lot of the educational information we have on the platform is related to specific tracks: design, development, data science and competitive programming, but besides that, we also have content on how to use our platform, Topcoder policies, how to submit in challenges, etc. which is currently found in the Help Center.

As of today, Topcoder’s content is relatively scattered and it is difficult to find what you need whether you are a newbie or veteran member. This new page you are tasked with designing, will be the landing page so that members will be able to find educational resources. From here, the user could select a specific track to see the related resources or they can search for the information that he or she wants and access those articles. All of the dispersed learning resources will now be stored in the Educational Center pages (for example blog articles content will be moved here).

Minimal Requirements
In terms of ugly technicality, this is what we envision so far - please don't allow this to limit your creativity, it's just a rough reference. The sky is the limit! Keep in mind to ONLY design the Educational Center landing page and only 1 submission is accepted.

At a minimum, a Topcoder member should be able to see the following information here:

• Search for a resource (this is a core feature so the user can easily find content easy)
• Links to educational content per tracks (Design, Development, Data Science, Algorithm Resources) – so for example a designer can quickly look into design section
• Link to How to Use the Topcoder Platform (this is useful for all members)
• The resources can be of a couple of types:
  • Blog articles
  • Forum posts (for algo and data science they discuss their approach on forums once a challenge ends)
  • Webinars and Workshops (now are on Youtube)
  • Practice problems (for algorithm)
  • Newsletter content (like for design we have Tips & tricks, Shining Stars this Week Gallery, etc.)
  • Other content for Design, Development, Data Science, Algorithm that is now on site (Topcoder> Tracks > Learn More)
• The resources can have tags/ be filtered by different levels of difficulty: beginner, intermediated, expert
• Latest resources added (this can be general or related to the track you’re more active/personalized content)
• Recommended resources for a user
• A user will have the option to upvote a resource if he likes it, as well as comment on it
• Submit a resource option by a member to be added to the Educational Center
• Anything else? Perhaps a leaderboard with top contributors, most liked resources, etc.
• As a member, what other information you think it would be useful to have on this page?
• Include the unique/fun items mentioned in the General Rules section - mandatory!

The items above should be used as guidance, but don’t let them limit your creativity and feel free to come up with any other elements you think it might be good to include. We are looking forward to see what exciting new section/ elements you think we should add.

Key Items to Focus on

• This web application must look and feel modern, clean and professional.
• Make your design stand out on a first and use the random fun elements!
• Easy and intuitive use for any Topcoder member, newbie and veteran.
• Target web devices at 1366px width and height adjustable as needed

Branding

• Please use the provided color palette for this challenge
• Typography is open to designers
• Stock photos and stock icons are allowed from the approved sources.
• You can download the Topcoder logo from here.

Target Audience
Topcoder members

Judging Criteria
Your submission will be judged by:

• How well you integrated the required elements
• How fun your application looks
• How creative your design is
• Completeness of design

Final Deliverables

• All original source files.
• Design Explanation Notes (create this as an overlay on your screens for instance)
• Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop and saved as a layered PSD file, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch or Adobe XD
• Note: for this challenge we don’t need to use a Marvel prototype