JMU CIS/SMAD Capstone First Place Comptetitors!

Every year in the spring semester, JMU seniors within the College of Business and School of Media Arts and Design get together to create an integrating web application that serves and help find solutions to certain organizations and clients. In 2022, there were around 150 seniors from three classes that were organized into a dozen teams. It is their goal to compete and build the most functional application to the best of their knowledge. In the end, I am proud to say that the team I have worked with has successfully taken the first place spot throughout this entire capstone! You can view the full capstone final presentation Facebook video here.

Problem and Vision

Problem

This year's client was the JMU Ole School Alumni Scholarhip Group (OSASG). They explained to the students that they seek a functional program/website that helps connect to their students and mentors within the OSASG. They needed a way to communicate with their students better, help organize information from both the student and administrators end. This will help connect with the students, whether it be assisting with internships, scholarships, jobs, and much more. JMU Ole School Alumni Scholarship Group Site.

Vision

The JMU students got together in different groups to create a solution to the OSASG's problem. The Computer Information and Science students would create the back-end and functionality of the site using the knowledge of C#, SQL, and more. While, the School of Media Arts and Design students would conduct user research and utilize HTML/CSS to create the front-end development of the site within the realm of User Experience and User Interface.

JMU summary article of the capstone. Learn More

Design Process

User Research

Working with two fellow School of Media Arts and Design students (SMAD), we started our process with discussing with the OSASG administration to see what they desire and have issues with. With the information we have aquired, we have created wireframes, mockups, daily reports, user personas, conducted interviews with the staff and students to get closer to our desired goal. You can view our report from our Sprint 2 presentation Here.

Front-End Development

My main role in this capstone was to help create the front end of the site. Using HTML/CSS and influence from Bootstrap, I was tasked to bring our mockups and functionality to life. I was tasked to translate ASPX to HTML/CSS using Visual Studio Code. I was able to single handedly able to combine both ASPX and HTML/CSS coding together, creating all of the pages to bring our site to life. To the right, I have attached some screenshots of our site as well as a walkthrough video of our finished site towards the bottom of the page.

Screenshots of the Capstone Site. Learn More

To The End

Together As a Whole

Throught the entire capstone project, our team was able to reach to the top two finalists spot in the end. With judges from KPMG, MITRE cloud engineers, OSASG directors, and Amazon Web Services, we were able to win the entire capstone. It was a challenging process of being the only front-end developer within the HTML/CSS side of this project as a whole. However, this project has solidified my understanding of C#, SQL, ASPX, and more within back-end development. Additionally, I was able to improve my understanding and knowledge of conducting user research as well as the steps of a design process within the UX/UI realm.

Final Capstone Site Walkthrough.