Brilliant — Improve the CBL experience
In the last 6 months at the Apple Developer Academy, we’ve worked on dozens of different projects, learned new things, explored new paths.
And still, I’ve seen many of us struggling with the same problems.
Many of us came from a different background, with a different mindset than the one we’re learning here at the Academy, so often it’s not very simple to make this switch.
For example, the CBL approach is wonderful: it makes you ready for the world of work, makes you think, try different things, grow.
But because of our different background, the CBL is not always followed as it deserves, and we make a lot of lovely jump to solutions.
Since I believe that CBL is something worthy to learn and to master, I wanted to understand better why we have these difficulties to apply it, and so I interviewed some peers.
Interviews
I’ve interviewed 5 peers and basically the outcome was always the same.
CBL is indeed valued as useful and worthy among them, but as I thought the difficulties came from a background focused on solutions, and not on the process.
Interestingly, while at the Academy we made a lot of sessions and workshops about different exercises, procedures and so on and so forth, the people I interviewed said that often they had the problem to actually apply those exercises, not knowing when or how to implement them.
Is it possible to make the process easier?
Okay, I’ve understood more about the reasons why my peers had problems with CBL, now the question was: could I help to adopt the CBL with ease?Well… let’s try!
During the research I identified 2 main scenarios in which an app could be helpful:
- Peers know the process & the methods, but they’re not structured enough to follow them;
- Peers do not know well enough methods & process.
I’ve tried to find some app that could help with these scenarios, and while there are a lot of useful resources, often they’re very theoretic and not so practical.
The main problem is: they’re not timely.
They’re a huge database of methods that you can learn from, but you can’t easily use it when you need it.
It looks like my peers need an app with fewer methods maybe, but applicable at the very same moment they’re using that app!
Wireframes
With the wireframes I’ve tried many different solutions, but in the end my goal was to differentiate the scenarios and focus on a path, rather than a lot of not structured information.
That’s how Brilliant is born!
With Brilliant, I’ve tried to solve the issues we as students are facing with a new approach.
I’ve tried to give a “blueprint”, not to follow always but to assist in the first steps with a new way of thinking and working.
For the UI I’ve been inspired by the overdose of post-its we need to follow many methods.
Post-its are a very good symbol of rapid ideas, prototyping, iteration, so I’ve tried to include them in my UI.
And with post-its came the handwritten font, which also reinforces the importance of not falling in love with our solutions.
Finally, there is no button in the app to vaguely simulate an analogical approach, and for the same reason filter e.g. are always on, while interactive elements of the UI (such as the link) are highlighted with an actual highlighter-style underline.
Conclusion
Due to time and other obvious constraints, the researches are based on a small amount of data and I’d like to make deeper analysis and additional testing to improve this solution.
Nonetheless I had fun and learned a lot about my peers and many other things, so thank you for reading!
Last but not least, I would like to thank Danilo Capasso, Emanuele Agosta, Francesco Dell’Aglio and obviously my personal, special mentor: Mara Rossi.
Credits:
“Brilliant” handwriting by Francesca Franco
Icons by https://icons8.it
Illustrations by https://undraw.co
