SPARX is an educational social media platform where students can follow their own interests and post their research, create, collaborate, collect, discuss, encourage, and present school projects and original works.
I lead and organized the structure of what this project would become. The idea and vision came from my college Rich Kallage, but the management of time from step to step and organizing the scope of the project become my role. As such, I had a hand in every step of the process from beginning to end. I collected interviews and sorted through the data to help understand our userbase. I then helped to create wireframes and prototypes and eventually created a coded information landing page.
Public school students with high talent or specialized interests need to find a space and an outlet to explore and develop their unique passions, as well as a space to find others who share similar interests. Students who fit this category need a platform to advance their achievements beyond the scope of school standards because it can help them to forge relationships based on interests and develop bodies of work that can advance their education far beyond the limits placed by public schooling. Public schools lack the resources to accommodate students with niche, gifted and talented, or otherwise specialized interests; the percentage of the general student population in this category is generally low (under 10%), but the aggregate number of students across the country is in the thousands.
This is SPARX, where students can create pages designed around their interests, join groups of other students with similar interests, explore topics to find content, forums, and make friends who share their interests and share their work with a wider audience through Live Feed and specialized forums.
A platform like SPARX can be modified for different versions, such as homeschooling versus public schooling. The platform can be created with different levels of permissions based on factors such as age and parental controls. Further utilities could be used to match tutors with students or to even match professionals with students for career growth. Plug-in features such as music recording studios, Figma-type collaboration software could be implemented for a better and more hands-on experience for the students. The UI flow can then accentuate learning and discourage similar use of other social media platforms such as Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram.
