Inspiration
As students passionate about STEM, we've seen firsthand the lack of representation and support for women and non-binary individuals in our fields. Inspired to make a difference, we embarked on creating BeyondOrdinary, a platform dedicated to empowering and championing diversity. This is a more advance remake of our previous project called STEM Forums.
What it does
At BeyondOrdinary, women can explore a platform showcasing women's achievements, and timelines illustrating their successes, interact with a chatbot for website assistance, enroll in courses with quizzes, reach out for inquiries, read success story blogs, discover job opportunities tailored for women, and much more!
How we built it
We used JavaScript, HTML, and CSS in constructing this website. Utilizing CSS keyframes, JavaScript animations, complex dictionaries, advanced HTML tags, and extensive CSS design, we crafted this platform.
Challenges we ran into
We were unfamiliar with utilizing APIs and decided to experiment with them. However, we found that most job platforms did not offer user-friendly APIs. Additionally, we encountered difficulties integrating a dataset to display job roles, as it worked seamlessly with Python code but not with our JavaScript code. These challenges posed obstacles for us during the development process. We faced challenges while creating the quiz too. We experimented with different quiz formats, spending hours fixing issues. Neither of us are proficient in JavaScript so making everything function was quite difficult. We had to scrap several ideas due to our lack of understanding. Styling was another hurdle; finding the right fonts and other design elements took up a lot of our time as well.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're thrilled to have developed this platform, uniquely tailored to women's needs. Our journey has been rich with learning experiences, from exploring APIs and coding with them to refining our CSS skills beyond our previous projects. We've deepened our understanding of design, honed our abilities in crafting animated cursors, and optimized our use of CSS for more effective web development.
What we learned
We've significantly enhanced our skill set by learning advanced CSS and JavaScript techniques. Through hands-on experience, we've learned to use JavaScript, where we've focused on creating chatbots, and an animated cursor. Our understanding of web layout has grown as we've learned to manipulate grids effectively. We've gained proficiency in enhancing user experience through designing and implementing dropdown menus within navigation bars. Our dedication to refining our design skills has resulted in the development of visually appealing web pages, showcasing our expertise in UI/UX. This journey has been great in honing our coding skills and elevating our web design capabilities.
What's next for BeyondOrdinary
Our plans involve integrating a backend system to facilitate user sign-ups, course enrollment, and progress tracking. We aim to incorporate various animations such as loading animations for the website and more. Also to integrate APIs for job listings, and chatbot, enhancing the platform's utility for our users. In addition, we also plan on adding a forum which users all over the world can add to. Many of our future ideas require a database so we will be looking into that.
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