During the summer after my sophomore year at the University of Utah, I applied and was chosen to participate in Code School, a ten week long course that met 20 hours a week to learn advanced techniques to springboard us into the world of web design and development. Over those ten weeks, while learning everything there was to designing, building, and launching a website, we were also assigned into groups to create our own project from scratch, which we would then present to the various companies that we had networked with throughout the semester.
My group included myself, Hannah Ripley, and Taft Thompson. Our idea was to create a website where students could input their resume information into form fields, and then have that information auto-populate into customizable templates, streamlining the process of resume creation. Hannah Ripley ended up reaching out to the Career Services Center at Utah Tech to collaborate on the information such as the tips and tricks that are presented to users in the input fields. Throughout the process, we ended up adding features such as a database that allowed users to log in and save the information they had added to their resumes. We also created a system in which users could rearrange the content of their resume into different "zones" throughout the templates, and added a color wheel so that the colors of the documents could be adjusted dynamically. And of course, we allowed for the export of the document, both through saving and printing.
The project taught me valuable lessons about collaboration on web projects, including how to utilize the unique skills of everyone on the team to finish a project quickly and efficiently. In the end, I was tasked with the front-end of the website, designing a look and layout that was dynamically adjustable. I also designed the layout for many of the resume templates that were offered to users.
Although the site is no longer live, as the project was redone, a simulation version of the site is still viewable here.
