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A user's initial homepage, ready to ask their first question.
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The user can enter relevant information about their problem, so that potential helpers can understand if they are able to offer assistance.
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Immediately after the user has submitted their question it is added to their list of unanswered questions.
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Helpers can also see a global list of unanswered questions, with options to accept (offer to help) or reject (ignore) each item.
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Some point in the future, two helpers have expressed interest in the problem. The user can decide who to choose based on their experience.
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Upon pressing "Call", a Webex video session starts, hosted within the platform. The helper can give the user relevant assistance.
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Once the call has finished, the user can rate their experience, to help inform future customers.
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The user can also view all available helpers and read their biographical information.
Inspiration
Working habits are increasingly favouring flexibility of location and schedule, with virtual tuition services now in high demand. Our product takes this one step further by offering unique, personalised solutions to specific questions, answered by subject matter experts in real time.
What it does
iamstuck.com is a platform that allows students to post specific questions which qualified helpers can offer to work through with them, face to face. This means they can get the support they need when they want it, rather than having to commit to regular tutoring. Helpers can connect from anywhere in the world and offer specialist knowledge on their own schedule, increasing the chance of a successful match. Using Cisco's powerful Webex platform, students and helpers can interact via video call, collaborate on a virtual whiteboard and much more. Also, users can rate each other at the end of each interaction, promoting an environment of trust and accountability.
How we built it
We used Webex APIs to create the core functionality, video collaboration. The calls are facilitated using our backend Python service, and interacted with using Cisco's pre-built React widgets.
Our backend uses the Django framework to model data schemas and handle transactions. This functionality is exposed via a RESTful API, which our frontend React application consumes.
Our Single Page Application uses modern techniques like dynamic routing and the new fetch() API. We used Tailwind CSS to style our components to create a intuitive user interface.
Challenges we ran into
Initially, we struggled to combine the Webex widgets with other React libraries due to conflicting versions of common dependencies. After consulting the documentation and existing open source repositories, we managed to resolve these issues.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that we managed to build an MVP version of our initial vision. Our group was new to using the Webex API and React but quickly adjusted and implemented all of our planned functionality.
What we learned
We learnt how to use React, Django and Webex to build a seamless user experience.
What's next for iamstuck.com
In the future iamstuck.com will learn from user activity to automatically propose optimal helpers to suit specific individuals. Helpers would be able to charge an optional fee for their time or simply volunteer to share knowledge, giving a wide breadth of choices to the user when searching for help.
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