to the future
cypher, cypher, cypher, cypher, cypher,
cypher, cypher, cypher, cypher, cypher,
Introduction
Cypher organises and runs hands-on creative coding camps and courses for children aged between 5-14.
With increased demand and offering more courses than ever before, Cypher reached out to Studio Graphene to build and design a new web platform to offer a refreshed and improved user experience for its customers.
Furthermore, as the project kicked off, COVID-19 impacted Cypher’s entire business model requiring a significant pivot in terms of their focus shifting from physical coding camps to online only.
Additionally Cypher required a platform that could be used to help scale the business, as well as future proof the booking system - transforming it from a manual booking process to a smart, intuitive and efficient digital experience.
Solution
Collaborating and working together as one team with Cypher’s founder, we initially focused on the different users' needs including children, teachers, parents, schools and administrators - we had to design a solution that worked and catered for all.
We built a bespoke platform leveraging React.js, Node.js and Drupal with a lot of customised functionality designed to make the admin process fully automated, so it was efficient and effective as it could be. Key functionality included bookings, scheduling, managing transactions and payments in multiple currencies in different time zones and locations throughout the world.
From a design perspective, our team took inspiration from the Cypher brand’s isometric grid design system - resulting in a clean and bright look and feel designed to appeal to both girls as well as boys.
To clearly delineate between the physical location based courses and the online courses, we created a different design language specific to each.
We wanted the user experience to be fun, hence we integrated lots of animations and accessible iconography throughout the platform for the children and parents alike. Our aim was to showcase the diversity of Cypher’s offering from coding courses to other creative topics including architecture, fashion, art and physically making things. We needed a design approach that could showcase the broadness of Cypher’s offering.
Results
We created an intuitive and easy to use web platform that not only showcased the variety of Cypher’s online courses but also developed a future proof backend platform to transform the booking and admin process for the internal team in order to successfully scale the business.
Cypher makes use of the latest AWS services like EC2 for computing, RDS for persistent storage, CloudWatch for Governance and Audit, and Simple Storage Service for Storage and Content delivery.
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