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Student Projects – Frame of Mind

Made by Team Syntax Squad

Express your creativity a little bit every day

Frame of Mind is a creative storytelling app that helps users to express their emotions through art. Users can draw solo or collaborate with others around the world to create comics made up of 8 panels, with each user contributing one panel. Once comics are completed, users can share their comics in the community hub, get inspiration from others’ work and support each other. Through a streak-based system, users are motivated to return each day, and in the future we hope to implement a virtual art studio where users can purchase items with their points. We created this app with the hope that 5 mins of creativity each day and the collaboration with others, will help to boost users’ mental well-being.

The Team

Holly Skinner

Holly Skinner

Hi, I’m Holly and I’m a software developer with a Master’s

in Chemistry and a background in Investment Banking. The transition into tech has been an exciting challenge and Northcoders has been a fantastic place to begin my career in the industry. In my free time I teach yoga and enjoy playing a variety of sports, from netball to trail running and latin/ballroom dance.

Kyle Noad

Kyle Noad

Television Director transitioning into software

development, motivated by a passion for technology and problem-solving.

Harrie Teague

Harrie Teague

Artist and comic author with a love for webdev and trying

new things. I joined the Northcoders bootcamp to solidify my programming knowledge and turn that passion into a career!

Thomai Christopoulou

Thomai Christopoulou

Hi I’m Thomai, a former pastry chef, turned software

developer. Originally from Greece, I now live in Manchester and I’m excited to embark on a career in tech following my experience on the Northcoders course!

Beau Vincent

Beau Vincent

I decided to delve into the world of Software, stemming

from my interest in problem solving and interest in providing real world solutions to automate our day to day lives. Moving into a Software role, I’m ready to discover the never-ending journey of debugging, recursion and recursion. Aside from my technical side, I enjoy spending my time exercising, playing chess and developing ideas to bring to life.

Scott Girling

Scott Girling

Hi, I’m Scott! Having been interested in tech for a while I

took the plunge and enrolled in Northcoders’ Software Development in JavaScript Bootcamp. Now a Junior Software Developer I’m ready to embark on the next chapter of my professional development. With the knowledge and skills to build full-stack web applications the future feels more auspicious than ever before. Outside of coding, I love to hike and explore the great outdoors!

Tech Stack

Tech Stack for this group

We used: JavaScript, Firebase, React, Next.js, Rough.js, MUI, Figma, Phosphoricons, Perfect Freehand, PrimeReact Colour Picker, Random Word Slugs We used Firebase for our backend as it allowed us to handle authentication, database management and notification handling. In the frontend, we chose to use React and Next.js so that our app was compatible with web and phone usage. Next.js allowed us to optimise our file structure and streamline routing for a better UX. Rough.js, Perfect Freehand and PrimeReact Colour Picker were used collectively to build our canvas functionality and were easily integrated to allow the smooth-running of our canvas feature. Figma was used for designing the app wireframes and visualise our designs more professionally. MUI and Phosphoricons were utilised to maintain a consistent theme across the app and enable easy user navigation.

Challenges Faced

Whilst we met our MVP, we would have liked to implement our Virtual Art Studio as an added layer to the user rewards, and encourage users to engage across the app daily. As Firebase was a completely new technology, this presented a steep learning curve, especially in terms of the user authentication process, however this was implemented in the final product.