Odyssey

Inspiration

There are plenty of professionals out there who are willing to help students, but the problem is often they don’t know what students to help, how to connect with the students, or how to best help the students.

What it does

What Odyssey does is connect students and professionals on a platform suited to the needs of the student and the expertise of the professional! There is not exactly a platform where students can flair out the need for help to professionals. There is a stigma with showing weakness in the field when students want to present their best.

Students might be overwhelmed with finding the right mentor for them. We help match students and professionals up based on several qualities that students mark of importance to them including industry, background, identity, and affiliation in addition to experience level.

Students fill out a questionnaire about their interests during onboarding, what level of certainty they have about their career, and whether they want to explore fields, companies, or critique their resume and interview skills. From there, the student's profile is set and the app sends in-app notifications for matches.

Every day, students get a different match and you can choose if you want to meet the recommended professional. However, this is also an option for mentees to search for mentors themselves. Mentees can then set up availability with mentors and we'll suggest conversation topics based on the mentor's expertise and the student's desires to take away from this interaction.

Each chat between a student and professional will be exported where students can see what they learned from each session and always go back for key insights. They will then be notified for a follow-up session one month later.

Professionals will fill out a questionnaire based on their availabilities and what level of commitment they are comfortable with. In addition, they will identify interests, identities, and other information that can match students with them.

How we built it

We used Figma, a sketch prototyping tool that allowed us to wireframe the flow of our application.

What part(s) of the problem are you solving and why do you think your prototype will work in solving that?

We're solving all three parts of the problem: professionals will now (1) know what students need help, (2) have a direct way to connect with students on a platform catered for this purpose, and (3) see the help students need because students themselves will have the opportunity to list forms of help they require.

Our app will provide daily opportunities for professionals to match with students in need and our filterable profile parameters make it easier for professionals to know what help they should provide before holding a session with a student. The app will also hold call capabilities and desktop integration, allowing meetings to be held on the desktop as well for a more comfortable experience. Because of this, the app is exactly how professionals can connect with students.

The extent of the impact is exponentiated based on the number of connections between professionals and students on the app. By promoting follow-ups and by allowing our users, professionals, and students, to be specific with their needs, expertise, and goals, we idealize the quality of the connection between professional and student where both come out of a session feeling rejuvenated.

What's next for Odyssey

We hope our ideas are taken into account and believe that these three core goals are essential, especially for underrepresented students who may not have as strong of support from families for further education. We believe that no matter the case, any platform growing the bond between professionals and upcoming professionals will better prepare students for industry. And at the same time, we make the world a more connected place.