Birthday and a new version instudies

About a year ago our team announced the launch of a new educational project designed to become an indispensable assistant for every student. Since instudies have changed a lot and look without a smile on the first version of the service we can't :) However, even the crude product was many abracham, which formed the first nucleus of the users liking. Today we want to talk about the fact that we've been through in the development of the project for the previous year and what it's like to do an educational startup.

Short on facts

• September 2011 – started version 1.0;
• November 2011 – we presented a project in Silicon Valley;
In January 2012, the project draws business angel investing;
• March 2012 – work is running version 2.0 (modified design, performed the full refactoring);
• June 2012 – September 2012 – development of a completely new version 3.0

Summer

Spring was coming to an end, and with it the academic year. This meant that we had the time for all forces to undertake improvement of the service.

The main problem of the service at that time was the existing concept: after registration, the user was required either to create or to join a closed group whose name you want to know. I think at this point we've lost most part of users and attention to our service. Besides, the unregistered user is in no way to look "inside" of the service, that is, to see what awaits him after registration. Also we did not like the fact that on his group, the user sees nothing.

In the end, it was decided to expand the visible boundaries of the service, placing the user and not the group in the center of it all. Simply put – we started thinking about how to socialize the service. We had three summer months of working, and new instudies 3.0 we planned to release on 3 September, with the beginning of the school year. To do this, we even rented office space from which now I write these lines.



June. the Whole of June we spent on the discussion of future versions of the product, but rather what new features it will include. The difficulty was that a consensus were to meet all the team members + the investor. Sometimes there was a feeling that the days pass in vain, despite the fact that to accelerate this process proved impossible, and to sit for the development of an indefinite concept was pointless. By the end of the month we have accumulated a huge pile of ideas began to be shared by some tasks but to cope with such volumes of information we were not able to. Fortunately, at this time the team has a specialist in project management. With her help, we just a few days determined with the methods of distribution of tasks, raked all the debris and prescribed the necessary stages of work.



July. Finally managed to start developing the new version. First, as before, drew the design that we decided not to change and leave the spirit of the second version of the service. However, fate had its own plans in this regard and one of the sleepless nights our web designer completely shoveled existing design. In the end, we obtained a qualitatively new result, while losing the previous two weeks time. By this time, our main and only at that point, the programmer waved at us and went on to conquer Elbrus. The rest of the month we disainile and typeset layouts to the arrival of the developer to have a huge pile of work :)
August. Work started on all parameters. Before the launch was only a month, not all layouts were drawn, not all laid out and almost nothing is programmed. That is the month of August showed us that he is able to make the team, sandwiched in such a short time. The code was written in airports, on the road to Odessa on the train (went to a business meeting), waiting queue in the shower in the hostel where he lived. Nobody had to motivate them, and all what was missing is a couple of extra hours in the day.


Go to Odessa, we were joined by our friends. Unfortunately, on the sea, we spent a few hours.

3 September. We did not start :)

September 17. Late for 2 weeks and write all necessary functions and correcting 194 caught the bug, we finally launched!

New instudies 3.0

What has changed in the draft?

1. Naturally, the new interface design, main page and tour website.
2. It was possible to create training group or communities of interest, thus making them open or closed.
3. In the center is the user. You can now add each other to friends, subscribe to specific users, to subscribe and join the desired group. This means that all information will be concentrated in the activity feed user.
4. Open Public blogs, where any user can write a post and share their unique experiences and knowledge with others.
5. When you create a group, you can select Tools (for example, homework and essays to the exclusion of all else). However, if necessary, group configuration, of course, change.
6. There was a tool "E-mail group" (each group gets the address of the form group@instudies.com, which teachers can send assignments and / or materials). All the letters are displayed directly in the service interface, and participants can them if you wish to discuss in the comments.

Thus, our service is now fully can use not only pupils and students but also teachers with Tutors. That is, the service can be configured to fit almost any educational need.

At this point, the work never stops for a second. We are working very hard to make the tools for students is impeccable. That is why we are happy to listen any ideas for service improvement, as well as proposals on possible cooperation.

PS And we interview those studying abroad and to publish them in the appropriate category.
P. P. S. Secret link, which show how looked the main page of version 1.0 instudies :)

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru