🗂 Overview

Brainheaters is an educational ecosystem helping engineering students prepare for exams with the right resources at the right time. The goal was to design a user-friendly mobile app for students and a robust Admin Panel for internal team members to upload, control, and analyze content usage.

This project included:

• Designing the student-facing app from scratch

• Creating a custom Admin App (for permissions, resources, analytics)

• Building a role-based backend system to scale with growing users

• Ensuring a smooth content update pipeline without needing developer support

🎯 Problem Statement

"How can we make the exam preparation journey seamless for students while giving our team full control over the app content and user access — all without touching code?"

We needed to solve for:

• 🧩 Content structure across 20+ universities, 100+ subjects

• 🎛 Permissions control for different user types (FE Free Plan, Lifetime Paid Plan, etc.)

• 📈 Scalable content delivery — PDFs, notes, questions, videos, etc.

• 📊 Insights for the team — Which topics perform best? Who's accessing what?

👥 Target Users

1. Student App Users (Primary)

• Engineering students from Mumbai and Gujarat regions

• Struggle with local train travel, time shortage, exam fear

• Want last-minute prep, smart filters, and access to the right notes instantly

2. Brainheaters Team (Admin App Users)

• Content managers, customer support, community leads

• Need a backend tool to upload resources, manage users, track analytics

• Require zero technical skill to operate

🔍 Research & Insights

We did a mix of:

• 1-on-1 calls with FE, SE, TE students

• Chat transcripts from WhatsApp community (~20k members)

• Internal interviews with the Brainheaters team to understand bottlenecks in content upload and support

Key findings:

• Students get anxious 5–7 days before exams, want "just the important stuff"

• Many students have limited internet — offline capability was key

• Our team had no clear dashboard or access-level control — everything required developer support earlier

✏️ UX Strategy

We designed two separate yet tightly connected experiences:

1. Student App (iOS + Android)

• 🎯 Semester-wise home screen

• 📂 Subject screen with filters like Notes, PYQs, Videos, etc.

• 🔒 Smart access control (Free access for FE, Locked for others unless Lifetime is activated)

• ✅ Lifetime plan benefits — unlocks all semesters

2. Admin App (iOS)

• 📤 Resource upload system (PDF, YouTube links, text)

• 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 User control: Activate/Deactivate, assign plan

• 🎯 Dashboard: Total users, top subjects, most used resources

• 🔐 Role-based access: Content Manager vs. Support team vs. Admin

  
  

💡 Smart Features

For Students:

• 📚 Dynamic Content Filters (Notes / Important Questions / Videos)

• 💾 Offline Downloads

• 🔒 Locked Resources with plan upgrade CTA

For Admins:

• 🧠 Auto-Sync with Firebase/DB

• 📈 Analytics Dashboard showing which subjects get most views

• 🔄 Update without developer – Entire app content manageable from Admin UI

📊 Results & Impact

• 💥 Scaled from 10,000 to 100,000+ students

• 🚀 Reduced dependency on developers by 90% (for content updates)

• 📉 Reduced student support queries by 70% due to clear locked/unlocked access logic

• 🎯 Admin team now uploads, edits, and tracks resources independently

🤝 Tools Used

• Figma (Design + Prototypes)

• AWS (Server)

• React Native (Development)

• MongoDB (Database + SQL + Roles)

• Google Sheets (Bulk uploads pre-migration)

  
  

🧵 What I’m Proud Of

• Designing an ecosystem, not just an app

• Creating an Admin App so intuitive that non-tech interns could manage 100+ uploads a day

• Solving a real pain point for thousands of students with clarity-focused design

  
  

🔚 Final Thoughts

Brainheaters App + Admin App isn’t just a project — it’s a system that impacts real students at scale during one of the most stressful phases of their academic life. As a designer, my job wasn’t just making things beautiful, but making clarity scalable — for users and our internal team.