Harvard Kennedy School - Website and Full-Stack Digital Platform
Malchiel Daniel Rodrigues
Project: Receptiveness - Website and Full-Stack Digital Platform for Showcasing Research by Harvard Kennedy School
Overview
The Receptiveness Project was a unique initiative by Harvard Kennedy School, aimed at showcasing and extending cutting-edge research at the intersection of communication and psychology. The primary objective was to create a digital platform that not only communicated the essence of this groundbreaking research but also allowed the public to interact with and apply the research findings. As the project lead, designer, and developer, my role was to bring this vision to life.
UX Challenge: Close Client Collaboration
One of the key challenges of this project was to effectively communicate and translate complex research into a user-friendly and engaging website. To overcome this challenge, close collaboration with the client, who was the professor in charge of the research, was vital. Iteration and continuous feedback ensured that the website effectively conveyed the research ideas to a general audience.
The writing tool that provided a public deployment for the NLP algorithm developed by the research team.
Technical Challenge: Bridging Research and Online Deployment
The technical challenge revolved around marrying the research's coding, primarily done in R, with online deployment. This required the development of a Python Flask API to facilitate user interactions on the website. The API handled the survey scoring and the text analysis NLP tool. The NLP tool deployed an R-based SpaCy custom machine learning algorithm developed by the research project.
This technical integration was a greater challenge than anticipated and we had to develop and test multiple integration configurations to optimize for response time, system resource consumption, and user load.
Moreover, the website included a lightweight admin portal designed to empower the professor. She could create group codes and receive reports, making it a valuable resource for her courses and presentations.
We kept the admin portal as simple as possible for professor.
Key Features
The Receptiveness website is a fully custom-designed and coded platform, harnessing modern web technologies such as React and Python Flask. It is hosted on AWS EC2, with a specialized RStudio & Flask image to facilitate communication between the R algorithm and the Flask API.
Languages, Frameworks, & Platforms
HTML, SCSS/CSS for frontend development
Typescript/Javascript for interactive features
React for building the admin portal
Python Flask for API development
R for the specialized machine learning algorithm (developed by the research team)
Hosting on AWS EC2 for scalability and performance
This project exemplifies my expertise in full-stack development and custom web design, where I seamlessly merged technical and design skills to bridge the gap between research and online deployment. The collaboration with the client and the technical challenges overcome in this project demonstrate my commitment to delivering unique and effective solutions.
Disclaimer: This project was conducted independently by Excito LLC and is not an official endorsement, partnership, or collaboration with Harvard University. While we provided services to Harvard for this project, the views, opinions, and content presented here do not necessarily reflect the views of Harvard University.
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Posted Nov 7, 2023
Full-stack (UX, Web Design, API) project to deploy and showcase research on conversational receptiveness developed by Harvard Kennedy School.
