The app to conquer the Erasmus programme
We've already spoken about Papaya in the past (Papaya! Web apps for everyone): the app, developed in collaboration with the Erasmus Student Network Modena association, that allows to automatically match in pairs local and international students — getting rid of an onerous manual process, aiming to ensure a deeper integration and to offer a better support to exchange students.
Why are we here again, speaking about it, after several months?
Without anticipating the final, here's the whole chronicle.
The app started its path at the dawn of 2017 when, from the need of the volunteers of Modena, this project was born, bringing a consequent drastic reduction of the amount of work to do to get things done: from weeks of effort to a few hours of work.
After some month of use, we started to gather the first feedbacks, identifying accordingly the improvements on which to work on, reported by the experience of both local and international students: this cosmopolite conglomerate of opinions generated a series of cycles of "inspection and adaptation", typical of our Agile development methodologies, that brought the app to assume a more mature and surely more complete appearance, compared to the initial one.
We are not just talking about new functionalities: the entire User Experience, i.e. the ways the user can enjoy the app, was revised and refined; this, together with a complete graphic restyling, brought the enthusiast community around the project to spread the word about the potential of the service.
Approaching Summer, they were already many the membership requests to the system from other Italian sections of the Erasmus Student Network; but not only: several other European realities announced their interest toward the app. Riding this wave of requests and feedbacks, we renewed Papaya so that could accept all the associations which could have applied for it: the scalable technological structure of the app, based on the Cloud infrastructure of the Amazon Web Services allowed us to satisfy this demand, making us able to offer Papaya to thousands of international users.
Shortly thereafter, the boom: the invite to present the project to the Minister of the Instruction, University and Research (MIUR), in a partecipation inside the National Mobility Day, happened last September; an immense honor, completed by the possibility to show to the International Relations Offices (URI) of the Italian Universities attending the event, the potential of a project so important for the welcoming of the exchange students. All of this, combined to the comunication started by ESN Italy, increased further the spectrum of interest and the number of membership requests in Papaya, so much to arrive even... in a castle in Lithuania.
During the first weekend of October, we took part to the 33° Lithuanian National Platform, an international event that allowed us to present Papaya at the suggestive venues of the castle of Raudone. To the presentation followed a small workshop, an opportunity to discuss the state of art of tutoring projects like the Buddy system, for all the sections and the associations involved. Given this recent success, as in a sort of tour, we will be in Hungary, in Budapest, next November.
Could it be better than that? Indeed, in fact,
together with ESN Modena, we had the possibility to partecipate to a wonderful contest that showcases the best practices to facilitate the international students and the volunteers whom support them: l'ESN Showcase of the South West region of Europe (South West European Platform - SWEP). The event, held in Milan a few weeks ago, also wanted to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the mobility program par excellence: the Erasmus programme. Following an interesting conference, an amazing flag parade through the central streets of the city and after a couple of days full of small sessions and workshops, Papaya reached the final of the competition.
In the gorgeous venue of Palazzo Lombardia, following a charming galà dinner, the proclamation of the prize-winners is finally arrived. We proudly and happily announce
the victory of Papaya and of ESN Modena for the best practice of Europe's South West region!
Many good feedbacks, in short, the result of an optimal mix of good communication, of a united community and of a platform, Papaya, built over a solid Cloud structure, scalable and offered in an attractive interface, through an immersive user experience.
The recipe with which we create all of our apps!
Let's build together our next success story. Contact us and we will enlighten you!
