Project Case Study

BracU Diary

A unified student platform built to centralize academic tools, course resources, events, and AI-assisted support for BRAC University students.

Next.jsTypeScriptFastAPIMongoDBVercel
BracU Diary

Problem

Students often rely on scattered links, informal groups, and repeated manual searching to find course materials, events, and important academic utilities. That fragmentation creates friction every semester.

Context

BracU Diary was developed as an academic project for a systems design course. The aim was to think beyond a single feature and design a platform that could support everyday student needs in a more connected way.

Goal

Build a unified student platform that could simplify access to academic resources, improve workflow visibility, and provide timely support through an integrated assistant.

Solution

The platform combined several core capabilities into a single interface:

  • Secure authentication for student access.
  • Structured directories for course resources and academic utilities.
  • Event management features to make student activities easier to track.
  • A Retrieval-Augmented Generation chatbot to support users with contextual guidance.

The frontend focused on responsiveness and clarity so students could find what they needed without unnecessary steps.

Process

The project started by identifying common pain points in student workflow, then grouping them into a few essential product areas: access, discovery, events, and support. From there, I translated those needs into a web platform backed by a FastAPI service and MongoDB data layer.

Challenges

The biggest challenge was balancing breadth and usability. A student platform can grow messy very quickly if every function competes for attention. I had to keep the structure simple while still accommodating different use cases.

Outcomes

  • Delivered a single platform for academic tools, course resources, and event information.
  • Added a RAG-based assistant to improve user support beyond static pages.
  • Built a project that reflects both full-stack development and user-centered systems thinking.

Links

Reflection

BracU Diary showed me that useful student products do not need to be flashy. They need to reduce search effort, organize information well, and support people at the exact moment they need help.