Senior Capstone Project: From Idea to Blueprint

Every project starts with a question. For Good Neighbor, ours was: why is it so hard to ask for help, and why is it equally hard to find a way to give it?

As a team of four students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, we set out this spring to answer that question by building something that didn't exist yet: a simple, centralized platform that connects people who need everyday help with volunteers who are ready to provide it. Not a nonprofit with a hotline. Not a corporate gig platform. Something in between, built for real neighborhoods and real people.

The first few weeks were less about design and more about definition. We mapped out our stakeholders, identified our constraints, and asked ourselves honestly: what can four students actually build in one semester? That conversation shaped everything. We made early decisions to leave out payment processing, GPS tracking, and AI matching, not because those aren't interesting ideas, but because scoping a project well is its own skill. Knowing what to cut is just as important as knowing what to build.

Once we had our scope, we built out a Work Breakdown Structure and Gantt chart to organize the work across four phases: initiation, planning, execution, and closing. Seeing the whole project laid out on a timeline made it feel real in a way that a brainstorm never quite does.

What I took away from this phase is something I think applies to design at every level: clarity at the beginning saves pain at the end. The more honest we were about what we were building and who we were building it for, the easier every decision that followed became. Before we ever opened Figma, we knew exactly who we were designing for, what they needed, and what success looked like. That foundation made everything else possible.