One of our WOW-Elite Crews recently delivered an innovative prototype – an online recruitment portal – to a very valued and important client.

Among the many positive feedbacks from the client was this: the value of the personal investment that each Crew member contributed in breakthrough-thinking, creativity, ideas and solutions to the project build – that brought to the prototype more than anticipated.

Within the prototype requirements were a number of deliverables that required some smart-thinking and approaches to GUI, data management, mining and presenting relative information to site users.

We set about selecting a WOW-Elite Crew that combined UX / Design (GUI) / core development skills and project management. From our contacts and partnerships with some of the top Universities – the Crew on this project consisted of students / graduates and mentors from UCL / Ravensbourne and Cambridge among others.

As soon as the project outline was presented to the Crew – there was an immediate buzz – this was a project that they could contribute more than just code / PSD’s and reporting documents – this was something they wanted to engage with personally – contribute thoughts / ideas / solutions and potential add-ons for following iterations.

At every Crew meeting – we would update and evaluate tasks delivered / tasks outstanding / problems and solutions. But more than this – there was deliberation, analysis, debate (even arguments between Crew devs), research and lots of sketches on what ‘else’ could be done – ‘A better way might be this’ – Why don’t we try this approach’ – ‘ I just researched this algorithm and I think we can apply it here’ – ‘Has the client thought about this? – can we demonstrate to them?’…and many more.

As project lead on WOW-Elite Crews – it is always more than satisfying when you bear witness to this genuine desire to ‘go the extra mile’ – to explore not the just the obvious – but what could make this better?!

The combination of a technically challenging deliverable, the opportunity to work within new dynamic Crews – engaging with the client in real ways – this is why we believe WOW-Elite offers such fantastic experience to our students and graduates who work with us.

For nearly all of our Crew members – the fact that they are also paid for work on these projects is secondary. What is more important and rewarding to them is the opportunity to contribute more than just an out-dated curriculum thesis, a dull final year group project or some solitary piece of coursework…through WOW-Elite they dynamically work with their peers from other Universities in WOW-Elite Crews – get invaluable support and mentoring from our WOW-Elite Industry Advisors – they work with real clients on real projects with real budgets, real deadlines with real opportunities to contribute their BEST work and creativity.

It would be easy for any provider to take on projects – scope out the bare minimum – and deliver JUST the bare minimum. Working with some of the best students and graduates coming out of our Universities – this just ain’t going to happen – they are eager, hungry and biting at the bit to get the opportunity to prove what they are really capable of.

It makes for very exciting projects – for us, the students AND for our clients!

As Director and founder of WOW-Elite – I continue to be immensely proud of the skills, innovation and creativity that lies innate within our student and graduate ‘tribe’ – simply waiting for the opportunity to shine, prove and showcase their very best skills and talent.

In our humble opinion – this is what makes our WOW-Elite Crews a little bit special!