This sprint, we shifted from “building features” to “building habits” – for our users and for ourselves. With exams looming, we leaned into study-season realities: clearer flows and community touchpoints that make Mathiné feel like a teammate, not another tab.
Project Update
We kept learning with experts and students, not just code. Our follow-up with Professor Allyson Hadwin reinforced the importance of scaffolding self-regulation without taking the wheel – students learn most when they author the plan. That framing shaped how we’re positioning the “to-do list” experience during finals: smaller steps, clearer wins, and coaching that invites reflection rather than prescribing it.
On the ground, the exhibition doubled as a mini bug bounty and usability lab. Students gave us fast, candid feedback – fewer clicks to meaningful actions, clearer labels, and tighter empty-state guidance.
Community ops levelled up. Taylor and Anna took point on Discord engagement and sweepstakes operations, translating classroom momentum into an online rhythm – Q&A threads, quick polls, and prize announcements that keep the loop alive between “I tried it” and “I’m sticking with it.”
The team completed TCPS2 ethics certification to keep our surveying above board, and we aligned with Tristin on analytics instrumentation and data access so that what we measure matches what we value: adoption, weekly study cadence, and confidence signals – not vanity metrics. We’re working through permissions and an ethics amendment so that the first wave of dashboards we see is both compliant and actually informative.
Challenges
Not everything hit the timeline. We fell short on one of our Sprint 3 targets and re-baselined scope accordingly, prioritizing what will matter most during exam season. The AI Quiz Generator remains gated by approvals and copyright clarifications; we accepted the constraint, documented the value case for students and profs, and paused net-new work there until the pathway is clear. That decision gave us room to finish highly requested items instead of spreading thin.
Feature-wise, we focused on the study stack students actually touch in November: to-do list with task breakdown (our “five-part study plan” clinics), calendar subscriptions, and time-blocking as a gentle on-ramp to planning. We’ve also queued a kanban toggle and a refreshed landing page so the first impression mirrors the product’s current clarity. Each piece is designed to reduce cognitive load and increase momentum – recognize the problem, make a plan, see progress.
Team-wise, the daily stand-ups continue to pay off. We had a few hard but healthy conversations about communication styles and post-lecture group work norms, then adjusted how we hand off tasks and ask for help. It’s the same culture we’ve been growing since day one – transparent, curious, and kind – now with the maturity to reset when something drifts.
Up next: run the end-of-term study workshop, review early analytics for adoption patterns, and ship the last polish PRs (calendar subs, time-block affordances, and to-do/kanban smoothing). Finals season is noisy. Our job is to be the quiet, steady tool that helps students see what’s next – and feel confident they can do it.